Oradour-sur-Glane - Martyr Village. In Memoriam

Today we visited a terrible place … a place that's been left to remind us.
I normally keep my posts very light, but I felt I needed to share this, and be warned, it is not light reading. 

On the 10th June 1944, 200 SAS troops surrounded the small town of Oradour-sur-Glane which lies more or less on the line between the Vichy Ruled France and Free France.  They proceeded to kill everyone in the place and destroy every building in it.  642 people died.

They ordered everyone into the village green, then separated the men, women and children - the latter were ordered to the church - 193 women and 206 children - and the men were divided up into groups ….The Nazis systematically set up machine guns and at one signal shot each of the groups of men and then burnt their coprses.

The sign says "This is a burial site.  A group of men
were massacred and burned here by the Nazis.  Remember."
We passed 8 of these signs and I think I missed a few.

And once they were sure everyone was gone they went to the church and set fire to it and exploded the roof on top of them.

The Church in Oradour sur Glane.

An atrocity beyond comprehension.

Charles de Gaulle ordered that the village  be left as it was.   As a reminder of what war can do.  We sanitise war on our news.   This was so real.

They have left the cars where they were, sewing machines, tables, bedsteads … anything metal survived and has been corroded by the elements in the the 70 years that have passed.  And much of the metal had been contorted by the heat of the fires.

It was really shocking.

Some of you reading this may remember the war.   I don't.   But I remember our own war.  The emotion of feeling this massacre brought me back to the bad days of the euphemistically called "Troubles" in the North of Ireland.  Murder is murder in whatever shape it takes.

The soldiers that day, the troops that is, were all 18 years old and younger.   An officer held a pistol to their heads and ordered them to shoot - them or you.  And the worst part is - they got away with it.  Nothing to pay for it.

Apparently, the Restistance had captured some senior German officers - one was killed but one escaped… And when he got back behind German lines he told ….

But he named the wrong village.

The whole cemetery is a memorial - it's still used, this cemetery.   All around the memorial are plaques from family members.   The people who were left behind must have been in a terrible way.   How could you get over that.

And the women in the church must have heard the rest of the machine gun fire and been in such terror. I found it hard to even offer up a prayer for them.  What could be said.

9 members of one family

 In the entrance to the memorial there are these posters with quotes from various people. 

"Here some men offended their mothers 

and all women in the worst manner:  

they didn't spare the children."  

Paul Eluard (1944) 

"Oradour was not a crime due to madness but the logic of a system.  

We must remember this not to see it again, 

we must live and build a world in which crime 

will be folly again, and reason will be peace."

Claude Roy (1949)

I despair of our world - we have learned nothing really.   but places like this will hopefully serve to teach.   Children should be brought there on history trips - war is not a glamourous thing - by any stretch of the imagination.

Rostrevor

Rostrevor is a tiny village in the foothills of the Mountains of Mourne in Co. Down, Northern Ireland.

We live about 2 miles outside of Rostrevor and it is the spot about which Percy French wrote the famous song "The Mountains of Mourne".

It's also the location for part of the shooting of the recent movie "Philomena" starring Judi Dench.  And Game of Thrones is filmed very close to here.

A news article about Judy's visit here -
she actually found some relatives here in the village...  

Here are a few of the highlights for me....

Fiddlers Green Festival takes place here at the end of July every year and starts off with a concert up in the mountain at a clearing called Fiddlers Green which is the name for fishermen's heaven.

Setting the scene at Fiddlers Green

A lot of the Festival events happen on the water and the mountain and it attracts the best of Irish traditional and folk music both as headliners and visitors.  One of my favourite events is a day when guys with boats bring others out on the water.  And a friend of the festival who swims every day in San Francisco Bay out to Alcatraz, comes here every year to swim across the lough symbolising the union between north and south.   the further coast that you can see in this picture is in Co. Louth in the South of Ireland.

Messing about on the water during Fiddlers Green Festival

When we first moved here I was fascinated by the Fairy Glen .... the river is the Glenshee which translates as Fairy Glen and the walk along the river can take you away into another land without too much imagination being used. 

The Fairy Glen

 It's almost a pilgrimage for visitors to walk up to Clough Mor - the big stone - which was thrown by Finn McCool legend has it!   the boring people tell us that it is a remainder of the ice age but Finn's story is much more likely!!!!    I wrote a blog about Finn and the Big Stone here...

Clough Mor or the Big Stone at the top of the mountain behind the village

Looking down on the village

It's a very picturesque place and I fell in love with it the instant I first visited.  

You can read more at The Rostrevor News Page

Water Street