🇫🇷 Miss Dior.Late afternoon 6 July 1944, Catherine Dior, Resistance member and sister of fashion designer Christian, is arrested by the Gestapo when she goes to meet a member of her network at Place du Trocadero in Paris. 1/7

🇫🇷 🇬🇧 The Free French watering hole in Soho. With Free French forces based in and around London, the 'York Minster' pub at 49 Dean Street, Soho, London, became a favourite place for French personnel to enjoy a drink. The pub and dining house started out with a German landlord

RT @PoppyLegion: We’re saddened to share that Donald Rose, the UK’s oldest WWII veteran, has passed away at 110. A sniper with the Queen’s….

Bastille Day in occupied France.On 14 July 1941, the inhabitants of the small town of Wattrelos, north east of Lille by the Belgian border, decided to honour the graves of British soldiers who had fallen in the fighting of May/June 1940. They brought the French tricolour and the

Taken to Limoges and transferred to the Gestapo headquarters in Paris, Violette was deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp and subjected to hard labour and starvation in various subcamps. In early February 45, she and two other SOE women agents also held at the camp were

Her convalescence over, she was ready for her first mission, and on the night of 5/6 April 1944, a Lysander aircraft brought her and another SOE agent into occupied France. After gathering intelligence and making contact with Resistance members, she was successfully exfiltrated.

Violette, given her previous ATS work and her fluency in French, came to the attention of the Special Operations Executive and she was called in for an interview in July 43 and accepted for training. Passing through the various SOE training schools, she passed out after

Etienne returned to London for a short period of leave and from this brief interlude, the couple's only child, Tania, was born on 8 June 1942. Back in North Africa, Etienne's unit saw action against the Afrika Korps shortly after his daughter's birth. Violette, who had left the

Etienne and Violette had what the French call a 'coup de foudre' and 42 days later the couple married. Violette and Etienne Szabo were able to enjoy a week's honeymoon before he was sent off to fight in Africa and 'Vi' joined the ATS, training on anti-aircraft guns. 3/7

Among the soldiers on parade are men of the French Foreign Legion, many of whom had joined de Gaulle after fighting in Norway. A 19-year old Violette Bushell was asked by her French mother to invite a French soldier home for tea and she came across a 31-year old Legionnaire

London, 14 July 1940 - a Bastille Day love story. Free French troops parade for Bastille Day and on the radio, Winston Churchill delivers a speech in which he references the recent actions against French navy ships, notably at Mers-el-Kébir, stating,."That melancholy phase in our

The 1947 Tour de France in the Norman city of Caen which still bears the stigmates of the summer of 44.

13 July 1944 - Cortona, Tuscany, Italy.Men of 'B' Sqn H.Q - 1st Kings Dragoon Guards, 6th Arm. Div., sheltering from the hot sun on top of a Staghound armoured car nicknamed 'Frascati'. This was my grandfather's division. Colourised by Doug.

🇺🇸 Those that never returned. An officer of the USAAF 91st Bomb Group packs away the belongings of a Flying Fortress crew that did not return from a mission. Some 26,000 8th Air Force men were killed in missions with a similar figure becoming POWs.

And so it began, that tumult in the skies, 85 years ago today.

8 July 1940.After an ultimatum sent by Captain (acting rear admiral) Onslow on the aircraft carrier HMS Hermes to the French battleship Richelieu in the port of Dakar, Swordfish planes launch an attack, striking Richelieu with a torpedo. She will later undergo modernisation in

Salina, Utah, 8 July 1945.Pfc Clarence V. Bertucci returns to the POW camp after a few drinks in town shortly after midnight. He climbs up into a watchtower, pulls back the bolt handle on the .30 Caliber machine gun and begins spraying the tents with bullets. Eight German POWs

🇫🇷 8 July 1943 .82 years ago today, Jean Moulin, a giant of the French Résistance, died in a train deporting him to a concentration camp in Germany. Arrested on 21 June in Lyon, he suffered weeks of brutal interrogation, but had given nothing away. His body was broken, but his

The town of Vimoutiers in Normandy has decided not to allocate funds to help restore and make museum dedicated to the Tiger 231 tank that, on Sunday 19 August 1944, ran out of fuel after escaping from the Falaise Pocket and which was then scuttled by its crew. It remained where

Burma, 7 July 1945 .Major Ichikawa, commanding officer of the Imperial Japanese Army's 3rd Battalion, 215th Infantry Regiment is tasked with an anti-guerilla sweep in the village of Kalagon. He orders the entire population to be gathered and then his men proceed in leading men,

6 July 1944.If you're wearing 'Miss Dior' today, spare a thought for French Resistance member Catherine Dior, sister of Christian, who was arrested by the Gestapo on this day eighty years ago. Despite torture, concentration camps and a death march at the end of the war, she