Midnight Rambler said:
I also recall that for every resistance member, there were five collaborators. Probably pure conjecture; however, there it is.
I am only familiar with the Aube department of France, and the area surrounding. I've never visited Normandy.
After the war, the RCAF sent my grandparents photographs and letters received from the Mussy-Grancey Maquis.
Having never lived under German occupation, or witnessed Gestapo police methods, it was hard to imagine that entire families - including small children - were being tortured and put to death for helping our airmen whose misfortune it was to be M.I.A. behind enemy lines. As the U.S. Third Army was liberating the area, there were massacres and entire villages being torched.
Years later, my father and I made arrangements to visit the Personnel Records Centre at the National Archives in Ottawa to view Missing Research Enquiry Service M.R.E.S. #136 ( Paris ).
My family has learned from pilgrimages to Aube of the wonderful assistance given by the average French family to our airmen who were Missing in Action.
The Royal ( RCAF airmen were partnered with the RAF in Bomber Command ie: aircrews were combined ) Air Force Association put it this way in a letter dated 23 July 1947 to the people of the Aube area, "We cannot speak highly enough of the great spirit and heroism which was found throughout the entire German occupation."
This is immediately after all of the surviving aircrew, German PoW's, and local population had been recently interviewed, and the M.R.E.S. ( AKA M.I.A. ) investigations completed.
Those revisionists are crazy.
