The Memorial wall at the Montormel Museum and Memorial is flanked by two well maintained museum-piece vehicles – a Sherman and an M8 Greyhound armoured car, both of which featured heavily in the region during the Battle of Normandy.
Completed in 1965 for the 20th anniversary of the battle, the two vehicles stand on a ridge overlooking the Dives valley landscape of the Falaise-Chambois pocket which witnessed some of the bloodiest fighting in France.
Remembered here are the Allied soldiers who fell for freedom including those of the 1st Polish Armoured Division, 2nd French Armoured Division, 359th Infantry Regiment of the 90th U.S. Infantry Division, the Canadian Grenadier Guards of the 4th Canadian Armoured Division, the 21st Army Group, and the French Resistance.
This Sherman is a M4A1 76 version, a later-war model than those used during 1944 at this location and was donated by the US for the memorial. On the side is the name General Stanislaw Maczek – Commander of the 1st Polish Armoured Division – who is remembered with a statute in the parkland near to this Sherman.
The US-built M8 armoured car was in the service of the French 2nd Armoured Division as a reconnaissance vehicle.
The M8, nicknamed the ‘Greyhound’, could reach 55mph and had a range of over 300 miles over good terrain. It was equipped with a 37mm gun with telescopic gunsight and usually .30 calibre and .50 calibre machine guns too.
The crew of four consisted of a driver, co-driver, gunner, and commander/radio operator.
Over 8,500 were built between 1943 and 1945, with France employing nearly 700 of them. Several nations are still using them to this day.