-Two hundred thousand buildings in the province had been destroyed.

-In the village of Vesly, over which Patton's army had rumbled in August, 655 out of 700 inhabitants had lost their homes; at Saintenay 151 out of 245 houses had been destroyed.

-Caen was a mountain of broken stones; 9,000 of its 15,000 buildings had been bombed or shelled flat.

-By 1954 Caen was reborn.

-Something that had to be done was gathering in of the bodies of the soldiers who had died in Normandy's fields and orchards. Most were buried where they had fallen in the 10 weeks of fighting

-The bodies of the 9,000 American dead not repatriated were buried together under a forest of white cruciform headstones at Saint-Laurent above Omaha Beach. At La Cambe, 20,000 German soldiers were interred in collective graves, marked by monumental granite reproductions of the Iron Cross.

Digging graves.

Rubble after the war.

Modern day Normandy.

Graveyard of soldiers who had died