Anyhow, I'm about dead, lol. Today I woke up and it was SUNNY - which meant I had to mow the lawn, so my son and I took two hours this afternoon and ATTACKED, MOWED, and WEED WHACKED. I might not have been so tired if I hadn't been to gym already this morning. The garden looks terrifc though - my son and I make a good team.
I grabbed some nettles by accident though, and my fingers still tingle. They are potent in the spring. Ouch.
Two cars have had their tires removed this week in the village. Very strange - it's so quiet here. But it's certainly not funny for the car owners.
Other news - the 8th of May came and went - the ceremony for the end of WWII here in France. We gathered at the war memorial where the mayor gave a speech thanking the veterens and they played the national anthem on a cassette player in the back of a jeep. LOL.
Afterwards we went to the cemetary where five English aviators and one Australian aviator are buried. You have to realize that during the war here, the Germans had forbidden the villages to bury any enemy soldiers, so when the plane crashed, the villagers all ran to help out, to carry the bodies away from the crash, and to gather what identification they could before the Germans came. There are still people in this village who remember the plane crash. Farmer Duval, for example, was only seventeen at the time, and he told me he was the first to arrive because he had his bike. Madame Lemarié was a young girl, and she remembers the crash and subsequent events well. There was one survivor - a photographer, who had managed to bail out when the plane was shot down. They hid him, then helped smuggle him back to England.
Last year, one of the aviator's family came to visit his grace (they'd never been over here - they found the grave completely by accident on the internet, through a blog...) It was one of the English aviator's brother. Lynn, an English woman who lives in the village, organized lunch for them and I went along to help her out. It was very moving. They were impressed by how neatly the villagers kept the graves. But you see, these soldiers are part of the villagers' memories. WWII might be something in the past for us, but they lived through it and it still stirs strong emotions. Madame Lemarié had tears on her cheeks when she met the English pilot's brother...
2 comments:
My MIL remembers spending night in the bomb shelter during the Blitz, and my hubby's Granddad was a plane spotter. Which for him, I gather, meant getting drunk on the roofs all night, but everybody contributes in their own way.
It is odd to be in a place where so many people have such clear memories of war. Not remembering hardships because of rationing or whatever, but remembering actual war--the Luftwaffe flying overhead and blackouts and stuff. But it's cool. It makes it so much more real.
Ah,
"they grow not old as we who are left grow old..."
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