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Chapter 30 - The Duty of Memory

General Charles de Gaulle fled to England after refusing to accept his government's armistice with Germany. The BBC broadcast his call to the French people to continue fighting the Germans. Known as the Appeal of 18 June, this use of the BBC was the first weapon given to France by the United Kingdom. It was also the first time de Gaulle used the term “resistance” in connection with the fight of the ordinary French people.

To all Frenchmen

France has lost a battle !
But France has not lost the war !

A makeshift government may have capitulated, giving way to panic, forgetting honour, delivering their country into bondage. Yet nothing is lost !
Nothing is lost, because this war is a world war. In the free universe, immense forces have not yet swung into operation.

Some day these forces will crush the enemy. On that day, France must be present at the victory.

She will then regain her liberty and her greatness. Such is my goal, my only goal !
That is why I urge all Frenchmen, wherever they may be, to unite with me in action, in sacrifice and in hope.

Our country is in mortal danger.
Let us all fight to save her.

Long live France !

General de Gaulle
Headquarters,
4, Carlton Gardens,
London, S.W.1.

Click on the Photo of Moulin and Leclerc to watch a short video about the beginning of the Resistance

Letter from the Governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchenson to the people of Crèvecœur-le-Grand for the aid they provided to Louis I Watts, native Arkansan

Newspaper Coverage in France

May 20, 217

I just returned from a 5-week trip to France where I visited with old friends and met new friends Gerald and Carol Hovelacque. I also attended two 78th Anniversary WW2 D-Day events – one in Somme and another in  Carentan (Normandy).

PART 1 Château de Tailly-l'Arbre-à-Mouches

The event in Somme to commemorate the landing of General Leclerc’s 2e DB Free French armored unit’s participation in the Allied invasion of northern France when they landed at Utah Beach on 1 August 1944 was held at Château de Tailly-l'Arbre-à-Mouches, the family home of General Leclerc located near Tailly, in the Somme department to the west of Amiens. Members of the family still live in the château.

A few of the re-enactors from the weekend. Note: I am the white hair in the back row — half hidden in the rose bush.

This annual event was organized by my good friend Sylvain Binet (first photo on the left, below) the president of Mémoire d’Alliés 1939-1945. Hundreds of re-enactors from across France assembled on the grounds adjacent to the chateau to realistically recreated with original equipment, uniforms, and vehicles a representation of the June  1944 military camp life. Great attention is given to authenticity creating a living history of WWII and sharing daily life. Uniforms and equipment are original or quality reproductions. And, yes I showered in a tent and I slept in a tent.

Despite the rain on Saturday crowds showed up to view Free French tanks and half-tracks and to remember the heroism and sacrifices of the brave men who liberated France in 1944.

That’s me dressed as a war correspondent with my driver.

Areas  near the campsite provide secluded venues for recreations of inland skirmishes and tank attacks.

 There was a steady stream of families and school children at this two-day event. Seventy-eight years later, a large number of the French population has vowed to never forget the lessons of World War II. The number of young people participating in and attending events such as this one gives hope that the value of freedom will be passed down to their children and their children’s children.

I just returned from a 5-week trip to France where I visited with old friends and met new friends Gerald and Carol Hovelacque. I also attended two 78th Anniversary WW2 D-Day events – one in Somme and another in  Carentan (Normandy).

The event in Somme to commemorate the landing of General Leclerc’s 2e DB Free French armored unit’s participation in the Allied invasion of northern France when they landed at Utah Beach on 1 August 1944 was held at Château de Tailly-l'Arbre-à-Mouches, the family home of General Leclerc located near Tailly, in the Somme department to the west of Amiens. Members of the family still live in the château.

A few of the re-enactors from the weekend. Note: I am the white hair in the back row — half hidden in the rose bush.

This annual event was organized by my good friend Sylvain Binet (first photo on the left, below) the president of Mémoire d’Alliés 1939-1945. Hundreds of re-enactors from across France assembled on the grounds adjacent to the chateau to realistically recreated with original equipment, uniforms, and vehicles a representation of the June  1944 military camp life. Great attention is given to authenticity creating a living history of WWII and sharing daily life. Uniforms and equipment are original or quality reproductions. And, yes I showered in a tent and I slept in a tent.

