Désiré
DAJON-LAMARRE
Ouistreham Riva-Bella
Désiré Dajon Lamarre, the boy from Ouistreham, aged 12 at the time of the landings
My name is Désiré Dajon-Lamarre, I was born on 23 November 1931 and I have always lived in Ouistreham Riva-Bella.
We, the children of Riva, would go off with the grown-ups. Their job was to protect us from mischief.
On 19 June 1940, we arrived at the Ouistreham crossroads, the junction that leads to the port, the market town and the beach.
Léa has got a tattoo of her grandfather's boxing glove, a reminder of a British soldier on 6 June 1944
The grown-ups say, ‘The Germans! And in fact, there was a side-car coming down the middle of the crossroads, and there was a German who had got out, machine gun at the hip, and entered the grocery shop just beside the crossroads.
My grandmother who looked after me said to me: ‘You're not going out, you're not going out’.
Everything had to be given. And they introduced food cards.
We didn't suffer much, so to speak... meat. The worst thing was the bread. We had chickens and rabbits.
Playing was the street. And let's not forget going to the rabbit patch.
During the German occupation, what changed a lot was when the first bombings took place.
I came out of the cellar... I looked up. What did I see? Bombers.
But fighter planes all around, all around, above the house, my grandmother calling me. And then all of a sudden, it fell, it fell. I was soon back at my grandmother's house.
On 27 April, the British dropped incendiary bombs, blast bombs and explosive bombs.
My aunt, who was on sick leave due to minor health problems, left with the whole structure and ended up in the field opposite where the secondary school is located.
And that day, 1st June 1944, I came back and I could hear the planes, the planes, the planes... But you couldn't see anything.
And all of a sudden, it fell, it fell. The whole heart of the village, our schools, our music theory school... you could see the desks in the bomb holes.
And I was looking up, with my kettledrum. A German came up behind me, slapped me on the back, lay down next to me and put his hand... I promise you, what I'm saying is sincere.
What happened all of a sudden? Behind our shelter, a shell fell. The shelter started to collapse. ‘Let's get out!’
That's when I got hurt. And when I fell, my hand was charred, not burnt, but it was scorched. It was the sparkle next to me.
I always heard my mum say: ‘One step more, one step less, and you could have had your leg cut off’.
Désiré's school notebook, which he started in June 1944 and has kept ever since
When I came back from being treated, there were the tanks that had stayed behind. There was an Englishman with a machine gun on his hip, and I got my pair of boxing gloves as a souvenir.
And the English, it's amazing, they had already built the infirmary, they had a big flag. And we were close to the infirmary, and that's where the Germans would drop a bomb here and a bomb there.
I have a photo of the family with the English, because my mum washed the washing, gave out tinned food, and I was always with the English.
As soon as school was over... they stayed until February. School had to resume in October, until the refugees had returned.
The headmaster brought all the classes together in the playground, where the town hall is now located. And he read us all the names of our little friends who won't be sitting next to us.
It does something, because you're thinking about a friend.
Then there was the town hall, where I was a deputy at the time.
My teacher said to me, ‘Désiré, why don't you testify?‘ And that's when, little by little, he said to me: ‘go on, you have to testify’.
On transmission: It's a need for me not to go through what we went through. The hardships, the war, everything... it's a need.
I feel liberated from the things I've been through.
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