WWII Hero’s Sacrifice: Saving a French Bridge

A US soldier sacrificed himself on August 5, 1944, to save a French bridge from German demolition. The bridge, with a history of name changes, now bears a plaque commemorating his act.

Two years later on, on August 5, 1946, the town set up a plaque on the bridge itself, in French, roughly equating to: “Below, to conserve this bridge, James Mac Racken of the 315th Bn., United States, compromised himself on August 5, 1944.” It’s a small, easy-to-miss marker on a stone bridge that otherwise resembles dozens of others across provincial France, which is kind of the factor: nothing about it yells battleground, which peaceful is precisely what makes the tale land when you review it standing there.

Beyond the calling overkill, the bridge itself has experienced more names than many bridges manage in a life time. Building and construction started in May 1824 and completed a decade later on in 1834, and for some time it was merely the Pont Ambroise-de-Loré. It came to be the Pont d’Orléans, after that the Petit Pont, then the Caisse d’Épargne bridge, drifting through identifications the way old bridges often do when no one’s rather sure what to call them.

On the evening of August 5, 1944, as German forces retreated from Mayenne, they loaded the bridge with 125 eruptive costs, intent on blowing it prior to the advancing Americans can use it. He really did not survive the operation, but the bridge did, allowing his division cross the river and take the community’s left bank that same day.