The forgotten hero who saved London

I am on my travels today, so apologies for the paucity of posts. To make amends, here is a piece from when I was last on my travels in Normandy. I came across the story of Michel Hollard, a leader of the French resistance, whose intelligence network sabotaged the Nazi V1 rocket campaign.

Hollard and his comrades prevented the destruction of large parts of London. If it were not for them, then London would have gone the way of Warsaw, Dresden, Hamburg and Rotterdam and been reduced to ruins.

And yet, although there are statues all over London to the imperial heroes of the past and the progressive heroes of the present, nowhere is there a memorial to Hollard. With that arrogance that drives the rest of the UK wild, Londoners have never acknowledged their debt to him.

But that is no reason why we should.

So here is his story of Michel Hollard, Commandeur de l’Ordre de la Légion d’Honneur, recipient of the Croix de Guerre (twice), of the Médaille de la Résistance, and of the Distinguished Service Order. May his memory be a blessing.

Near where I was staying in an unseasonably cold and rain-drenched Normandy is Val Ygot, the best preserved of 103 V1 launch sites the Nazis built in northern France.

TheVergeltungswaffe I (”Vengeance Weapon”) was the first cruise missile. The Nazis developed it at Wernher von Braun’s research station at Peenemünde on the Baltic, and intended to unleash thousands of V1s with devastating force on London.

The V1 site at Val Ygot

Although many missiles flew, the V1 campaign was a military failure because of the work of one of the most successful members of the French resistance: Michel Hollard. His story is both an inspiration and an admonition: whatever fantasies we tell ourselves, very few among us would be capable of making Hollard’s choice.