« A dedicated life », episode 28: Words of Companions…

Jean-Pierre Vernant (1914-2007, FFI leader)
“My father volunteered in the second class infantry and was killed in early 1915. I never knew him at all. And I now realise that although I had no father in the bodily sense, I had an imagined father like that. A socialist guy who enrolled in second class and was killed in 1915 was surely something that affected me without me even knowing it.”

Claude Raoul-Duval (born in 1919, fighter pilot)
“In my family, we had no anti-German feelings: my great-grandmother was German and my father spoke German. Very often, my father brought all his friends together at our home. They had all been in the Great War together, and they mostly talked about the cold, the mud, the rats, the stench of life in the trenches. That’s what persuaded me that if I had to fight, I would choose a different weapon.

Louis Cortot (1925-2017, FTP-FFI Resistance fighter)
“In my family and at state school, I had been warned of the horrors of war. My uncle, born in 1856, reminded me of the war of 1870; for my father, it was the 14-18 war; and I experienced the 39-45 one. I say all this because life is a constant struggle – in all eras. Our lovely motto “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, inscribed on the pediments of our town halls, is good but it’s not enough. It has to be applied and above all defended.”