In Calvados, a man finds a photo of himself as a baby, 80 years later!

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Jean Rolland lives with his wife Janine in a pretty house in Guibray districtin Falaise. He agreed to tell a great story. That of a photo taken by the Canadians during the bombings of Falaise in August 1944.

In his hands, an old photograph, certainly of poor quality given the years gone by, but we can clearly see in this one refugees who came to protect themselves in the Sainte-Trinité church, among the rubble littering the ground, chairs sometimes overturned .

And, among all these people, adults and children, we see a woman sitting on a chair, near a pillar of the church, breastfeeding her child. “This child in his mother’s arms is me,” Jean Rolland announces with emotion.

» In this photo, I am about 10 months old. I was born on October 20, 1943.” Today, at 81, he reveals his emotion in front of this old photo.

The night of August 17, 1944

Jean often heard this story told by his mother, Paulette Rolland, born Hue. » The mother talked about it all the time. » His parents, Paulette and Étienne, aged respectively 17 and 24 in 1944, were farmers on the Livarot road, the road which goes to Eraines.

» It was a very small farm with 2 or 3 cows on 3 or 4 hectares. » The Battle of Normandy began on the coast in June but, in August, the bombardments were around the Falaise/Chambois pocket. On the day of August 16, 1944, the evacuations of the inhabitants of Falaise began. There are many of them ready to go to the small surrounding towns.

» My father and my grandfather Paul, who worked on the railway at Falaise station, left in one of the trucks but without my mother and my paternal grandmother Marie, who stayed behind. They found themselves separated… Those who remained, around 300 people, were housed in the Sainte-Trinité church, thinking that it would be spared. »

Jean says that “among the refugees, there were some who wanted to leave the church but they were killed that day. » Most already no longer had a home in a town more than 85% destroyed by the fighting. That August night, the church was targeted by German airmen, using significant firepower to destroy the building. Stained glass windows were blown out, the organ was burned, the bell tower collapsed, tearing off the choir vault. But the ship holds and protects the Falaisians.

A busy life

In the church, there was Paulette with little Jean, but also her mother-in-law Marie. » The night of August 17 was very long, the fear was felt… The next day, the two women found the father and grandfather.

» Jean's memories are quite precise. An anecdote then comes to mind.

My grandmother had taken the money she had with her from the crate that served as my cradle. But when we had to go out, my mother took me in her arms, without the crate. And the money stayed in the church. My mother never wanted to go back and get them.

Life resumes its course and the family returns to the farm. Paulette has a very busy life with Étienne, between working on the farm, milking cows, selling vegetables at the market or even distributing cans of milk in Falaise by going door to door in a 2CV, without forgetting of course, the education of his children.

Jean will be the eldest of 9 children in the Rolland household. He became a butcher in Pont-d'Ouilly with Janine then in Caen. They will be the happy parents of two children, a girl and a boy and grandparents of three grandchildren.

The photo

Paulette closed her eyes on January 27, 2024, at the age of 98 in an EHPAD (accommodation establishment for dependent people) in Caen.

» She still had her wits about her and remembered everything. She often talked about the war, unlike my father who didn't talk about it. » But the story doesn't end there.

During a mass this summer for Paulette, Jean goes to the Sainte-Trinité church. “I never went there since my church is that of Guibray,” the latter specifies. » And there, I come across “the” photo that my mother spoke to me about so often, presented during the exhibition for Heritage Days. “

Pleasant surprise, which brings back so many memories for Jean.

I immediately recognized the mother, and me in her arms… I had never seen this photo.

That day, Jean leaves a little note on the photo as a wink. » I'm the baby in the photo. “

A call is launched

Katia Guyomard, president of the Falaise Patrimoine association, remembers this moment.

We discovered on the frame of the photo of the refugees in the Trinity Church a business card signed Jean Rolland saying that he was the baby at his mother's breast appearing in the photo. But without his contact details.

She then launched an appeal on the Facebook page of “Si Falaise m'tait conté”, to find traces of this gentleman. A few days later, she was contacted by Jean's niece, Valérie, then by her younger brother Loïc, who saw the call and gave her the address in Guibray.

» I went to see him, he told me his story and I came back to see him after the exhibition had been dismantled to give him the print of the famous photo! » For Jean, he had to wait 80 years to see this photo with his own eyes but, today, he is proud of the trace of his own little story in the great History. He feels regret:

This is the first Christmas spent without mom. She would have been so happy to see this photo, which confirms everything she has told us all these years.

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