It was very close to here, near St Nazaire’s Old Mole, that my great uncle Mark Rodier was killed in the early morning of March 3 1942, in what became known as The Greatest Raid of All.
The raid did what it was designed to do, disabling the dry dock at St Nazaire, and at huge cost.
169 of the 612 British commandos died. 360 were killed on the German side, most of them when the converted destroyer the Campbeltown, rammed into the lock gates the night before, exploded as intended though several hours late.
Last Friday we honoured Jutta’s uncle Hans, killed two years later aged just 17 as D-Day got under way 300 km to the north. Yesterday, we remembered Mark, dying just short of his 25th birthday as he piloted one of the wooden launches intended to take the commandos back out to safety.
Almost all of them were blown out of the water in the intense German fire that greeted the attackers once they realised the disguised Campbeltown was not one of their own ships.
Wikipedia’s entry on Operation Chariot as it was codenamed is very much worth reading, and St Nazaire as a city commemorates the raid well.
Since I was last here nearly 20 years ago, the main monument, an inscribed vertical stone so typical of these parts, has been moved close to the Old Mole where Mark and his small flotilla had hoped to dock – rather more peaceful today as locals practise their pétanque skills.
Since cycling across the base of Brittany, Jutta and I have had a lovely couple of nights staying with old Paris-based and ex-Reuter friends Tom and Elisabeth at Le Croisic, having unexpectedly chanced on the way there upon the small French town of Muzillac that’s twinned with my own home of Sheringham.
My mother Audrey of blessed memory was very much connected with that twinning scheme, and I never knew where Muzillac was.
It did make Jutta and me smile that seven years ago when we were cycling Provence on our two separate e-bikes we again came upon on a very local French-English connection, the small town of Crest that’s twinned with Cromer just along our Norfolk coast from Sheringham.
With a general election just having been called in the UK, we’re reminded here in France at every step both of the ancient ties that bind our countries, and also what a catastrophe Brexit has been for our reputation in Europe.
Our hosts at Air BnB or Booking.Com overnights, or just encountered in cafes, shake their heads at the stupidity of that 2016 vote, which has probably done more to lower European regard for Britain than anything we’ve done in hundreds of years.
Will we rejoin? Probably not in Jutta’s and my lifetimes, even though public sentiment has profoundly shifted from 2016’s 52/48 for leaving to a good two thirds of Britons now considering Brexit to have been a mistake.
One later-life Brit we met in Evran, a former City of London banker living with his French wife in a beautiful old house next to the canal, had an interesting take which I fear is close to the mark.
As also Irish and therefore still able to stay in Europe for longer than 90 days at a time, Paul had of course voted Remain, knowing how disastrously expensive and complex it would be to disentangle the UK from the EU, in every imaginable and unimaginable way.
He was not surprisingly right, but now argues that it would be just as costly and disruptive to get back in, on worse terms. So best to stay out. How sad.
After St Nazaire, we’re now the other side of the Loire, having cycled perilously last night over the longest suspension bridge in France – no separate lane for bikes other than that marked out by a thin dotted line.
We’re heading south towards Île de Ré, then on to Bordeaux to collect a new battery for the Pendix, adding solidly to our weight but perhaps with some of our less necessary baggage stripped out and sent back to England with friends from down the coast in Norfolk who are spending a short early summer in France (90 days, after all).
Time to get going. So here, sans further words, a selection of photographs from the last couple of days.
