Bush finds friends in Normandy

More than 5,000 ships, 13,000 aircraft and 150,000 service men and women took part in D-Day landings

PARIS, France -- U.S. President George W. Bush received a warmer reception in Normandy than his welcome in Berlin and Paris over the past week.

Washington's policies on the environment, trade, Iraq and the Middle East have angered many in France, as well as the rest of Europe.

But in the northern French region of Normandy, where Bush and his wife Laura attended a Memorial Day service to honour the U.S. soldiers who fought and died in World War II, pro-American feelings still run high.

However, Howard Manoian, one of the U.S. paratroopers hailed as liberators for wresting the small town of Sainte-Mere-Eglise from its Nazi occupiers early on D-Day, June 6, 1944, said those sentiments are beginning to fade.

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The decorated veteran who 18 years ago retired near the town he helped liberate told The Associated Press: "There was a time when Americans could do no wrong here. I don't know when it changed, but it has."

Manoian, 77, said he understood their sentiments. "We Americans stick our noses in everybody's affairs. We push 'em around," he said.

Still, Normandy is about as pro-American as France gets, and Sainte-Mere-Eglise, the first town to be liberated from the Nazis on D-Day, is more pro-American than most. It is only a few miles from Utah beach, one of five beaches where tens of thousands of U.S., British and Canadian troops landed.

The town is full of references to the U.S. paratroopers who freed it. A stained-glass window at Our Lady of Peace church features paratroopers at the foot of a Madonna and child and the streets have names such as Rue Murphy or Rue de la 505th Airborne.

A corporal on D-Day, Manoian parachuted into a cemetery behind the church. The widowed former police officer from Lowell, Massachusetts, and a father of five, said a feeling of gratitude runs so deep in the town that all World War II veterans are welcomed with open arms.

"If you are a veteran here, you will never go hungry, never go thirsty, and you'll never sleep in the rain here," he told AP.

The Normandy American Cemetery in nearby Colleville-Sur-Mer contains the graves of 9,386 American military dead and inscriptions of the names of 1,557 missing U.S. soldiers whose remains were not located or identified.

"It will be ironic to see Bush visit the war graves at the same time he seems to be preparing for a war against Iraq, and more death," said Solange Bazire, 77, at a cafe in nearby Caen. "It doesn't please many people that he's getting ready for war."

More than 30,000 Americans were buried in Normandy during 1944-45

Older French people remember the war as a time of domination by German troops, lack of freedom, ration cards and the deportation of many men to Germany, where they were forced to work for the Nazi war machine.

Sainte-Mere-Eglise Mayor Marc Lefevre told AP the town would never forget its American connection.

"Despite the difficulties over the years between France and the United States, we've always remained faithful to those who liberated us," he said.