In 2002, I befriended an old Frenchman called Andre. He had been a resistant, one of the first, and when the SAS parachuted into the wooded, rolling countryside of the Morvan in central France, he was there to greet them. For three months in the summer of 1944, the SAS and the Resistance waged a guerrilla war. It was a brutal campaign. Andre took me to the church tower from where the Germans had hurled the village priest, and he showed me the forest clearing where his Resistance group had shot a 15-year-old boy for betraying one of their number to the Nazis. Andre also told me about his acquaintanceship with François Mitterrand. They first met shortly after the war when Mitterrand was elected Andre’s MP having artfully wooed supporters from the left and the right. At first he admired Mitterrand, ignoring those who questioned the authenticity of his war record with the Resistance.
Gavin Mortimer
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