How Lisieux Was Bombed

Little Flower's Sanctuaries, House' and Her Surviving Sisters Safe By Maurice Desjordins
LISIEUX
Three weeks after the liberation of Lisieux I heard from the lips of the director of all the Ste.
Theresa Sanctuaries, Mgr. Octave Germain, the full story of how 56 nuns (none of them Carmelites) lost their lives in three Allied raids on D-Day and D+ I-Day.
Our conversation took place in the intact Carmel, which had been surrounded by lire that had stopped after destroying the roof of the house next door.
One bomb scored a direct hit on the Benedictine Abbey of Notre Dante du Pre and soon after fire broke out. Twenty nuns died under the debris. One Sister died en route to the firstaid post. Streets were piled with rubble and progress was slow and difficult.
At the Community of Refuge home for wayward young girls theme were four deaths among the Sisters. The nuns had decided to sleep out in the garden after the bombing that re:curled at 8.30 p.m. on the evening of June 6. Another large raid came at 2 o'clock the following morning. Incendiary bombs fell on the building, which immediately became engulfed in flames.
Surviving Little Sisters of the l'oor in charge of a home for aged men in Lisieux said that during this early morning bombing the two wings of their ancient building were shattered and that 13 of 17 nuns died with 60 of the old men. Other aged and feeble inmates of the home were so stunned they did not leave their rooms in the main portion of the building until help came in the morning. This part of the building remained intact.
The Sisters of Providence affected by the bombing are members of a nursing community. A large bomb fell on the roof of the cellar of the novitiate, where the Sisters had taken refuge. The cellar collapsed and 18 nulls were either crushed, drowned or asphyxiated.
AIMED AT RAILROAD YARDS
The first raid at 8.30 o'clock in the evening of D-Day was aimed at the railroad yards. It was a very accurate raid. I was informed, and lasted but 30 seconds. In the large raid at 2 a.m. literally thousands of bombs were dropped. with the vital Paris crossroads as the target. There was another shrill raid at 2 o'clock in the afternoon of June 7 when bombs fell all shout the Basilica of St. Therese of Lisieux, wrecking all the shops in the immediate vicinity.
It was a temarkable fact, Mgr. Germain said. that Carmel, where the Little Flower's remains are venerated, was untouched and that none of the Carmelite Sisters was injured.
At the time of the first raid on the evening at' D-Day the Sisters were reciting their evening Office. They went on with their normal life and at 2 am., during the second raid, when everything seemed crumbling and burning about them. they huddled in little groups in the cells and played. They lemained in the convent through the third raid and only on orders of Mgr. Germain did they seek refuge at the Basilica.
The Cathedral of Lisieux remains standing on the brink of a panorama of ruins, a bit like St. Paul's in London. 'Two other churches, the church of St. Jacques and the church of St. Desir, are destroyed. part and parcel of the tortured landscape. Les Buissoncts. the modest little house on the road to Pont Leveque where St. Thereseand her four sisters lived, is still intact.
Pauline Martin and Celine Martin. sisteis of St. Therese. I was reminded, are still members of the Carmelite.community. The former, who is the Superior, is 80 years old and Celine is 76.