When I was a kid she would tell me about living under the German occupation when there was almost no food and German soldiers everywhere. She described the bombing of the port by the allies when they destroyed much of the docks and the older part of the city. She said that instead of seeking shelter, the people were all out in the streets under the bombs cheering with joy. When the allies later landed as part of the southern version of D-Day and fighting raged throughout the city, the Germans did start destroying the old port but couldn't finish the job. They did destroy an internationally-famous landmark called le pont transbordeur, an engineering marvel of steel that spanned the old port, to jam sea traffic.
My mother's sister worked for the boss of Renault. His kids went out hiking in the hills above Marseille in about 1960, found a hand grenade left over from the fighting, and accidentally blew themselves up.
When I was a kid, my dad was transferred to the U.S. air force base in Bitburg, Germany in the mid 1950s. The other kids and I would play in old German foxholes and encampments that were everywhere. Under some bushes we found some heavy machine guns and their tripods along with ammo belts. It was too rusty to work but we played with it for weeks until our parents found out and freaked out.
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