This year we take the time once again to thank all those ordinary men and women who went on to do extraordinary things 100 years ago – and then again just 20 years later.
A silence, our heads are bowed, a prayer from the Mayor. In turn the boys read out the list of the fallen sons of the Great War, perhaps a dozen names from those awful days. This would have been a village of around a hundred people.
Book Club: Secret Agent, Unsung Hero: The Valour of Bruce Dowding. This biography, researched over decades, is written by Bruce’s nephew, Peter, to honour Bruce and the millions who gave their lives for our safety.
Historic Perpignan, the colourful mix of old and new, chic and shabby, trendy boutiques, narrow, cobbled streets and small intimate bistros, was also a pivotal location in supporting the British and Allied war effort.
Visit this wonderful museum which was a beacon of hope for expectant mothers exiled during the Retirada.
Towards the end of August 1944, resistance fighters from all around the region fought Germans and French militia to take back Perpignan.
How about a day out in an iconic Citroën 2CV?
Love and War in the Pyrenees by Rosemary Bailey is available in paperback, the cover glowing with the colourful stripes so familiar to lovers of the Catalan fabric of St Laurent de Cerdans.
French writer and poet describes the massacre as unspeakable, its wounds so deep that we dare not mention them, in this desolate poem, ‘Oradour’.
The war is nearing it’s end. The Germans occupying France are on edge and expecting the Allied Invasion at any time.