Local legend goes that the town, or what's left of it at least, is haunted.
But I held an odd fascination with it all the same.
There was nothing left but an old water well pump, which meant there wasn't much to see. When I was a kid we visited this town one or two times, usually through accident or simply because it was along the route and we wanted to go. Nippen Tuck's name (although he typically goes by Tuck, or just Nip) comes from a small former town in Illinois which was named 'Nippentuck'. Indirect branches: Boo, Lurke, 01, Tornjaw I doubt if I could do it I wonder how many others could.Nippen Tuck It takes a certain very special kind of courage to act like that. “We never slept” was how one (white) ANC member put it to me. Their main memory is of endless, gnawing fear of discovery, with consequences as bad as any the French suffered, never able to relax, always fearing the knock on the door in the middle of the night. I never had the chance to meet any of the actual Resistance members, but I got to know a number of people who worked underground for the ANC is South Africa. That must have disturbed the sleep of more than a few.
So a single bomb planted or shot fired could result in the deaths of ten innocent French people in front of a firing squad. Not only were friends and families in danger, but the Germans had a policy of executing hostages after every attack. It also meant wrenching moral dilemmas, for people who had come from the most ordinary of occupations where they had no ned to consider such things. Although the Resistance was also preparing for an Allied landing one day, its main function during the occupation was to preserve French national pride and act as a symbol of hope. I doubt if more people have ever devoted their lives, for so long, to an essentially symbolic cause with the near certainty of eventual betrayal, torture and imprisonment, or more likely death. – the French Resistance is actually one of the most inspiring stories in modern history. Everyone in who understands English should listen to it. It is 15 minutes of beautiful, inspiring, intensely sad, poetry. But I am pretty sure that, however difficult that is, it is even more difficult to live every minute knowing that you, and those who are risking their lives just by not turning you in, might be captured, tortured, and killed, any minute. I don’t know how difficult it is to give your life for a valuable cause. It’s also a tribute to the men and women of SOE. It’s a tribute to the ordinary French people who lived, and those who died, fighting the Nazis in the small and large ways they could. I think the BBC probably hold the copyright, so if they request me to I’ll take it down (but please, if you’re from the BBC, don’t ask me to take it down).
#WHERE ARE SIDENOTES HELD IN DROPBOX HOW TO#
I tried to put it up last week for the anniversary of VE Day, but the file was too large for CT and I only just figured out how to put it somewhere else – and anyway, there was a lot of other, less welcome, stuff going on that day. Last year was the hundredth anniversary of his birth, and at a celebration held at the Institute of Education my dad got hold of this, amazing, broadcast. He began the war as a conscientious objector but then spent most of 1943 in occupied France, working for the SOE aiding the Resistance. Not so! He, in fact, starred in School For Danger (aka Now It Can Be Told (youtube has the date wrong)). Until recently I assumed that Harry was, at that time, still bound by the Official Secrets Act, so I wouldn’t have learned much about his wartime activities. I think about it now, reasonably often, having played the sort of role in younger people’s lives that dad would have liked Harry to play in mine.
I knew, even then, that the regard in which my dad held him meant he was really, really, something, and it was only a combination of shyness, social awkwardness, and the general low-level depression that plagued me for much of my youth and early adulthood, that stopped me taking up my dad’s suggestion. Harry was an academic education scholar, of the very progressive variety who, later in his career (well, he was only slightly older than I am now) quit professoring, and went to teach in a comprehensive school. One of the stupidest things I have done in life was not taking my dad up on his suggestion, when I was 18, that I go and spend some time living with his friend, hero, and mentor, Harry Ree, and act a sort of secretary for him.
0 kommentar(er)
