I had what will surely be my most significant observation of Veterans' Day this year. I attended a dinner for the Alliance Francaise, and the speakers after the meal were all French survivors of the war, some of them members of the Resistance. I have known the five women who spoke about their experiences for decades, but I had never heard them discuss their lives during and after the war. There was also a guest speaker who described his experiences and his subsequent efforts to establish a memorial in his town, but his talk was much less poignant since he was a stranger to us all.
Some of the women had difficulty in beginning to speak, some had difficulty stopping once they got started. To hear them speak candidly about what they went through was an humbling experience. I feel that it was courageous of them to recall it for us, in addition to their bravery of having survived the events in the first place.
They described what it was like to sit in classrooms and knit woolen hats for the soldiers who were fighting in extremes of weather. This made the war a daily part of their lives, part of the most mundane tasks for everyone. They talked about what it was like to be separated from family members, either through enlistment, capture, or death. It was sad to realize that after all this time, families are still being separated by the military, and the uncertainty of the future is no less frightening.
I also held in my mind a dear French friend who had died a couple of weeks before at the age of 92. He had been a prisoner of war and had spent the rest of his life affirming the positive aspects of living and bringing joy to others. I wonder if he might have contributed to the presentation had his health allowed.
Bright Blessings,
Spiral Crone
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posted by Spiral Crone -- 12:32 PM.
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