Memorial • Airborne Sector
Graignes Memorial Church
Graignes-Mesnil-Angot
The ruins of a church where villagers and US paratroopers resisted side by side.
Dropped more than twenty kilometres off target, 82nd Airborne paratroopers were sheltered, fed and nursed by the villagers of Graignes at the risk of their lives. After the battle of 11 June 1944, German reprisals killed civilians and wounded men alike. The preserved ruins of the Romanesque church now form a starkly moving Franco-American memorial.