SHORTLY AFTER DAWN on June 18, 1944, two Citroën Traction Avants, the executive black automobiles favored by the Gestapo, drove east along a narrow country lane toward the village of Saint-Marcel in Brittany, northwest France.
The German military policemen inside the vehicles had no idea they were approaching a vast French Resistance camp. The French fired two antitank shells at the Citroën, destroying one and killing its four occupants, and immobilizing the second. One German leaped from the damaged vehicle and escaped into the nearby woods. The Battle of Saint-Marcel had begun.
The village of Saint-Marcel itself lies half a mile from where the Germans were ambushed. Close to town is a museum—first opened in 1984 and recently renovated at the cost of $4.6 million—that commemorates the battle, but otherwise the area’s rural landscape has changed little since 1944.
I walk a few minutes west
