I did not really want to go but I asked myself why not? I could not really come up with a satisfactory answer and so I went.

I was seated next to one of the village’s oldest inhabitants, opposite a draughty door and the starter was foie gras on which I am not keen.

Not a good start.

I had prepared myself for a miserable two hours when the old man started talking to me.

I sat and listened, amazed, as the village that I live next to, suddenly became alive.

Had I noticed the hole under a certain house? Yes, I nodded.

“Ha, that’s were I hid from the Gestapo when they came,” he chuckled.

The splintered stone at the side of the washing fountain apparently was not caused by age, but by Nazi bullets when they executed fifteen young men from the village.

The bend going out of the village he smiled, was not always as narrow as it is now. The French Resistance halved the width of the road so that German trucks could not escape when they attacked from the woods.

He ran, in his bare feet, through10cm of snow for three miles to escape once more when the Gestapo returned to arrest him.

The Germans never had enough food and set snares to trap rabbits. He would go out at first light, and take the rabbits from the traps before the German’s could get them.

Instead of suffering two miserable hours, I sat enthralled for the whole meal as accounts of horror and bravery were offered across the tablecloth.

I spend the war in London during the blitz, it lasted a few months.

My tablemate had it much, much worse, German thuggery – for four years.

And I got enough story lines for three short stories that I shall write some day.