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.
One day in August 1944 we were told “OK, boys, here we go.”
Young Australian Bruce Dowling arrived in France in 1938 to improve his French. He ended up helping hundreds of allied servicemen to escape from occupied France and paid the ultimate price, beheaded by the Nazis 29th birthday in 1943.
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.
Two of the most feared French collaboration groups were La Carlingue and La Milice, pro-Nazi French militia set up by the Vichy Government under Petain to fight ‘terrorists’, otherwise known as the Resistance.
From their small grocery shop in Perpignan, the 3 courageous Sabaté women, joined the fight against fascism.
Women from many countries fought alongside men in covert operations in Nazi-occupied countries during WW2.
In 1940, Louis Torcatis joined the French Resistance under the pseudonym Bouloc and became head of the secret army of Languedoc Roussillon.
When General de Gaulle published a list of 1,038 resistance heroes who contributed to the liberation of France; only six were women
This year, 2024, marks the 79th anniversary of VE Day, the formal acceptance of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Allies.