Revisit: WWII Survivor tells Eisenhower in 1964 about 1944's Landing
Nita Wiggins
Author, U.S. politics commentator and essayist, university lecturer on "How African American Women Affect Policy: From Truman to the 2024 Election"
(AUGUSTA, GA) “Paratroopers fell everywhere around us…” starting at 10 p.m. on June 5, 1944 during the D-Day liberation exercises, according to the recollection of Simone Renaud. She was wife of the wartime mayor of Sainte-Mère-église, Alexandre Renaud. With crisp memories twenty years after the military operation, she informs “interviewer" Dwight Eisenhower what she witnessed.
The aerial invasion by the Allies is “a wonderful surprise” and a hope for rescue for the 1,600 residents of the Nazi-occupied town.
Mrs. Renaud appears in a five-minute segment of a 90-minute CBS film, adding: “I think it was a disaster for them [the Nazi forces] to see the Airborne troops."
A vital screening at a time of remembrance
The unique and remarkable film features a post-war conversation between the woman who becomes known as the "Mother of Normandy” and the general who becomes not only the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, but also president of the U.S. within a decade of the war's end. Click to view "EISENHOWER | His Emotional Return To The D-Day Beaches | WW2 Normandy." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M1fw6z2JPk
More on Gen. Eisenhower's return to Normandy. He uses layman’s terms to explain the D-Day beach-landing considerations. And, he confides to Mrs. Renaud that the brass feared the scattered nature of the landings of the paratroopers would be disastrous.
Au contraire.
The 101st Airborne and the 82nd Airborne paratrooper divisions' landings in and around Sainte-Mère-église were followed by the 4th Infantry, outlines Gen. Eisenhower to Mrs. Renaud in the 1964 video. She recounts to him that for two days the Allies and the Nazis battled in her town.
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Nita Wiggins appears on Paris TV and discusses U.S. life, politics, icons, and ideals, such as equality of opportunity fought for in World War II. In Civil Rights: My Story of Race, Sports, and Breaking Barriers in American Journalism, she examines whether the Civil Rights Act of 1964 delivers equal treatment for her in her lifetime of pursuits. Nita teaches at Sciences Po Université in Paris, France, where she is a requested public speaker. Options for purchasing her acclaimed memoir can be found at www.NitaWiggins.com. Check out her Youtube channel.
Wiggins is currently traveling through the South and Southwest U.S. doing research for the 60th anniversary of 1964's Freedom Summer and the struggles for rights.