A cow grazes beside a German casemate that once defended the port of Quinéville. The fence is made of German barbed wire stakes and American mesh. Photo: Department of MancheEighty years after the D-Day landings, a lesser-known piece of Normandy’s wartime heritage is coming into focus: the creative use of military materials for household and agricultural purposes.
What today we call upcycling was once a survival tool in a region ravaged by war. During the German occupation and a period of reconstruction that lasted until about 1960, scarcity drove rural civilians to repurpose the remnants of conflict in creative ways. Until recently their ingenuity went relatively unnoticed, as structures faded into the countryside and objects were tucked away in family homes or preserved in private collections.
Now, thanks to a network of professionals and other enthusiasts, this aspect of D-Day history has become accessible to visitors.
Salvaged material upcycled as clothing and household objects
An exhibit at the Ferme-Musée du Contentin, in Sainte-Mère-Église, will remain in place for the next five years and includes more than 100 household items constructed from salvaged material. The show’s title, “Système D-[Day],” is a play on the French word débrouille, which means “to make do.”
Helmets, whether left on the battlefield or turned in by surrendering German soldiers, were put to various uses. In the barnyard, they became egg carriers and measures for chicken feed. The German ones, with a visor that could function as a spout, found new life as kitchenware. With the simple attachment of a handle, they could be converted into pitchers or pots.
Credit: Ferme-musée du Cotentin
A child’s bed on view at the museum is a mélange, using jute fabric from British army gunnysacks and nylon cord from U.S. Army parachute lines. Fabric scraps nailed in the bed base suggest that it was once covered with camouflage parachute material.
Discarded parachutes were, literally, a windfall, especially the American ones, which were color-coded: Red held ammunition or weapons; yellow was for medical equipment; blue for food; green for radios; and white for other equipment. White parachutes were commonly used for wedding gowns; there’s an example of one in the museum collection.
A child-size white parachute cloth dress and a blouse, also in the exhibit, came with an oral history from the donor, says Virginie Guillotin, director of Heritage and Museums, who curated the exhibit. The original owner was 10 years old on D-Day, and spent more than 15 days in the cellar of the post office building in Montebourg during the liberation fighting. When it was over, her family had nothing left. American soldiers gave them parachutes to make into clothes.
Credit: Ferme-musée du Cotentin
Many other items surfaced as a result of a collection campaign, conducted in 2023 and broadcast in the local press, on local television and on social networks. It announced that the museum was “looking for objects, documents, photos, testimonies, illustrating the reuse of military equipment by civilians, during and after the Second World War.”
Items donated included a wooden chair with a seat woven from parachute cord. It came, without any other information, from a farm in Houesville, near Sainte-Mère-Église. That village, the site of a famous D-Day battle, was the first French town liberated by the Allies on June 6, 1944.
Credit: A. Cazin
Military waste in an agricultural setting
With help from Stéphane Lamache, a historian, and Cyrille Billard, a regional archaeologist, a companion project captured images of military waste used in a rural agricultural setting. The result was 22 photographs showing how relics of reinforced concrete and metal, mostly on private property, are still part of the local heritage.
“We wanted to show that the remains of the Atlantic Wall and the Second World War are still very present in the landscape and in daily life,” says Marlène Deschâteaux, director of Heritage and Museums at the Batterie d’Azeville.
Picture a drinking trough for cows attached to a concrete cube that once protected the connection boxes for telephone cables between the various German defensive structures, or grain silos installed at a former bomb workshop.
A shelter for sheep, made of galvanized steel corrugated sheets, is believed to have come from Azeville. In that village, which is less than a mile long, the German occupiers built one of the first French installations of the Atlantic Wall — a massive system of fortifications, obstacles and warning centers to defend the European coast against Allied attack.
Credit: Department of Manche
The battery was seized by the Americans on June 9, 1944, as they moved inland from Utah Beach, about eight miles away. Today, visitors to the restored garrison can tour the casemates, where sophisticated engineering provided electricity, well water and telephone lines.
Though there were formalized systems for disposing of military waste, including land mines, the photos show how scrap metal has been repurposed. In Bretteville-en-Saire, there are fence posts made from elements of the iron beach obstacles built by the Germans.
In Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, a chicken coop was patched together from mesh, tarred canvas and mats used to construct temporary runways, all of which came from the neighboring town of Brucheville. The American Army built an airfield there in July 1944. That facility was used only briefly, from August 2 to September 5, during Operation Cobra, intended to break through the German defenses in the direction of Brittany.
Aging cheese in a former German bunker
One of the more unusual uses of old military structures is of 21st-century vintage: a World War II bunker in La Hague that’s been transformed into a cheese cave. Five years ago, Simon and Quentin Cervantès, brothers in their 30s, were looking for a cool, moist underground place to ripen their artisanal cheese. After considering other historic venues, like a lighthouse and the crypt of a church, they began to look for an old German bunker that would fit the bill.
As Normandy natives, they knew there were lots of these solidly built concrete blockhouses in the vicinity but weren’t sure how to locate one appropriate for this purpose. On a whim, they contacted Rafaël Deroo, a Belgian specialist on the Atlantic Wall and author of the book À l’assaut de la Hague. Using the book as a guide, he identified three possibilities from among about 1,000 in the area.
The one they chose is near where the brothers grew up, and owned by the municipality from which they now rent it. The amount they pay is confidential, but the sum is nominal, Simon Cervantès says. Essentially, they rented it “as is,” agreeing to handle all of the cleanup and maintenance.
It took the brothers, who did all the work themselves, a full year to prepare the abandoned bunker for use as a cheese cave. For electricity, they installed solar panels, which power the lights inside. A small sink, where they wash their hands before handling the cheese, is operated with a foot-pedal pump.
The well-camouflaged underground location is secret, and it’s not open to the public, but during an interview there Simon Cervantès showed me around the operation. Unlike other bunkers along the coast, which were used for fighting, this one was an inland headquarters and communication center. Pieces of the cables that connected to a telephone switching center are still secured to the walls.
A room now devoted to affinage — the process of aging cheese — is lined with shelves made of sapin (fir) wood, which is resistant to changes in humidity. This space is used just for ripening; the cheesemaking process takes place at a local organic farm, which also provides the milk.
As we talk, Cervantès rotates the cheese wheels, rubbing the top, bottom and sides in a circular motion, and then turning each round over on the shelf. For the first week of production, he does this twice a day. After that, once or twice a week will do. Without turning, the cheese would grow “a forest” of spores, he says.
The brothers learned cheesemaking by scheduling visits with other producers; talking with chefs; and making mistakes. “My chicken eats a lot of cheese,” says Cervantès, whose “day job” is running his own youth hostel.
They’ve been using the bunker for affinage for more than two years, and have been selling the cheese for about half that time. Their production is small, and their audience strictly local.
Why not have a cheese cave like everybody else? “It’s rock ‘n’ roll. It’s more class. I don’t want to go to a job in a normal cave,” says Cervantès. “Every day, when I come here, I’m so happy. It’s more fun. It has cachet. It’s just cool. And it’s really ecological because it’s recycling.”
At Fromagerie Duronaj in Équeurdreville, the cheese was displayed with the label Tomme des Sillon affinée dans un blockhaus (round cheese from Sillon ripened in a blockhouse). The price was slightly higher than that of other artisanal cheeses from the region — €36.20 per kilo, or about $17.50 per pound. Eager to taste it, I sprang for a half-pound wedge.
Back in the kitchen of my Normandy Airbnb, I first examined the rustic brown rind, and the yellow pate with tiny holes. Then I cut myself a slice and bit in. The texture was delightfully pliable, and the flavor had citrusy overtones. What about the aroma? One whiff evoked the blockhouses I have toured throughout the region. In peacetime, it’s an earthy, pleasing smell.
Deborah L. Jacobs, a lawyer and journalist, is the author of Four Seasons in a Day: Travel, Transitions and Letting Go of the Place We Call Home and Estate Planning Smarts: A Practical, User-Friendly, Action-Oriented Guide. Join her on Facebook here. You can subscribe to future blog posts by using the sign-up box on her website’s homepage.
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