For long months and years he lived in constant expectation of death. He learned to kill. To live with the knowledge of having taken a life. He considered himself fortunate each day that he was not captured or shot. But his luck ran out. Fleeing the Gestapo, Abel suffered a terrible fall and was left with terrible injuries. Despite his wish to fight the Germans he could no longer be thought of as a fighting man. Instead he was sent to a town in Correze where he could be involved in the passing of information and could use his knowledge of the printing press to ensure that even the remotest villages received information about the Resistance.

He was a useful asset, but his fighting days were done.

In 1944, the year that my son was taken from me, the Maquisards had become the scourge of the SS. They won countless victories against the Germans and it was Hitler’s personal command that all possible measures be taken to stamp them out. Their primary tool in this was the Milice. These men were a unit of paramilitaries created with the express instruction to obliterate the Resistance. They were brutal extremists and many were recruited from prisons where they had been serving sentences for terrible deeds.

The Milice frequently used torture to extract information or confessions from those whom they interrogated. The French Resistance considered the Milice more dangerous than the Gestapo and SS because they were native Frenchmen who understood local dialects fluently, had extensive knowledge of the towns and countryside, and knew local people and informants.

Among them was a man called Jean Favre. He was known as Le Tanneur due to his ability to skin a man without killing him.

In June 1944, three days after the D-Day landings at Normandy, the Maquisards had passed through a town in Correze. They had been victorious in seizing key towns from the Nazis but the arrival of the 2nd SS Panzer Division forced them to retreat to a town known to be loyal to the cause. The SS followed them. So too did the Milice.

Abel was mute witness to what occurred next. As the tanks rolled into the square, he saw the horror of what had already been done in the search for the Resistance men. He recognized the young man strapped to the hood of the commanding officer’s car. The young Maquisard had suffered almost beyond endurance.

The Mayor of Correze stepped forward to beg for mercy and was killed with a single shot. Then the SS commanding officer began to shoot the inhabitants of the town. Men aged 16 to 60 were strung from lampposts for daring to aid the Resistance. And then the young man on the front of the tank found the strength to speak.