A family in France deals with the legacy of rape and murder of the World War II Allies

PLABENNEC, France — As the world commemorates this year the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy and the liberation of Europe from the Nazis, a French family is finally coming to terms with the personal tragedy that befell them during the summer. 1944.

Following D-Day, US troops expanded into Normandy and the neighboring western region of Brittany to capture and secure major ports such as Cherbourg and Brest. A family’s encounter with a soldier that summer will change their fate.

On a recent day this summer, 66-year-old Michelle Salaün walks across a field in Brittany toward the house where her mother grew up.

“This is the farm where my grandfather was killed and my mother raped, August 20, 1944, By an American soldier at the end of the war,” says Salaün.

Her grandfather, 47-year-old Eugène Tournellec, was shot while trying to protect his 17-year-old daughter Catherine from a soldier who came to their farmhouse late one night. Tournellec left behind a widow and six children. Her daughter survived, but was left with a terrible secret and a wound that never healed.

“This was a secret for my whole family (my three sisters and two brothers), no one knew,” says Salaün.

A photo from a family album shows Eugene Tournellec and Marie-Louise Tournellec on their wedding day.

Sexual violence by US soldiers in the aftermath of D-Day has long been a taboo subject on both sides of the Atlantic. But as historians and descendants of the victims examined the cases over time, the accounts challenged the heroic legacy of some Allied forces while also revealing the official racial discrimination of the period.

“There was a real problem with rape.”

Mary Louise Roberts, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, was one of the first scholars to turn to both French and U.S. archives for her work. 2013 book, What Do Soldiers Do?.

“Towards the end of the summer of 1944, there was a real problem with rape,” he says. “And the United States Military at the highest levels of SHAEF were concerned about this.” SHAEF stood for Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, commanded by General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In some ways, the problems were created by the U.S. Army, Roberts says. He depicted French women as highly sexualized to motivate soldiers. He mentions the infantry newspaper as an example Stars and Stripesit often showed images of GIs embracing French women.

“U.S. soldiers arrived with hypersexualized images of France and French women,” says Roberts. “And they saw themselves as knights in shining armor, waiting with the open arms of French women.”

The military decided this would be a “Black issue”

In October 1944, a French newspaper in the Normandy town of Cherbourg reported that rapes and murders were terrorizing rural families.

Roberts says it’s impossible to know how many rapes there have been. He estimates there are hundreds of them, based on his research, more than 150 convicted soldiers, and other rape cases where he believes no arrests were made or reported. He says the extent of the sexual assault was serious enough for the U.S. military to recognize the need to bolster the confidence of occupying forces in France.

Roberts says he read notes from an Army command meeting in the late summer of 1944 where crime issues were discussed. Even if it wasn’t so, he says, they decided to hold Black soldiers accountable.

“So they decided it was going to be a Black problem rather than an American problem,” Roberts says. “They could accuse African Americans of the belief that they were hypersexual and violent, thereby exonerating white American soldiers from rape charges.”

U.S. reinforcements pass through the waves as they land in Normandy in the days following the Allied invasion of occupied France in June 1944.

Rapid military trials were conducted. Of the 152 US soldiers tried for rape, 139 were black; yet black soldiers constituted only 10% of the fighting force. 25 of the 29 soldiers publicly executed were black.

“(French) mayors were actually asked to issue a notice to civilians to come and watch for African American soldiers being hanged for rape,” she says. “Obviously the Army wanted to impress on ordinary Normans that this was a situation the U.S. Army was in control of.”

Roberts believes logistical factors, as well as the racism prevalent at the time, played a role in the military’s decision.

He explains that the rapid movement of white soldiers in combat units from one point to another made it difficult to prosecute soldiers suspected of a crime. Separate units of black soldiers responsible for logistics largely remained in locations longer. This meant that a Black soldier could be blamed for a rape committed by a white soldier who had long gone elsewhere.

Roberts’ book won many awards and was well received by the US Army. adjunct professor at West Point But it also earned hate mail.

