The Pope will be in Marseille this coming weekend. Parts of the left decry President Emmanuel Macron's intention to attend the main focus of the visit, open-air Mass at the OM stadium, the Velodrome, as an insult to France's secular status. I'm of the left, OK softishly, and have no such complaints since French presidents have often attended religious service, not as worshippers but as heads of state.
Forget coronations. This weekend is special because it marks the golden anniversary of arguably the greatest FA Cup final of all time.
As a lifelong Sunderland supporter, I desperately wanted a ticket. Phil, the sports editor of the Harrow newspaper where I was then working, promised faithfully he could and would get me one. He had 'great contacts' at Wembley. It would be a doddle.
Phil was also our neighbour in a company flat. His promise had been repeated as late as the eve of the final. On Saturday morning, May 5 1973, his flat was deserted. He was nowhere to be seen and nor was any ticket.
These are my recollections, helped along by those of Sunderland's goalkeeping hero, Jimmy Montgomery. and my great friend, Pete Sixsmith, who did get a ticket and also saw pretty much the whole of the cup run. I am grateful to the editor of The National (UAE) who consents to reproduction of my work here and to Jim Harker, who readily permitted the use of his magnificent drawing of the winning goal ...
Fifty years this weekend from the famous FA Cup final where unfancied, second-tier Sunderland defeated Leeds United, then a mighty force in English and European football, Jimmy Montgomery remembers his moment of goalkeeping glory as if it happened yesterday.
Vladimir Putin's obscene attack on a neighbouring sovereign state, accompanied by the deliberate targeting of civilians, strikes many as a barbaric criminal enterprise carried out by a deranged dictator without trace of humanity or compassion. It reminds us, too, of an unquenchable global thirst for conflict. The Second World War ended 77 years ago but few visitors to Salut! would struggle to add to my list of the wars that have polluted post-war history: Korea, Israel-Palestine, Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen ... and, of course Algeria.
This is my piece for The National, a newspaper published in Abu Dhabi and which I helped to create, on today's 60th anniversary of the signing of the Evian Accords. The editor kindly permits me to reproduce my work here:
The signing of the Evian Accords on this day 60 years ago officially ended not only a bitter and bloody war of independence between France and Algeria but 132 years of colonial rule.
Named after the spa resort on the shores of Lake Geneva, where the French and Algerian delegations met to ratify its text, the 93-page agreement was meant to herald a new era of mutual respect and friendship.
From l'Algerie Mon Amour, an art exhibition marking the year of Algerian independence from France. It will continue ar the Institute of the Arab World in Paris until July. This item is listed as 'Baya, Musique, 1974, Gouache sur papier' and was donated by Claude and France Lemand
By the early evening of Saturday June 10, 1944, the bold fighting men of a Waffen SS unit were able to start relaxing after their day's work.
No fewer than 642 French civilians had been slaughtered in Oradour-sur-Glane, a village set in lush Limousin countryside. The victims included 247 women and 205 children, among them little Désirée Machefer (pictured above), who were herded into the parish church and either burned alive or shot - or both.
Job done, the Germans must have been thinking as they embarked on a night of celebration, singing heartily and sinking copious amounts of plundered wine from the remaining houses not already set on fire. Those buildings could await their turn next morning when the hungover Nazi soldiers would complete the task of turning a bustling village into a charred and ghostly testament to a monstrous war crime.
In the 50 years I have been visiting and, at times, living in France, I have often thought of going to Oradour to pay my own insignificant respects to the martyred village. Only this month, breaking a long journey from the Mediterranean coast to London, did I finally get round to it.
I have nothing much new to say about the massacre. What happened that day - at the end of a week in which Allied forces landed on Normandy beaches and, so much more mundanely, my mother had her 30th birthday - is an essential part of the history of warfare in general and the Second World War in particular and is therefore well documented.
Of the officers responsible for the slaughter, one (Gen Heinz Lammerding, who had also ordered the hanging of 99 Resistants the day before 113km away in Tulle), avoided trial altogether, except in absence, and resumed a prosperous business career in Dusseldof. Another, Major Adolf Dickmann, described as a bloodthirsty drunkard, was killed in action in Normandy later the same month.
And, as a rare survivor, Robert Hébras, recalls in his slim volume, 10 June 1944: The Tragedy Hour by Hour, a third, Lt Heinz Barth, finally brought to trial in East Germany in 1983, insisted it was a completely normal act.
No, he is said in other accounts to have added, he had no regrets; "in wartime, one acts harshly and with means available".
He was jailed for life but released after 14 years, on account of age, health and having finally "expressed remorse", and lived for a further 10 years.
There are, of course, people of the far right in France, Britain, Germany, the United States and elsewhere who struggle to find fault with the Nazis and their evil acts, to the point in some cases of feeling the wrong side won the war. They occasionally pop up in Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National despite her attempts to detoxify its rotten image; her father, Jean-Marie, founder of the party as the Front National, has infamously dismissed the Nazi occupation as relatively benign and the death camps as a mere detail of war.
In August, one or more persons preceded my own visit to the impressive memorial centre adjacent to the preserved remnants of the old village, now a neighbour of the new Oradour that has developed since the war. But the mission not to pay homage.
He, she or they proceeded to daub the exterior wall, changing the word "martyr" to "menteur" - liar - and asking when the real "truth" would be told*, adding for good measure the name of a much-convicted Nazi apologist, Vincent Reynouard.
We do not know yet who was responsible. It could ,in theory, have been the work of anti-Nazis but why would anyone see a need to demonise demons?
To be fair, Mme Le Pen was among those quick to condemn the desecration.
Beneath grey skies and amid incessant rain, my wife and I walked, mostly in silence as requested, around the blackened streets.
Signs denote where once could be found schools, the baker's shop, a Renault garage, several cafes with some also offering hairdressing, a couturier, a dentist's surgery, the workshops of the blacksmith and wheelwright and so on.
Almost at the end of the walk, but before heading for the cemetery, we arrived at the shell of the church and wandered inside in awe, noting the confessional box where two children were found shot dead after surviving the fire, the altar and a plaque commemorating Oradour's 1914-18 war dead.
My consoeur Anna Pukas James, writing at Facebook after I had posted photographs and the two videos seen below, recalled her own visit a few years ago: "A haunting - and haunted - place." Dave Eyre, another Facebook friend, said it was "most moving places I have ever visited".
As for us, it was a bleak reminder, not of collective German guilt but of man's capacity for inhumanity to his fellow man, woman and child. not a death factory in the sense that Auschwitz was but, because of the calculated destruction in a single day of a large village and all or most who inhabited it, even more disturbing.
I am glad I went but, even 76 years on from the awful event, aware that I shall never forget what I saw there.
* A German version of the 'truth' of the tragedy of Oradour appears at this link and purports to show that the church was set on fire when explosives stored there were detonated by a civilian, possibly a Maquis Resistant and possibly not even French but intent on heaping blame on wholly innocent Nazis (save for the admitted murder of men in Oradour they failed to separate from activists). I am unaware of any evidence that any trace of Resistance or Maquis arms and explosives was found in the village)
This is my most recent piece for The National, which kindly permits me to reproduce my work here. And posting it gives me an opportunity to wish all Salut! readers, even those who support Brexit, a very happy Christmas and New Year ..
France’s long struggle to acknowledge the iniquities of its imperial past has taken another significant step forward with President Emmanuel Macron’s declaration on a visit to the Ivory Coast that colonialism was a “grave mistake”.
Mr Macron’s choice of words on Saturday recalled previous comments, notably including a famous admission in another former French territory, Algeria, while campaigning for office, that colonisation was a “crime against humanity”.
But the tone was unequivocal. As he stood alongside the president Alassane Ouattara, in the Ivorian capital, Abidjan, there was no attempt to qualify the recognition of colonial sins by insisting, as he had done in Algiers in 2017, that it was important not to “sweep away all of the past” or descend into a culture of self-guilt.
I heard this song, great words set to a familiar tune, for the first time today, during France 2's coverage of the D-Day commemorations ... this is how I described it at salutlive.com
Forgive me for being late with this but, come to think of it, the timing is right.
On French news this lunchtime, amid generous and impressive coverage of commemorations on the 75th anniversary of D-Day, this song popped up. I realise the story may well be old news for some.
It was not the battle to end all battles and it was certainly not the war to end war. But 100 years ago today began the slaughter or maiming of more than one million men in the Battle of the Somme and it is right we should remember their sacrifice.
The photograph is by an esteemed former colleague, Geoff Pugh, reproduced with his consent, and the context takes us back 10 years. As I have said before, forgive me if you have read this here previously. It bears repetition.
An excellent opportunity to use this great juxtaposition caught by Bill Taylor
Now and then, a sudden burst of traffic towards these pages turns out to be inspired by an old posting. This article, about international rally of Citröen 2CVs, is one of them. It appeared four years ago and drew lots of interest then - see http://www.francesalut.com/2011/07/tin-snails-and-upturned-prams-a-festival-of-citroen-2cvs.html - and, probably because a similar event is due to take place at the end of next month in Toruń, Poland, has sparked renewed activity now. Here, mostly untouched, is the original...
A very happy Christmas to all Salut! readers. This seems a seasonal enough posting, more or less what will have appeared in the last day or so at The National, Abu Dhabi ...
One year ago today, David Cameron marked the first visit by a sitting British prime minister to the holiest Sikh shrine, the Golden Temple at Amritsar in Indian Punjab, by endorsing Winston Churchill’s condemnation of a “deeply shameful” event in colonial history.
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