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Author Topic: A forgotten German Gun Battery in Normandy is unearthed after 50 years  (Read 8032 times)
Koen
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« on: 25 May 2009, 21:46:35 »
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http://www.armourer.co.uk/maisy/

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1891355,00.html

The location is at Maisy in France: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandcamp-Maisy

Quote
AMATEUR historian Gary Sterne solved one of the mysteries of the D-Day landings - after he found a tattered map at a fair in Stockport.

Experts were divided on the location of the main Nazi gun battery which caused carnage on Omaha Beach, in terrible scenes which were recreated for the Hollywood film Saving Private Ryan.
The Germans had built a decoy gun emplacement overlooking the area and the location of the real guns which blasted the beach, where 2,000 men lost their lives, remained unclear.

But Mr Sterne, a publisher and collector, stumbled on the answer as he browsed through items at a Stockport militaria fair and a piece of paper fell out of a pair of US serviceman's trousers.
It turned out to be an invasion map for Omaha Beach, which included an area marked Area of High Resistance he thought could be the `lost' Nazi gun emplacements.

"It sparked my curiosity, because that area was previously thought to be just fields," he said.
The 43-year-old father of two from Cheadle Hulme travelled to Normandy to examine the area - and bought it.

He spent thousands buying the 40-acre site bit-by-bit from 32 different landowners, and two years excavating trenches and bunkers to reveal the `Maisy Battery'.
Mr Sterne believes this was responsible for the brutal bombardment of Omaha on D-Day and for days afterwards until its capture on June 9, 1944.

Now Mr Sterne plans to open a museum on the site and the battery will be featured in a documentary for the BBC Timewatch programme.
Mr Sterne has contacted veterans of the US 5th Ranger Battalion, who confirmed taking Maisy Battery from the Germans.

They also revealed that they found $4.2million worth of French francs, which was shared among the men.



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