Existing comment:
D-Day
Members of the French resistance wait by the radio to receive secret messages aired by the BBC.
The Poetry of Secrecy:
On June 1, 1944, the BBC aired the first line of a French poem by Paul Verlaine: "The long sobbing of the violins of autumn." This was the alert signal before the Allied invasion. Four days later the second line aired: "Wound my heart with a monotonous languour," the signal to act.
That night saw 1,000 resistance attacks -- railway lines blown up, phone wires cut and ambushes laid. |