French women speak out about rape by US soldiers during World War II

Aimee Dupre had always remained silent about the rape of her mother by two American soldiers after the landing in Normandy in June 1944.

But 80 years after the brutal attack, she finally felt it was time to speak out.

Nearly a million U.S., British, Canadian and French soldiers landed on the coast of Normandy in the weeks after D-Day in an operation intended to signal the end of Nazi Germany’s power over Europe.

Aimee was 19 years old, lived in Montours, a village in Brittany, and like everyone else around her, was happy about the arrival of the “liberators”.

But then her joy vanished. On the evening of August 10, two U.S. soldiers – often called GIs – arrived at the family farm.

“They were drunk and wanted a wife,” Aimee, now 99, told AFP, producing a letter written by her mother, also called Aimee, “so that nothing is forgotten.”

In her neat handwriting, Aimee Helaudais Honore described the events of that night. How the soldiers fired their weapons at her husband, tearing holes in his cap, and how they menacingly approached her daughter Aimee.

To protect her daughter, she agreed to leave the house with the GIs, she wrote. “They took me to a field and took turns raping me, four times each.”

Aimee’s voice broke as she read the letter. “Oh mother, how you have suffered and so have I, I think about it every day,” she said.

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