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• On March 27, 1944, about 14h30, by a wonderful weather, Biarritz was bombed by the United States Air Force causing many victims and important damages.
• The alarm had resounded towards 14h15 and by misfortune, no one did precipitate to the shelters.
• Every body wanted to see what was going on.
• It is, without any doubt, the main cause of the hecatomb which was going to follow within the next 6 to 7 minutes.
• From my balcony, on the second floor of the Avenue Victor Hugo n° 10, (centre town) I was counting the planes entering by the Adour River Bar of Bayonne flying Eastwards to bomb Pau Pont- Long airfield. They were not camouflaged and shone at a very high altitude. I was counting about 70 of them when Biarritz started to shake as under the effect of a seism. A rain of bombs was falling. That occurred in my back because the bombing planes were coming from West to East and my balcony was facing East. They planes were therefore hidden to me by my own building. It is only when I saw bombs falling into the garden of the opposite house that I immediately rushed inside. I had been lucky because several pieces of shrapnel had touched the frontage of the house and had even entered the apartment.
• The sun suddenly disappeared, it was dark, it was cold. All occurred in a few minutes. Explosions were still going on towards Portdelanne Place and Railway Station and then silence. A heavy and worrying silence. What had happened? Was it finished or was it going to take again?
• Soon the sun reappeared and the spring temperature of this beautiful Monday of March came back. Then one heard the screams and laments of the many victims to which, the persons in charge for the Civil Defence, firemen, police, ambulances etc. were carrying help.
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• I had already been bombed several times in Bilbao, during the Spanish Civil War, by German and Italian aviation and even by the guns of the German cruiser "Deutchland", but never with such an intensity. 45 tons of cluster fragmentation bombs in less than 7 minutes on a limited area !
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Deutschland
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• My father went out to see whether friends of ours, living the the bombarded zone, had been injured and when passing by the gate of the Hotel d’Angleterre (occupied by the Germans), he saw many bodies of German soldiers shredded against the grids of the garden.
• The decapitated and still helmeted head of the sentinel had gone to the window of the second floor of the house of the oposit side of the street. A jewellery was being plundered while bombs were still falling at the railway station.
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