St. Lô

The dead included AP photographer Bede Irvin, killed July 25 near the Normandy town of St. Lo as he was photographing an Allied bombardment.

It was replaced by “St. Lo,” a reference to the unit’s role in a brutal 1944 battle in France.

In 1944, Hideki Tojo was removed as Japanese premier and war minister because of setbacks suffered by his country in World War II. American forces in France captured the Normandy town of St. Lo.

Our heads were full of news from strange places in middle Europe or the Pacific — Lwow, Saipan, St. Lo.

St.-Lo, to name just one martyred Normandy town, was all but destroyed and later unflatteringly named “The Capital of the Ruins” by playwright Samuel Beckett.