On Saturday four generations of my family and hundreds of members of the French public and political class will honor an act of courage that occurred 75 years ago.
It involved my first cousin, U.S. Army Lt. Paul A. Swank, whom I remember as a surrogate brother. I had just turned 12 in 1943 when Paul, who was 10 years older, gave me his pin from training at Fort Belvoir, Va. I still have it. It was the last time I saw him.
Paul had enlisted as soon as he could. He went from engineer school to the discreet care of "Wild Bill" Donovan's Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency. He became the leader of a 15-man Operational Group, precursor of Special Forces, that was named Peg after his fiancée.
They parachuted into German-occupied France to help liberate the medieval spa town of Alet-les-Bains, near Carcassonne. Paul's group was based in a makeshift camp of local resistance fighters high in the mountains above Alet. His first big achievement was getting the Communist and non-Communist resistance groups to cooperate, especially on the tricky issue of dividing up the precious arms the American paratroopers had brought.
On Aug. 17, 1944, Paul's group was trying to stop a German food convoy that, unknown to them, was carrying French hostages, including the local curé. As the convoy approached, Paul sent his men up the side of the mountain. Even after he was mortally wounded, he continued to fire at the Germans. Eventually the hostages were freed. His actions saved dozens of lives at the cost of his own.
After freeing Carcassonne, the other members of Operation Peg helped blunt the German plan to move forces north to oppose the Allied advance after D-Day.
Locals recovered Paul's body and found a note in his pocket asking that he be buried wherever he might fall. After a few temporary graves, Paul was interred inside a marble-topped limestone tomb on the side of the N118 highway.
I'll be there Saturday, as survivors like Guy Sarrazi, then 14, have been virtually every year since 1946.
Why bother? Apart from Mr. Sarrazi and a few other locals, nobody here was around during the war. Maybe their parents or grandparents told them stories, or they were taken on school trips to memorials, but that is not the same as living through it. Mr. Sarrazi says that Paul "liberated our town" and that acts of courage, then common, "appear to be rarer and rarer."
Tomorrow I'll be listening to this story of courage in the conviction that it will still inspire people 75 years from now. I'll be standing with four generations, both of my family and of the French locals who know that America will always be with them to defend shared values. I'll be teaching my family about its history.
The courage of Paul, his colleagues and the local French Maquis resistance groups transcended the requirements of war. It was a character trait that shone through as needed. It had been demonstrated by American troops before World War II and has been since.
It is a lesson that instructs us all.
Ms. Jogerst is author of " Paul Swank : Enduring Hero" to be published Saturday by Significance Press.
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