(Luc-sur-Mer, Normandy) “Here it’s a piece of radio. There a grenade cap. And that’s a piece of shrapnel…”
Paul Cherrier meticulously takes out the objects from a wooden box, which contains dozens of them. He places them on the table, then goes to get more from a separate room. Shards of bottles, fragments of whiskey jugs, plates, belt buckles, brush, Brylcreem bottle, various debris… the unpacking never ends.
“I must have collected thousands,” emphasizes the young man, proud of his collection. I parted with some of it, but when I was a kid it was everywhere! »
It is surprising that objects from D-Day are still surfacing, 80 years after the fact. But this makes sense, considering the scale of the military deployment that took place on June 6, 1944 and the following days. Today, you just have to go for a walk on the beaches, after a big storm, when the sandbanks have moved, to hope to find treasures linked to this historic event.
The average walker would probably only see ordinary debris washed up by the sea. But over time, and through his many research projects, Paul Cherrier has developed an expertise as an amateur archaeologist that allows him to immediately recognize anything related to Operation Overlord. He gives the example of these small powder sticks, which look like old, dried spaghetti. “Now, I can spot them right away,” he says.
Most of these objects have no real market value, adds the collector. “The authorities are not necessarily interested in that. » But some have, in his eyes, greater meaning than others. This is the case of this shrapnel that he proudly brandishes before our eyes, of this fragment of a very thick steel bomb that he makes us weigh, but above all of this English helmet, all rusty and encrusted with shells, which he ended up lending to the Arromanches museum, specifically dedicated to the British invasion.
“He was there, on the ground, placed in the stones,” says the man who now works in a publishing house specializing in history books. When we see that, and we say to ourselves that there was a man behind, that this man was perhaps killed, that does something. It’s the most moving object I’ve found. »
In principle, nothing prohibits picking up objects related to the Normandy landings on the beach. Paul Cherrier is not the only one to have made it a hobby. There are indeed a few of them combing the beach, sometimes with metal detectors, looking for rare gems.
Most choose to keep their treasures, or resell them, sometimes at a high price. An American helmet, found on Omaha Beach, was offered this week on eBay for more than $1,000 CAN.
Others, like Paul Cherrier, prefer to offer the fruit of their miraculous fishing to museums, which will put it to educational use. The Juno Beach Center in Courseulles-sur-Mer, the only establishment that pays tribute to the Canadian troops of D-Day, made them the subject of one of its showcases. Around thirty objects are on display there, including a boot and a rifle surrounded by gangue.
Remember that Normandy soil still contains many potentially active explosive devices, such as bullets, shells or mines. For obvious reasons, these vestiges of the Battle of Normandy are the only ones that the “collectors” are not allowed to take away. Paul Cherrier admits that he sometimes took risks, which he would no longer do today. “I was a kid, I was unconscious. »
The best thing to do, he says, is to identify the location of the “sensitive” object, then contact the gendarmerie. However, he emphasizes that the dangers of explosion are relatively low, the rare accidents having occurred when people tried to defuse or clean the said device themselves.
It will probably take years to overcome these threatening remains. According to local media, the Normandy mine clearance services receive, every year, a thousand explosive devices from the Second World War. At the end of May again, eight shells had to be “neutralized” in the region, that is to say “exploded” in a safe place.
In 2021, the connection work on the Calvados offshore wind farm, for its part, gave rise to disturbing discoveries.
“The biggest weighed a ton and was two meters high,” confides Jacques Frémaux, director of connection of the Calvados offshore wind farm. It was a German mine bomb, the BM 1000, containing 850 kilos of explosives. This is the largest load we found on our route. »
This project will, moreover, have allowed Jacques Frémaux and his team to make an astonishing find. Among the 500 metal objects spotted was also a 2000-year-old lead ingot, dating from Roman times. It was stamped with the name of Emperor Hadrian (76-138 CE) and is now in the Normandy Museum.
The Landing sites are definitely home to many treasures…