8 June 1944. After their arrival at DZ Orange at around 2 a.m., SÔE Salesman II team are taken to the nearby village of Sussac and a safehouse, the grocery store owned by Anne Ribiéras. Violette Szabo, now known as Louise Leroy, grabs some sleep in a small room. 1/5
Their task is to organize the local 'Guingouin' maquis but the notoriously security conscious leader of the group is not there and the Salesman II leader, Philippe Liewer (Major Staunton) is instead met by Charles Gaumondie, the frontman for Georges Guingouin. 2/5
Guingouin has already undertaken small sabotage missions and Liewer is keen to meet him. Gaumondie suggests trying a certain Mme Lazerat in Magnac Vicq where Guingouin is known to visit. Liewer tasks Violette with cycling the hilly 22 kms there to introduce herself. 3/5
At the small grocery store run by Mme Lazarat in the hamlet (now the house in the photo), Violette outlines the team's mission and asks what Resistance groups are nearby and if they are ready to carry out acts of sabotage. Violette then returns to Sussac late afternoon. 4/5
Unknown to Violette, listening in to the conversation was Guingouin himself. The maquis leader is uneasy at the idea of sabotage due to consequences on the population. Events the following day in Tulle, and in Oradour on the 10th, will give credence to this point of view. 5/5
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🧵9 June 1944, approximately 8 p.m. French time, a civilian car, requisitioned the day before in Limoges, drives up through the village of Sauviat-sur-Vige and begins the long descent towards St Léonard de Noblat. The driver is Sturmbannführer Helmut Kämpfe. 1/10
Kämpfe is commander of III. Bataillon, SS-Panzergrenadierregiment 4 "Der Führer" of the Das Reich division. The previous evening his men were billeted in the school at St Léonard and were ordered to head towards Guéret to assist in freeing the town from maquis fighters. 2/10
Guéret is on the strategically important east-west N145 road and Wehrmacht forces from Montluçon soon arrive with Kämpfe's battalion blocking from the south. Kämpfe's SS capture 31 Resistance fighters and execute them at Combeauvert in the late afternoon. 3/10
🇫🇷 The price of freedom
25 May 1944. German forces surround Resistance fighters from the Henri-Bourgogne maquis in woods near the village of Lantilly (Côte-d'or). With no way out, the French men surrender to a locally-based Feldgendarmerie unit led by Feldwebel Max Rauker. 1/4
Hit with coshes, the men are forced to kneel in a field as the Germans take photographs before gunning them down. Twenty-three soon lie dead in the grass. Only three are spared execution but will be deported to concentration camps. The bodies are gathered later by locals. 2/4
Marcel Arnaud, 22, Marcel Bartoli, 21, René Bernard, 22, Roger Bertrand, 19, Jacques Bezou, 21, Georges Charbonneau, 22, Emile Chaussivert, 33, Bernard Chevalier, 20, Henri Creusevault, 24, Jean Fayard, 19,
Maurice Girard, 21, Roger Gobert, 21, Alphonse Hergott, 19. 3/4
🇫🇷🇬🇧#OTD in 1944, SOE F Section wireless operator Muriel Tamara Byck died whilst on active service in occupied France. She had been parachuted in with her team near Issoudon on 9 April 44. 1/4
Muriel was born in London on 4 June 1918 to French Jewish parents - she went on to live in Germany and France before moving back to London with her parents in 1930. Her profile saw her being recruited by the SOE after she had joined the WAAF. 2/4
After being parachuted in, she transmitted from the Sologne region south of Orleans and it was whilst there that she fell ill. Her leader Philippe de Vomécourt took her to see a doctor who diagnosed meningitis. De Vomécourt had no choice than to take her to hospital. 3/4
George the First 🇫🇷🇬🇧
During the night of 5/6 May 1941 - Georges Bégué becomes the first Special Operations Executive F-Section agent to be parachuted into the as yet un-occupied part of France. 1/10
Bégué was born in France in 1911. He went on to Hull University to learn engineering - picking up the English language along the way - and his future wife Rose. He was called up as a signaller when war broke out and would be one the many French soldiers evacuated at Dunirk. 2/10
He rallied de Gaulle but with his English and wireless skills, first found a place with the Royal Signals, before being recruited by the SOE to be trained as a wireless operator under the alias of George Noble. 3/10
🇫🇷 🧵A Rose... and a thorn in the side of Nazi plunderers...
Rose Valland was born in 1898 near Grenoble with a father who worked as a blacksmith and a housewife mother. Thanks to scholarships, her talent for art led her to the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts. 1/8
When the jackboots sounded on the cobbles of the Champs Elysées, she was a volunteer at the Musée Jeu de Paume, Place de la Concorde where she had organised exhibitions on foreign contemporary art. 2/8
She remained at the museum that was now being used by the Nazi occupiers to store looted pieces of art. The director of the Louvre, Jacques Jaujard, asked her to keep an eye on what the Nazis were plundering and to catalogue the stolen art. 3/8
🇵🇱 Janina Lewandowska 🧵- the woman in the wood
Janina was born on 22 April 1908 in Kharkiv. Her father ,Józef Dowbor-Muśnick, gained fame as the leader of the Greater Poland Uprising of 1918-1919. 1/6
As a teenager she caught the aviation bug. The intrepid Janina would go on to become a champion parachutist and the first woman to jump from a height of 5,000 metres. In 1937, she gained her civil flying licence. 2/6
With war clouds looming, she married fellow pilot, Mieczysław Lewandowski. With the German invasion, she was drafted into the 3rd Military Aviation Unit near Poznan with the rank of 2nd Lt. Her husband rushed to the train station but missed seeing her off. 3/6