Adventures Researching for HF Novels

At Oradour today, I met some French people from Bourges. They were astounded that an English writer could write novels about the local resistance network that had operated during WWII in the south-west region of France. I spent almost an hour discussing the intense research that I had undertaken for my projects—the novels, Les Ruines and Risk.

For me, it had been an interesting adventure involving interviews with some very old people, visits to sites specific to my plot, several visits to Le Musée de la Résistance in Limoges and trawling through many books in both English and French about the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the Maquis. The site visits were especially exciting because they validated some of the facts that I had gleaned from the reading material and from the anecdotes recalled by my interviewees. As survivors from that period dwindle, I realised the importance of gathering their recollections before the accounts of their experiences died with them.

I also spent several months trying to source a book about Violette Szabo, an SOE agent captured by the Germans near Limoges, interrogated by the Gestapo in Paris and eventually shot in Ravensbruck concentration camp. Her daughter Tania Szabo, who was only three years old when her mother suffered her cruel fate, wrote the book. Finally, I acquired a signed copy, a story that asked questions about the tragedy and told her story rather more graphically than the ‘sanitised’ film version, ‘Carve her Name with Pride’. Visiting her monument near Sussac, the ruined chapel on Mont Gargan where she met with local maquisards and seeing the drop zone where agents and arms were parachuted into the area brought goose-pimpling reality to events that took place almost seventy years ago.

I felt very humble knowing that such actions were commonplace across France at that time, events that led to the eventual liberation of the country from the Nazi occupiers. The dreadful massacre of the 642 innocent men, women and children at Oradour-sur-Glane, the hangings of 99 men in Tulle, the crucifixion of a teenage maquis member at Dent near Chateauponsac, the shooting of hostages across the Limousin were heavy burdens for the population to bear as reprisals for the actions of the resistance. Was it worth it? When one digs into the past, the alternatives are hard to contemplate.

For me, as a writer and observer of the dark years in France, it is difficult to imagine life under the Germans but I believe that one should remember—‘souviens toi’ as stated at Oradour—and recall the sacrifices and valour of all those who risked their lives for freedom.