«La Nueve, The Forgotten Men of the 9th Company» History does not always recognize true heroes… Like those Spanish republican soldiers of the 9th company in General Leclerc’s 2nd Armoured Division. They had fought Nazism…
Photo Credit: Auguste Chauvin On November 12th 1942, the Germans invaded ‘ la zone libre’ (the unoccupied part of France) and arrived in Perpignan. First the airport was taken over by a detachment of the…
During the Second World War, resistance movements in the Pyrenees-Orientales helped hundreds of refugees, allied soldiers and airmen to escape from occupied France across the border into Spain.
Many of us have taken to the hot springs of Dorres without knowing anything of its interesting history during the Second World War. The fashionable contempt in which the French hold the clergy seems to have been completely unjustified in that era…..but judge for yourselves.
Have you ever wondered what the D in D-Day stands for? It stands for ‘day’ exactly the same as the french equivalent ‘Jour-J’ and the Spanish ‘Día-D’. In the army D-Day is the specific day on which…
The Avions war memorial at Port Vendres quotes the now legendary tribute from Winston Churchill to the heroic pilots and aircrews who, from June to October 1940 fought the Battle of Britain.
Walter Benjamin, (1892 – 1940) German-Jewish literary critic, fierce critic of Nazism and posthumously one of the twentieth century’s greatest philosophers, has a plaque dedicated to him in Banyuls-sur-Mer.
During World War II the majority of RAF Evaders made their escape or passed through France on their way from Germany and Occupied countries, heading for the coasts in an attempt to return to England.
In every village graveyard wrought iron crosses bearing white enamel hearts record the deaths of generations of villagers.
In 1940, Louis Torcatis joined the French Resistance under the pseudonym Bouloc and became head of the secret army of Languedoc Roussillon.