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Mont St Michel over by Britanny officially is part of Normandy, anyone guessing would say it lies in Brittany. Normandy starts suddenly when you turn the corner north at Avranches. Suddenly the whole place is greener and wetter as reflected in the vegetation.

It is also reflected in the churches. Travelling backroads France you're basically travelling between church steeples, every town and village has one. Steeples in Brittany run tall, ornate and pierced, Norman church steeples are about like Norman castles; square and stout.

Case in point; the church steeple in St. Mare-Eglise, where in the early hours of June 6th, 1944, American Paratrooper John Steel hung wounded for two hours, playing dead while German troops milled about in the square below. He had been shot while coming down in his chute, most of the rest of his stick had been shot and killed the same way.



The corner of the steeple he actually hung from is the one closest to the camera. St. Mare-Eglise is actually a tourist attraction now because of D-Day, there is a major well-presented Airborne museum there now, right on the town square.

As part of this, a mannequin representing Pvt. Steel is left hanging from a different corner of the steeple facing this museum.



Which brings up the issue of how he got down.

After two hours it was the Germans themselves that noticed Steel was alive and who brought him down from the tower. He was their prisoner for a period of time until the Germans themselves were captured.

Here's some images from the museum, a Waco glider also crash-landed in the town that night.