Hear the story of the French Resistance
The Tour
The tour is about 3.5hrs long. We’ll start with a background talk (~1hr) over a cup of tea / coffee to set the scene, outlining the situation in 1940 after the ‘debacle’ of the allied defeat in the battle of France and introduce you to the main characters locally and organizations nationally that’ll play a part in the story of the ‘Maquis Henri Bourgogne’ (all with the help of photos and a video clips).
We then set off in our vehicle to do a tour in the countryside around the town of Semur en Auxois (2.5hrs). I’ll tell the story of resistance locally and, by extension, how resistance developed and played out nationally. We’ll see the locations of some of the maquis encampments and the roadside memorials to those that died. Enroute, we also go through a little village where there was a dramatic battle between a unit of the German army one of those ‘SAS’ jeep groups that I mentioned above.
This is a tour you can do regardless of your age or mobility and would be appropriate in most weather.
Maquis ‘Henri Bourgogne’
Henry Camp
The ‘maquis’ Henri Bourgogne was one of the first in dept of the Cote d’Or, indeed one of the first anywhere in France. This resistance group was ‘founded’ by a local Semur-en-Auxois carpenter, Henri Camp who was one of the very first resisters, right from June 1940. He managed to build a large network that, by 1944 covered much of the department. Henri Camp eventually received help from the allies, SOE /FFI and was linked to many of the regional and national resistance organisations that fought against the German occupiers and the Petain ‘Vichy’ regime.
About Me
My name is Tim Wilcox, I’m not a historian, just someone who has a deep interest in the subject and from years of reading and research have become well acquainted with the story of the French resistance generally and specifically the main local resistance group. I first became interested in the subject when I visited a roadside memorial in honour of a friend of my grandfathers (Capt. Roy Bradford - 20th July 1944) who died while on an ‘SAS’ jeep operation behind enemy lines and subsequently when researching my mother's ‘escape’ from occupied France in 1941 when she passed down one of the escape lines, similar to one of those that smuggled allied pilots back to the UK. Suddenly the many memorials in the area came ‘alive’ for me, standing at the spot in the history books and reading first-hand accounts of what happened! I realised that every stone memorial and every plaque came with a fascinating story behind it. Often tragic, heroic, barbaric... and they are stories that most veterans insist, still needs to be told today!
