Читать книгу The Cruel Victory: The French Resistance, D-Day and the Battle for the Vercors 1944 - Paddy Ashdown, Paddy Ashdown - Страница 8

I first became fascinated by the wartime epic of the Vercors in the early 1970s when I worked in the United Kingdom Mission to the United Nations in Geneva. I was drawn to it because of the tragedy and the horror of the story. But also because it struck me as a powerful example of a subject that has always fascinated me: the consequences for those on the front lines of conflict when those at the top know too little about the harsh realities of war, or think too little about what their decisions mean on the ground.

This is a French story, of course. But it is also a very human epic which has lessons for us all. The strong are not always wise. The simple not always stupid. The weak do not always lose. In most cases, the final determiner of outcomes rests, not with machines, or might, or well-laid plans, but with how individuals behave at the moment of trial.

This story has another function too. In this, the year of the seventieth anniversary of D-Day, it is as well to remember that the Normandy invasion was about more than what happened on the Normandy beaches, most of which is minutely documented and recorded. This is the hidden story of D-Day, when thousands of ordinary, untrained and in most cases crudely armed French men and women put their lives at risk quite as much as those who stormed the beaches, because they were determined to help throw out a hated occupier and join the fight to liberate their country.