Despite the rain on Saturday crowds showed up to view Free French tanks and half-tracks and to remember the heroism and sacrifices of the brave men who liberated France in 1944.

That’s me dressed as a war correspondent with my driver.

Areas  near the campsite provide secluded venues for recreations of inland skirmishes and tank attacks.

 There was a steady stream of families and school children at this two-day event. Seventy-eight years later, a large number of the French population has vowed to never forget the lessons of World War II. The number of young people participating in and attending events such as this one gives hope that the value of freedom will be passed down to their children and their children’s children.

If you think the French have forgotten the sacrifices Allied forces made to liberate their country, all you need to do is take a look at the volunteers of L’Association N’oublie Pas 44 (Never Forget 44). They give their time and their money to keep the memory alive.

The 78th anniversary of D-day, the day that Western Allied forces landed in Normandy, paving way for the liberation of France, will be celebrated this year. Annual celebrations have taken place since June 6, 1945.

That first commemoration took place on the beach near Arromanches only weeks after the signing of the armistice and Paris had been liberated less than a year earlier.

For a long time, commemorations of the Normandy beach landings were military celebrations, often attended by Allied veterans of that 1944 disembarkment. they served as a remembrance of the sacrifices of the Allied forces and those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Since the 1980’s the event has focused on the sacrifices made to liberate France and on the horrors of war, allowing for a collective memory to stay fresh, so that past errors will never be repeated. Veteran associations and history buffs congregate every summer in Normandy to commemorate this turning point in the history of France. It’s common to come across a vintage Jeep driven by young people wearing 1940s American military garb heading to a site to participate in its commemoration. Battles are reenacted, without violence, to show the public how the armies were displaced on the ground. Aerial fights are also organized so that one can admire the maneuverability and the power of the planes that allowed airborne troops to land.

This year my trip to France- my 4th since 2017- will include participation in one of the historic reconstructions of military camps in Normandy, featuring Us Airborne troops with dioramas and displays of a medical evacuation station and demonstrations of the equipment of the American paratroopers. I will be there with my good friends of N’oublie Pas 44.

tom Rice 100 year old d-day veteran click link for his story

Some of the men and women of N’oublie Pas 44

This BBC program from 1986 includes an segment with Bruno Radziminski one of the characters in my book. RAF Sgt John Miller was one of many Allied airmen assisted by the Kummel Line in Oise, France . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyOZ_ekH9nc

Bruno with his Mama and his sister and niece. This is the shack where they lived after his tailor shop/home was destroyed by bombs.

Along with the files mentioned in my last post, Franck provided me with a mailing address for the family of Patrick Hovelacque. I wrote to them and am now in regular communication with the family. Patrick’s presence in the book has now grown to four chapters where he is the star and mentions in other chapters. He is such an interesting person I am considering giving him his own book. Since I have already started on a book about Bruno Radziminsky, a Polish tailor and Dunkerque POW, this will now be a trilogy!

Here is a portion of my email to Franck:

Franck, I can’t tell you how pleased I am to now be in regular communication with the Hovelacque family.  I will be working with them for the next few weeks completing a few chapters about Patrick and his political leanings leading to his decision to join forces with de Gaulle in London. Having this information gives me a platform for personalizing the catalyst that brought the communist and the extreme right together in the Resistance.  This is such an important piece of the story.  When Gerald told me that Patrick was active in the Jeunesses Patriots while in school and actually was acquainted with the Tattengers I set out on a quest to learn more about the Young Patriots and the Tattengers . The result is I have lost 2 full days of writing time in exchange for 2 days of research.  Not a day goes by that I do not send you good vibrations when I realize how many months (perhaps years) you have saved me by sharing your oh so valuable research.  With that said, I have one more request—not likely the last request 😊.  Pascal advises I should ask you for Hovelques files from the French Military Archives. Can you please share with me this file?

Franck’s reply :

Your book is a once-in-a-lifetime book. It is the story of your family. Delaying it is not important. Actually, I feel proud to be able to delay the writing of a book. Let me know if I can help again!

