Preservation of a Massacre:
Oradour-sur-Glane, France
I spent much of my childhood
visiting the sites of battle. This wasn’t because of any unhealthy obsession on
my part (though obsessions can doubtless be inculcated) but because my father
was a career army officer, and my mother’s father also. They had both served in
the Second World War, which in the 50s and 60s was very close in recent history
(although to the mind of a child growing up in peaceful England, or even in
army quarters in relatively peaceful Germany, it was an incomprehensible
distance away).
