“When the last of us is dead, the flame will go out. But there will always be embers.”, said Hubert Germain in his memoirs Hope for France, collected by Marc Leroy (ed. Les Belles Lettres). The last companion of the Liberation, who disappeared on October 12, 2021 at the age of 101, was buried on November 11 at Mont-Valérien, in the crypt of the memorial of combatant France.
Hubert Germain risked his life several times to liberate France. For this document, signed Peggy Leroy, Henri Desaunay and Mathilde Rougeron, the magazine “1:15 p.m. on Saturday“(Twitter, #1:15 p.m.) had met him in 2019 with two other French people who had left, like him, to fight alongside General de Gaulle in 1940: Alexis Le Gall, who died in 2019, and his older brother Jacques, who died on October 30, 2021, at the age of 100 years old.
Three young free French
Hubert Germain as well as the brothers Alexis and Jacques Le Gall shared some memories of their youth “sacrificed“, as they say, and of their life which changed between June 17 and 21, 1940, when they were less than twenty years old.
They could have chosen to stay in occupied France, but out of ideal and patriotism, these three young men made the choice to fight Nazism by joining de Gaulle in London and the ranks of the Free French. Their testimonies remain.
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