the missing war medals and the battle of Pegasus Bridge

Man, what a bitch.

Totaly dispicable!

I have been going with veterans of the coup de main party to Normandy every year for the last six years. There has been a long running fued between surviving veterans of the 52nd and the Gonderee family.
John Howard and his family spent family holidays with the Gonderee's every year after the war. The Gonderee's also hosted many a reunion in the cafe. I have known Penny Bates (nee Howard) for a number of years and she used to relate stories of how they flew to France each year with their family car in the hold of the aircraft (I've even seen pictures in her fathers photo album of her as a nipper sitting in her fathers car in an airplane!). Penny and her brother used to play happily with Arlette and her sisters each year and were freinds.
When Arlettes parents died they passed on the cafe to their daughters, one side wanted to sell up, but Arlette managed to keep control of the cafe, which is where the real story starts.
It all started some years ago when John Howard was giving a presentation of the operation at RMAS. Later during a mess diner night he overheard from another table someone retelling the story of the battle, he got up to meet the fellow veteran to find it was actually Hans Von Luck his direct opponent during the battles following the capture of the bridges.
They soon after became freinds and John Howard invited Von Luck to Normandy one year. Howard and Von Luck were sitting outside the cafe enjoying a drink when Arlette came out and was introduced to Von Luck. I have been told that she was not very happy that this German was invited into her cafe by Howard, an argument ensued and to cut a long story short Arlette cut her ties with the Howard's and banned veterans of the 52nd from her cafe. At one stage she even went through a stage of denying that the 52nd liberated the cafe saying it had been 7 Para!
The resentment grew and the 52nd veterans boycote the cafe to this day, prefering to take their refreshments in the 'trois planeurs' on the opposite side of the road. A couple of years ago Penny laid some flowers on Georges Gonderees grave on the anniversary of his death, she found that within hours Arlette has removed and destroyed the flowers.
I am freindly with Mark Worthington, the curator of the Memorial Pegasus museum and with his predecessor Marc Jaquinotte (or however you spell it!!!), They have both related some mad stories of how Arlette has battled with them over property. Before the current museum was built there was a kind of museum behing the cafe, near the time of transfering the artifaxts Arlette had hired a truck and some 'heavies' to remove the items first by force, it was pure luck that Marc turned up first and stopped the proceedings.
It appears that Arlette is as mad as a hatstand!!!

Andy Ansell

what do you expect? she is french. say no more , they dont need a reason to be obsternate, rude , arrogant and confrontational. just as the british lorry drivers trying to deliver lamb 10 years ago

I think, like many French People, she has her own views on the world which she is happier to share than people are to listen.

Sadly, she has control of an item of historical interest. She clearly feels that gives her rights above veterans. How petty.

It's her home, surely she has more rights than anyone. I am in no way involved in the argument mentioned above so won't pretend to be clever by making a comment on it, but from first hand experience as a visitor i always found her warm and welcoming. I have no doubt she could have cashed in and pissed off on many occasions but she stayed and turned her home into a shrine. I personally feel a greater connection to history to walk into Cafe Gondree and be served a coffee from a living breathing Gondree. Rather than a modern glass and concrete cafe with a snotty teenager who couldn't give a shit.
She lived it too, she hid in the cellar with her family when the germans were executing people on the front door, shes a veteran in her own right. I don't think it's fair to slag her off with comments like that.

I remember going to the cafe in '81 (I was 14) with my mum and dad. it was grand. There was what seem ed to me an ancient lady in charge aided by two young women, i suppose these were the sisters.