Creully
Creullet
History
Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery landed with his HQ staff in Normandy shortly after D-day and occupied the Château Creullet, a Parisian summer residence.
The British had moved quickly inland on D-day over-running the Château's German occupants in a short and decisive fire fight in the garden woods to the right.
Montgomery preferred to live in his truck caravan captured from a German general in North Africa than in the Château itself from June 8th to June 22nd. On June 12, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of War Marshal Smutz visited him and on June 16th King George VI. On June 14, General de Gaulle met Montgomery in Creullet and on June 15th he welcomed General D. Eisenhower. The English newspaper reporters, accompanying the King, were so explicit about Montgomery's location that German officers in Lisbon reading the English papers passed the information back through channels bringing German artillery fire down on the Château grounds. Montgomery's HQ moved to Blay, south of Bayeux. Close by is the Creully Castle with its dominating tower from where Edward R. Morrow and Howard Marshall broadcast the battle news back to the States and the UK, respectively.