The 24th of April was Deportation day in Plestin. It is the day of remembrance for those who died in WW2, either shot or sent to the concentration camps.
My nearest neighbour’s mother died in Ravenbrock (Ravensbruck) in 1944 for sheltering two pilots who crash-landed on the beach at St Efflem. They stayed in the local château for a week and then were passed along the resistance escape network but the Gestapo found out and took her away. Her 10 children were hurriedly hidden, the eldest – 18yrs – went to England and the second oldest – 17yrs – hid out in one of our barns (which is now a gite: “Les Etables”) and became the local resistance communication expert using morse code. The farmer at Coat Aillis during the war was a communist leader of the local resistance, farming during the daytime and blowing things up at night.
So on Sunday, there was the usual ceremony, a march up the hill and the remnants of the Plestin fanfare played the usual numbers: La Marseillaise, Le Chant des Partisans and Le Chant Marais. Unfortunately, a lot of the players are away at the moment, so there was only four of us, the four musketeers: me on bari sax, Rodger on tenor, Guy on bass drum and Fabienne on trumpet (and she had an abscess and was on antibiotics) so it didn’t look too good but when we played it sounded OK as the Mayor said at least it was the best players who turned up.
Plestin’s first team had an interesting match last week. One of the opposition was red carded and instead of wandering off, he attacked the ref, physically knocking him to the ground (they had to call for an ambulance), so I think he will be getting a life ban and the club a massive fine.
Editor’s note : Ravensbruck was women’s concentration camp during the second World War, situated in Northern Germany about 90km North of Berlin. It was one of the few women-only camps with over 130,000 women passing through the system between 1939 and 1945.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks