Books

In the summer of 1944, the war in the south-west combined running battles between the French Resistance and German troops with a civil war among the French themselves. Atrocities grew as the summer wore on. Summary executions and cruel public punishments became commonplace. Not only individuals but whole communities became victims of reprisals. Emotions were forced into a pressure-cooker. Fear, hatred, anguish, and the desire for revenge set the scene for bitter and more widespread purges following the Liberation in August.

One Summer in Quercy tells the stories of four individuals – two women and two men – who were caught up in the violent and traumatic final stages of the German occupation of France. All were either Resisters, collaborators or alleged to be, or victims of reprisals by the Germans, or of reprisals by the French themselves. All either knew or knew of each other and all were based in and around Cahors and Figeac, Quercy’s two main towns. All experienced a savage guerrilla war at first hand. Three lost their lives, and the one survivor was irretrievably marked by his tragic experience of war.

The narratives in the book tell of extreme bravery and heroism, but also of love, deceit, sexual misconduct, teachery, murder, the loss of parents and of children – and of village enmities that remain alive today. It explains how individuals, communities, and France at the national level have all sought to mould the events of that fraught and divisive period into versions of history with which they can more comfortably live, and how the secrets that give the lie to these versions have been buried.