Part Four: Contents

15. Remembrance of the Battle of Medoc
16. Anarchist Losses
17. Libertad Battalion Combatants – Spanish Anarchist Guerrillas in the Dordogne – A Short list of Libertad Battalion Combatants
18. The Enigma of Capdevila (aka Caraquemada)
19. The Traces of the Battle

15. THE BATTLE OF THE MEDOC MEMORIAL

The names of all the troops (French, colonial and foreign) who featured and perished in the Medoc offensive are engraved on the Memorial erected in the town of Soulac-sur-Mer. Beside the dunes of the Atlantic shore-line, a thick wall pays tribute to the lives cut short in the Battle for Pointe de Grave and the Liberation of the Medoc (1945).

Photo: The Memorial to the Battle for the Medoc and the Pointe de Grave Front

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CONTENTS

1. Bound for the Medoc Front
2. The German Stronghold- Festung South Gironde – Defences-Defenders-Supplies
3. The Battle for the Medoc – The Libertad Battalion with the FFI – The Carnot Brgade – 1^st Foreign Volunteer Battalion
4. The Medoc Offensive – The Fighting
5. The Medoc Offensive – After the Fighting Ended
6. The Medoc Offensive and the Exile Press
7. The Libertad Battalion: The Views of Other Protagonists

4. BOUND FOR THE MEDOC FRONT

Having severed its ties to the UNE in Sauveterre-de-Bearn in the winter of 1944, in January 1945, Ordoki’s unit moved to fresh quarters in a French army camp in Le Bouscat near Bordeaux (Gironde), in which city on 26 February 1945, its members signed on as volunteers with the French Forces of the Interior (FFI). Weeks later, they were transferred to the Macau camp on the battle-front, there to join the 8^th RMME, only to be transferred again on 22 March 1945 to the western sector of the Medoc peninsula on the Atlantic coast.

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