Hi All, I was reading 'D-Day Plus One - Shot Down and on the Run in France' by Frank "Dutch" Holland today. As the title implies, Frank was a RAF pilot, flying with No. 184 Squadron, part of 2nd TAF when his Typhoon was brought down by ground fire on the 7th June near the village of Croissanville and the hamlet of le Lion d'Or (see Google Map link here). The book covers the escapades of Frank Holland during the following 68 days as he evades capture behind enemy lines. The full story deserves a thread of its own in the appropriate Forum section but I wanted to post one particularly harrowing experience which Frank endured here in the 'Civilian' section. The incident occurred near the end of of his wanderings in the Normandy countryside near the small village of Norrey-en-Auges. Frank had been staying with the Lair family for five weeks posing as an agricultural labourer with false identity papers. Until now, Frank had had a relatively trouble free experience as he could just about get by with a few words of school boy French and had been lucky in avoiding contact with the Germans. This changed one evening in early August as the front line began to move closer to the area of Norrey-en-Auges. A deliberate policy of clearing all civilians from villages near the fighting was being operated by the Germans. The idea was that the more civilians on the roads, the more the advancing Allied forces would be delayed. To refuse to vacate one's home was very often punishable by being executed out of hand. This particular evening Frank had been helping with the milking and was returning to the Lair family home with a mule carrying the churns of milk. As he and his co-workers moved out onto the road, they were met by a group of civilians having been forced to evacuate their homes. Frank's group then mixed in with this larger group of about a dozen refugees. Suddenly a German truck came along the road and the group moved to the road margin to allow it to pass. The truck did not pass but instead screeched to a halt and an officer jumped out of the cab and ordered everyone to line up on the side of the road. Frank thought his luck had run out and became nervous as he assumed that the Germans were looking for him. They were not. An old Frenchman, about seventy years of age, was dragged out of the truck and frog marched to the opposite side of the road. He was then blindfolded and tied to a tree. The German officer explained to the crowd that this man had refused an order to vacate his home when the evacuation order had been given in his village. For this crime he was to be shot. In the presence of men, women and young children the sentence was carried out there and then without further formality. The eight man firing squad then forced the group to bury him at the side of the road, re-mounted the truck and sped off. He was just an old man who did not want to leave his home, perhaps having already been forced to flee back in 1940 and possibly having survived the First World War. This incident is of course just one of many thousands endured by the civilian population of Normandy but the harrowing description has touched me deeply nonetheless. Does anyone know where on the road to Norrey-en-Auges this incident took place, the name of the man and where he now rests. Any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks, Pat