By midnight all the guests had gone and the whole family were in bed—really home at last.
André went out to the road many times the next few days to look for friends on the army trucks and jeeps rolling by. On the third day, a messenger from St. Sauveur, on his way to the supply dumps on the beach, stopped to talk.
“We got the peninsula cut off now,” he reported. “The 9th Division an’ the 79th an’ the 4th Division are on their way to Cherbourg. Goin’ fast, too.”
Captain Dobie’s men were still fighting for the marshes and some hills west and south of St. Sauveur, he said.
The storm over the Channel had built up to an alarming degree. Rain and wind whipped the trees along the coast and drove the villagers indoors. Traffic past the house slowed almost to a stop.
When André asked a truck driver what was happening on the beaches, the driver said, “A blasted hurricane. The sea is standin’ on end. No landin’ barges can get ashore. Pretty bad, ’cause General Bradley’s howlin’ for ammunition.”
Frenchmen coming to the village from the shore said tons of supplies had been swept away and sunk.
The storm raged for four days, and André went sadly about his duties watching the road now nearly empty of trucks.
Two days after the storm subsided, André heard that General Eisenhower had ferried across the Channel to look over the destruction.
“He’ll talk to them army engineers an’ get deliveries speeded up—or else,” a soldier said.