COBI Sainte-Mère-Église Church Set 2299

COBI's Sainte-Mère-Église Church is built from 2,280 blocks and stands 41 cm tall — the first COBI set to combine architecture with the Second World War. The roof lifts off for access to the interior, the stained glass and stonework are reproduced in printed blocks, and the grounds include vegetation and the village water pump. A figure of John Steele hangs from the tower by his parachute, and the set carries the official 80th-anniversary D-Day logo.

The clock is set to the right time

The hands on the tower show the hour the American paratroopers came down over the village in the early morning of 6 June 1944.

What made that drop a catastrophe was a house fire. A stray incendiary had set a building on the square alight, and the villagers had been let out after curfew to form a bucket chain under German guard. The blaze lit the whole square from below — so when the 82nd Airborne's transports came over, the men hanging under the canopies were visible against the glow before they were anywhere near the ground.

John Steele's parachute caught on the church tower. He hung there for roughly two hours, playing dead, while the fighting went on beneath him and the bell rang next to his head; he was deaf for some time afterwards. He was eventually taken prisoner, escaped, and lived until 1969.

Sainte-Mère-Église was the first French town liberated on D-Day. The church still has a parachutist on the tower, put there permanently, and the windows installed after the war show paratroopers descending among the saints.

Specifications

Pieces: 2,280 · Figures: 1, John Steele with parachute · Age: 10+
Model dimensions: 63 × 31 × 41 cm (24.8 × 12.2 × 16.1 in)