For over 15 years, Francois Gauthron has been the premier native guide for the D-Day landings on Normandy's beaches and the ensuing battles across France. Skidompha Library’s Chats with Champions program will have Mr. Gauthron as its guest speaker on Monday, Oct. 29 at 3 p.m. in the Porter Meeting Hall. Please allow time for parking. Note the non-standard time and day for this Chat.

A licensed expert guide, Gauthron owns and operates Around Europe Battlefield Tours, taking visitors to battlefields and cemeteries and telling them stories from World War I and World War II. He was born and raised in northwestern of France in a town called Bayeux, near Normandy and Omaha Beach. It was one of the centers of action on June 6, 1944, D-Day, when the Allies invaded the French coastline and marked the beginning of the end of World War II.

In the off-season, Gauthron began writing about his experiences. Over a four-year period, he wrote Colors of War: Not Black and White but Nuances of Gray. The subtle, overall conclusion of this book is that during both World Wars, the leaders of the Allies were not strictly altruistic and the leaders of the Axis Powers were not strictly evil. Although both sides were motivated to do right by their countries, to different extents, they were led astray in certain issues because of personal agendas, politics, and/or stubbornness. He uses his grandmother's story of escape from the Bolsheviks, marriage to a French farmer, a booming business, and three sons in the war--on different sides--and later German occupation of Normandy, to illustrate what war was like for individual French farmers and other civilians. The story shares the suspense of the D-Day landings from both an Allied and a German point of view. It is truly a unique perspective of perhaps the most significant event in the twentieth century.

Chats with Champions is a free community offering from your national award-winning Skidompha Library and is sponsored by Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Shop. Recordings of many previous Chats are available on Skidompha Library's YouTube.com page. For more information call 563-5513 or online at www.skidompha.org