 Amicalement, Franck

Patrick Hovelacque - Kummel Escape Line

Sometimes the story has a mind of its own and can be quite a bully. Recently I was writing a chapter about the creation of the Kummel escape network in February 1944. I had only minimal information on the founder of the network, Patrick Hovelacque. Despite several attempts to get more information, I found only a few references to him on the internet. I wasn’t even sure of his nationality. I only knew he was operating out of London. Because of this, my intent was to give him a footnote and move on with the story. But a little voice in my head kept nagging me. Surely he deserves more. I decided to give him a brief appearance— I decided to let him meet with Georges Jauneau who became the local leader of Kummel. I Googled him once more because I am a compulsive “Googler.” This time I found a little mention of the enrollment of foreign exchange students at the University of Georgia on page 15 of the student newspaper from September 23, 1938! How obscure. Was it possible that the student from Paris France mentioned in that article could be the same man I have been searching for? He would be about the right age.

https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo....

So I called upon researcher extraordinaire Franck Signorile. He sent me the records he has gathered from the US National Archives (NARA) on Hovelacque and the Kummel line. Et voila! Just like that, I have enough information for three, maybe four chapters featuring this hero. After serving in the French Army and being de-activated after the Fall of France in June of 1940 this guy joined de Gaulle’s Free French in London. In February of 1944, he parachuted back into France to organize an Allied Escape line in the northern French region of Picardy. If you want to know more about this one time Georgia Bulldog and genuine World War 2 hero, read The Duty of Memory - coming in January 2022.

On April 18 President Macron announced on US television that France will be reopened to American travelers in May or June 2021. On April 19 I was Googling flights to France and contacting my friends in France asking them to prepare a room for me. I have been waiting one year to interview 94-year-old Lucian Bertin. I first met Lucien in May 2017 and learned that he knew my father in 1944. We saw photos of my father, his crew-mates, and a teenaged Lucian Bertin. My father was an Allied Airman whose plane had been shot down over France during a bombing mission in preparation for D-Day. Lucien was a 17-year old Resistant.

During this 2017 visit, I decided to write a novel based on the true story we heard as we moved between the French villages where families had put their lives at risk to hide my father from the Nazis.

We were lucky enough to meet with M.Bertin again in September 2019 when we returned to France with the daughter of my father’s crew-mate, Joe Houlihan, and the son of crew-mate Billy Edge. Both of these visits were jam-packed with activities and schedules were tight, and frankly, it never occurred to me that this was likely the last living person who could tell me first-hand stories of those months from May 1944 until August 1944 while my father was being shuttled from hiding place to hiding place. I look back now and wonder how my brothers and I could have overlooked the obvious treasure we had stumbled upon.

Lucien Bertin in 2017 proudly wearing the medals he earned for his role in the resistance. From Left to Right:Cross of the resistance volunteer combatant, Combatant's Cross, French Liberation Medal, Medal of the Nation's Gratitude

It was while I was sitting at the dinner table of Daniel Radziminski as he told me the stories he heard from his father, Bruno, that I started to think of all the questions I had wished I had asked my father when he was still alive. Then the lightbulb went off. While in Daniel’s home, I wrote the first three chapters of The Duty of Memory and was already making a plan for a return to France in the Spring of 2020. We all know what happened to those plans.

Now with the world opening up once again, I can finally ask those questions of someone who was there. Next week I will be sitting in his home in France hearing his story first hand. What a gift this is.

1944 FROM LEFT TO RIGHT : LUCIEN BERTIN, JOSEPH HOULIHAN, YVONNE FOSSIER, LOUIS WATTS, SUZANNE LEQUIEN, WILLIAM EDGE.

75 YEARS LATER, In 2019 we recreated the 1944 photo in the same courtyard. FROM LEFT TO RIGHT : LUCIEN BERTIN, KATHLEEN ARGENTINA: DAUGHTER OF JOE HOULIHAN, PAULETTE (BEGUE): DAUGHTER OF YVONNE FOSSIER, MICHAEL WATTS & VICKI OLSEN: CHILDREN OF LOUIS I WATTS AND BOB EDGE:SON OF WILIAM EDGE

Lucien Bertin proudly wearing the medals he earned for his role in the resistance. From Left to Right :Cross of the resistance volunteer combatant, Combatant's Cross, French Liberation Medal, Medal of the Nation's Gratitude.