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| Britain |
| The daring British Major butchered by the Nazis – and why a tiny French village will never forget the ultimate sacrifice he made for their freedom, writes LORD ASHCROFT |
| 2022-07-25 |
| [MAIL] Today, with the help of Ogden-Smith's relatives and residents living in and close to the village of Querrien, I can recount the extraordinary events of July 29, 1944 – and explain why the valour of these three heroes will, hopefully, be championed for ever more. One thing is certain: without men such as Colin Ogden-Smith, Maurice Miodon and Louis Fiche, France would never have been liberated and Hitler would not have been defeated. The story begins in mid 1944 when the Allied Forces were about to launch Operation Overlord, the invasion of German-occupied France. On June 6 1944, the D-Day landings took place along 60 miles of Normandy coast, with the British and Canadians going ashore on the eastern beaches and the Americans landing to the west. Nearby Brittany, with its deep-water ports, was also seen as strategically important and so, despite the area being well defended by the Germans, British Special Forces units were inserted into the region. In the first week of July, Major Ogden-Smith learnt that it was time for his own three-man team to go into action. At that time, he was 34 years old and the middle of three sons who all served with distinction in the British Armed Forces during the war. He was married with a six-month-old daughter. Ogden-Smith had been among the first to volunteer for the newly formed Commandos, and had already seen action in North Africa and Crete. In 1942, he transferred to the highly-secretive Special Operations Executive (SOE) and joined the Small Scale Raiding Force to carry out raids across the Channel. Next, he volunteered for a clandestine group known as the Jedburghs who were soon being trained to parachute into enemy-occupied France in the aftermath of D-Day to link up with the French Resistance, or Maquis. |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #1 What a great story! |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2022-07-25 15:23 |