A Literary Tribute to the French Resistance
Published in Commemoration of Liberation, 1944

The French Resistance wasn’t a single, unified group. It was more like a patchwork — small networks, local cells, and countless people quietly doing what they could, right under the noses of the Nazis and the Vichy regime. Every act, from sabotaging a rail line to slipping a secret newspaper into the right hands, came with enormous risk. People often worked in total secrecy, and their efforts were rarely recognized, even after the war.

Looking back, it’s easy to imagine the Resistance as a group of straightforward heroes. But the truth is more complicated. There was plenty of courage, absolutely — but also fear, politics, and uncertainty about who to trust or what tomorrow might bring. Many of the most important efforts didn’t make it into the history books, especially those by folks without rank or fame.

The two poems that follow, The Silent Citadel and The Partisan’s Game, each offer a glimpse into a different side of this history. The first is inspired by Wilfred Owen’s emotional realism and tries to capture what it might have felt like to endure those hard times. The second takes its cue from Siegfried Sassoon’s sharp, ironic voice, holding a mirror up to the myths that sometimes grow around stories of war and bravery.

Together, these poems aim to honor not just the grand gestures, but also the complicated, sometimes uncomfortable truths — remembering both the courage and the grey areas that came with it.

The Silent Citadel

They moved as dusk unstitched the wounded town,
Each footfall muffled in a syntax of ash,
The brickwork breathed its ruin into silence —
A grammar of defiance, learned from scratch.

In cellars lit by candle-stubs and oaths,
They whispered names that would not see the dawn,
Their ink was hunger, their press was hope,
And every printed line a thread half-drawn.

No drum announced them, no parade of flags,
Just the slow accretion of the brave —
Their monument: a key turned in the dark,
A letter passed, a stranger’s life they’d save.

And when the liberation bells finally rang,
The cobbles knew whose blood had kept them clear —
But history, too quick to raise its glass,
Forgets the ones who never volunteered.

The Partisan’s Game

They played at death and called it something grand,
Those paper patriots with their after-wine,
Who spoke of ‘sabotage’ like cricket scores
And praised the few who walked the rifle line.

But what of her — the widow with no name,
Who hid the pilot in her attic’s breath,
Who fed him scraps and prayed the neighbours’ boys
Wouldn’t smell the foreigner’s cold sweat?

What plaque commemorates the grocer’s lie,
The forged ration card, the lookout’s nod?
They weren’t ‘resisters’ — just the frightened folk
Who chose to disobey an unjust god.

So polish up your myths, you armchair brave,
Your tricolours and tales of Gaulish pride —
The real work was done in whispered dread,
By those who had no choice but to decide.