A museum honouring the French resistance fighters

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I am ashamed to say I don’t know much history, especially as regards the First and Second World Wars. I am always intrigued and interested when we go through a museum and keep promising myself I’ll study more when I get the chance. I’m saying the same to myself now as yesterday we went through Musée Départemental de la Résistance Henri Queuille in Neuvic. Queuille played a major role in the French Resistance Movement during World War II. He and many fellow Frenchmen faced huge challenges and ran incredible risks in the fight to prevent the domination of their country by the German army. Eventually an airfield was set up in a field and weapons and communication devices were flown in. The photo shows one way in which the wireless transmitters were hidden from the German troops – under a stook of hay. The resistance fighters were hounded by the Gestapo and the Vichy police. These rural guerrilla bands were known as the Maquis. In the early days, they were men who fled into the mountains to avoid conscription into Vichy France’s Service du travail obligatoire. This organisation provided forced labour for Germany. There is also a link with a spot we visited some days ago but I’ll write about that later. The display was very well set up and we were given audio sets in English to enable us to gain as much as possible from the display.