Far from Normandy’s beaches, French paratroopers and resistance members fought a rear-guard action to keep the Nazis at bay. But its tragic end had made it a battle to forget.
Some 170 miles southwest of the celebrated landing beaches in Normandy, the remains of a D-Day site few visit peek out from behind trees in rural Brittany.
Overgrown with moss and ivy, the stone farm buildings were the former headquarters of the Saint-Marcel Maquis — thousands of local French resistance fighters who had gathered in response to coded Allied calls over BBC radio to prepare for an invasion. Among them were French army commandos parachuted in to block the Nazis from sending reinforcements to the beaches.
