Our Story

The Eternal Heroes Memorial was founded on June 6, 2012 by Irishman David A. Ashe and his French partner, Céline Schwab Lautour

David, from Belfast in Ireland, retired in 2009 to Ravenoville, in Normandy, France, a village of about 260 residents.

David, known as “Irish Dave” had been visiting the WW2 battlefields of Europe for decades and was curious to know what role his adopted village played on D-Day, June 6, 1944. 

Knowing Ravenoville was strategically located between the seaborne landing area of Utah Beach and the drop zones for the 101st Airborne Division, Dave knew his village must have figured amongst the first liberated towns on D-Day.

Curious, he quizzed his neighbors about that time.

Dave says “I learned there had been a battle over 30 hours for my village, between American paratroopers and the German garrison. By sheer coincidence, the field that I bought on the eastern fringe of the village to build my home just happened to be where a firefight began on D-Day.”

Dave became aware that the most famous photograph of American paratroopers on D-Day was taken at Marmion Farm, on the edge of the village. The iconic photograph shows paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division holding a captured Nazi flag posing for the camera.

In the 1967 best selling wartime memoir of Donald R. Burgett, Company A, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, “Currahee!  A Screaming Eagle at Normandy”, Burgett graphically recounts the story of paratroopers in Ravenoville.

Dave believed the men who fought for Ravenoville deserved to be remembered. Because of the tiny community’s significant D-Day history and the absence of any memorial to its liberators, he resolved to build one.

These elite paratroopers jumped into the night sky over the Cotentin Peninsula minutes after midnight on D-Day, the spearhead of the Allied invasion of Fortress Europe. Dropped far from their planned drop zones, happenstance directed small ad-hoc groups, even individual paratroopers from mixed elements of both the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions to the village, which had been under German occupation since June 1940. 

Dave then embarked on a 15-month quest to identify the paratroopers who saw combat at Ravenoville or on nearby Marmion farm back in June 1944. This entailed tracking down survivors from both the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions.

Dave also consulted researchers, museum curators, online forums, and the National Archives and Records Administration. To date, he has identified 100 of Ravenoville’s liberators.

In 2012 Dave and Céline built and inaugurated a memorial in the front garden of their Ravenoville home, realising their vision to Honor and Remember their liberators. Each June since then, they have hosted a Ceremony of Remembrance which to date has welcomed over 40 D-Day/WW2 veterans, families of other soldiers either killed during WW2 or who survived and have since passed, active duty US and German troops, and other distinguished guests such as Susan E. Eisenhower, Granddaughter of Dwight D. Eisenhower.