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- WORLD WAR TWO RESISTANCE TOUR -
Our tour follows the story of a brave young 23 year old heroine Violette Szabo who was the daughter of an English father and French mother and whose life was abruptly cut short by the barbaric Nazis in June 1944.
This wartime secret agent (who was in immortalised by the actress Virginia McKenna in the film Carve Her Name With Pride) gave her life so that her comrades may live.
She was awarded the George Cross (the first woman in history to be recognised in this way) and the Croix de Guerre for her courageous exploits against the Gestapo in occupied France.
Today the village where she was captured they still talk of the "Petite Anglais" who held over 400 of the Das Reich division at bay before being taken to the Gestapo H.Q. and prison in Limoges. Here she suffered atrocious tortures at the hands of her captors and was later moved to Ravensbruck and Torgau. During her interrogation she was beaten and abused but still was never to break her silence, her torturers never being able to get information from her.
Later after death her executioners were to say "she feared nothing and asked for no mercy, she died as she lived, brave and courageous".
Twice Violet Szabo entered occupied France from the second visit she did not return. The second time, gun in hand, she held up the advance guard of an SS Panzer Division, enabling her companions in arms to escape. Taken prisoner only when her magazine was empty, "she was the bravest of us all" quoted by Odette Churchill.
ITINERARY
Day 1- Arrive in the area of Limoges area early evening, checking into our hotel to take our evening meal.
Day 2 - First we visit the drop zone of Violette on Mont Gargon, we also see the battlefields where the resistance took on the Germans during operation Cadillac. From here we go onto the village where she was secretly kept with the possibility visiting the very house where she stayed. During our visit we can meet some of the villagers who can still remember those terrible times and who still share their experience. We then move on to trace her last journey thorough the small picturesque villages to the site of the ambush on that fateful day, June 10th. 1944. From here we make our way back to the hotel.
Day 3 - Oradour Sur Glane - a vision of horror. Today we visit the martyrs village, here on 10th. June 1944 one of the worst atrocities of the war took place. A small village just outside Limoges where the SS Das Reich Division massacred the whole population of men, women and children. They arrived here at 2:30pm and by 6:30pm, 642 people were dead, men executed in the barns, women and children burned. This tour is the most moving and emotional I have ever had the opportunity to conduct
Our walk takes us through the village which has been left as a memorial to those who perished here. We see the houses as they were left over 50 years ago, pots and pans still sit on the stoves, cars in streets, personal items of day to day life lie everywhere. We visit the church where the children and their terrified mothers were locked inside and burned alive, we visit the memorial and museum, a living testimony so no one ever forgets the horror of what took place here in 1944.
Day 4 - We make our way home OR optional tour of the surrounding Dordogne area and small town of Souillac or Rocamadour or Cologes La Rouge.
The towns are situated in beautiful valleys with small cobbled streets, numerous antique shops and small French restaurants with their fine wines and good food.
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