Le Chant des Partisans

BBC News/Europe Monday 5th April 2004 French knight set for Queen audience
The Chant des Partisans - with its opening line "Friend, do you hear the black flight of the crows on the plain" -- was intended as a war-song for the resistance, and it succeeded brilliantly. Maurice Druon is rather more than that of course.

He is also a celebrated writer, a former culture minister, die-hard Gaullist and a veteran of the London-based Free French in World War II. He is a former chairman of the Academie Française - France's most prestigious cultural institution - in which he became famous for his dogged but ultimately fruitless opposition to the feminisation of proper names.

And what he is remembered most for in France is the fact that he wrote the words for the country's most famous patriotic song after the Marseillaise. Le Chant des Partisans - with its opening line "Friend, do you hear the black flight of the crows on the plain" - was intended as a war-song for the resistance, and it succeeded brilliantly ....

University of York page on Le Chant des Partisans with instructions on how to listen to the Anna Marly version
Fédération Nationale des Déportés et Internés Résistants et Patriotes page (in French) on Le Chant des Partisans
French Prime Minister's page on Le Chant des Partisans
Blackburn College site on the French Resistance in French
Olivier Housseaux's page on Le Chant, on his Bomber Command Losses over the Marne site (English)

Royal Air Forces Escaping Society 1945-95 home page
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page last updated 15 Apr 2004
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