BBC News/Europe Monday 5th April 2004
French knight set for Queen audienceThe 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 ....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUZWlf_vuKg&feature=related
Royal Air Forces Escaping Society 1945-95
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