“In the public eye, World War II is seen as a ‘good war,’ especially the Normandy invasion,” says Roberts. “So when my book came out, there was pressure on that narrative.” Roberts acknowledges that the issue is sensitive and complex.

A documentary looks at a painful chapter

2023 French documentary OK Joe! it also looks at the executions of Black soldiers in 1944 and 1945, the crimes they were accused of, and the French families affected, including Michele Salaün and her siblings. Filmmaker Philippe Baron based his documentary on the book of the same name written by a young author named Louis Guilloux, who was a French translator for the US Army at the time.

“He spoke English and in the summer of 1944 he offered himself as a translator and found himself at the center of these investigations by American officers,” Baron says. “Guilloux travels with them to different places and participates in military tribunals. He becomes an established witness of history.”

Baron says it was difficult to criticize the liberating Army in the 1950s and ’60s. But even when Guilloux published his work in 1976, it went largely unnoticed. It would be another 30 years before U.S. historians began investigating the Army’s crimes and racism in the aftermath of D-Day. Today Guilloux’s book is considered an important historical document.

The painful silence of a family

Behind a cemetery in the small village of Plabennec in Brittany, Salaün and two sisters found 34-year-old Pvt. William Mack, a black soldier from South Carolina, was hanged for the murder of their grandfather in February 1945. Tournellec’s relatives say Mack is also charged with attempted rape, although they are convinced Mack raped their mother.

“People didn’t talk about rape then. It was very intimate. It was unacceptable,” says sister Jeannine Plassard.

Mack, a cook in a segregated unit of the US Army 578th Field Artillery Regiment (later Tabur) did not admit his guilt, although there were different accounts of his defence.

French relatives say witnessing the execution of their young mother Catherine Tournellec added to their grief.

A family photograph taken on the wedding day of Catherine Tournellec and Jean Salaün in June 1950. Salaun died in 1971.

“No one here wanted him to be executed,” says Plassard, 69. “The US Army did this to show that it was taking responsibility. But it was liberation and everyone was happy and finally free. It was just our family’s pain.”

At brother Jean-Pierre Salaün’s house, the brothers talk around the dinner table and show me old family photos. They say the crime and the silence around it poisoned their mother’s life and cast a dark shadow over their family.

But they don’t blame the Americans. They say this is the fault of conservative, strict and religious French society.

“Why did we have to remain silent about the rape of our mother and the murder of our grandfather in order to live in peace?” asks 72-year-old Jean-Pierre Salaün.

It was a shame that he only learned his grandfather’s name when he was 15 and wanted to be told it. No one talked about her because that would mean talking about what happened to their mother.

They all remember their mothers crying at night. Marie-Annick Gouez, 60, the youngest sister, says she cries all the time.

“I thought it was us kids who did something to hurt him.”

This is what angers Jean-Pierre the most. He pulls down a book from his library about their small town during World War II. “There’s not a word about our grandfather here,” he says. “They even talk about how many horses were killed. But not a word about our grandfather!”

Marie-Annick says D-Day anniversaries are always difficult.

“What can we say?” he asks. “They saved France and the world. Our pain was just a drop in the bucket. But the tragedy is that women are still paying the price of war. Look at Ukraine.”

The siblings remember children who were not allowed to play with them. And that their mother didn’t go out for cupcakes at a cafe with other women after church.

“I always wondered why people looked at her differently when she was so hard-working and cautious,” says Marie-Annick.

It all makes sense now.

They say it was her beautiful voice that saved their mother. She sang traditional folk songs of Brittany at local festivals. It was a way to adapt. And maybe it was a way to express his pain.

They play a tape of a clear soprano singing in Breton, the language of the Brittany region.

At the end of his life, he told his secret to his children

Catherine Tournellec Salaün told her children about the rape while she was on her death bed in 2013. One by one. Although they say they already know by then.

Marie-Annick remembers her mother saying, “You believe me, don’t you?” He choked up when he remembered what he asked.

The brothers say it was liberating to take part in the documentary and finally talk together about what happened.

On the 80th anniversary of these events in August 1944, the siblings gathered at their grandfather’s grave to honor him and their mother. The mayor and two French veterans carrying French flags were also there.