"Imagine"

(John Lennon)




Street in Oradour sur Glane



So Rich, also from Stoke, thought that Limoges was a place of great beauty I thought it was just generally drab and tatty. I would point out, to justify my assessment, that Rich, who was generally touring, did know a lot about Stoke City but supported Ipswich Town. So after packing I headed up to Oradour sur Glane. In June 1944 after the Allied invasion the Germans were now starting to just about ‘hold on’ in parts of France where the Resistance were buoyed by the fact that the Allies were winning the war and were starting to become more of a threat to the occupying German forces. In this part of France the Germans were becoming depleted as they deployed their dwindling resources to the various fronts. They were becoming increasingly desperate to counter the insurgency and amongst many crack downs decided in an act of unforgivable evil to kill all the people in this small town just north west of Limoges. Just over 200 SS officers and men surrounded this town and collected all the men, women and children together and the separated the men from the rest and in four separate parts of the town they shot and set fire to the bodies. The women and children they corralled into the church where they shot and burned the bodies. A total of 662 people were killed. The bodies were buried, obviously most unidentifiable, and then they set fire to the town. There is a museum and monument there today but more starkly the town is as it was at the time of the atrocity and you can walk around it. Anyway after this experience I headed south and came across a sign for a camp site at Châbus and thought I was heading to a site in the middle of nowhere….

Yard full of burnt out cars