Angels of Mercy – Story

 

THE STORY OF ANGOVILLE – AU – GALIN  ~  THOUSAND YEAR OLD HOSPITAL TREATS THE  AMERICAN’S, GERMANS AND FRENCH: The story of the two 101st Airborne Screaming  Eagle medics on D-Day, June 6th, 1944. In Angoville-au-plain, a small village between Utah Beach and Carentan, two medics treated over eighty causalities – American, German and French Inside a 12th century church. 

 

The book covers these events and also the history of the village throughout WWII: Internationally recognized D-Day historical and tour guide Paul Woodage vividly tells the riveting story about Angoville-au-Plain, the French hamlet where one of the most inspirational stores from June 6th, 1944 took place.

After landing in the middle of the night, off-target and without their equipment, American medics Bob Wright and Kenneth Moore, made their separate ways to Angoville-au-Plan and established and aid station in the town church where, over three days, they treated over 80 soldiers from both sides and faced down death repeatedly.

The book reads as if Dashiell Hammett was a historian.  As Paul gives life to the men who fought there, the desperate and brave townspeople who woke  one night to fighting in their midst  and even the thousand year old church that served as the aid station and whose pews are still stained by the blood of the wounded.

In the end,  amidst the  brutal combat, Paul  has delivered a touching book about the people themselves: the men, women,  and children who made , gratefully shared, the history. 

This is an absolute must read  by itself  for the message of  humanity and the sacrifice, and is invisible for any historian trying to better understand the desperate fighting  of those early days in June 1944.