[No Subject]

Tony Grogan wsno19 at MINDSPRING.COM
Sat Jul 13 16:22:34 EDT 2002


Hallo from France! As I was here in the south of France on business, I took
the opportunity to visit a place that has some meaning to Boatanchorites/
Collectors...it is the VERCOR. This is a pretty isolated region, east of Lyon,
north of Avignon...a lot of it high in the mountains..the valleys being 3000
ft and above...many of the mountains being at the 5000 to 8000 foot level.
Nothing much grows on these mountains except a scrub type brush (as in
Corsica) called "maquis"...!!??

Yes this is one of the more active regions in France where small armies of
Frenchmen, later assisted by the Allies, set up camp and in the most part
OPENLY paraded their arms and equipment and fought the Germans. Terrible times
were ahead...for one of the few German airborne assaults took place, on July
14 1944 in the valley near a small town of Vassieux-en-Vercor. Literally, "la
resistance" was decimated. Later, some reformation took place and the
resistance took its rightful place in history...along (as it should) with the
SOE and OSS et.al.

Given the opportunity, visit this museum in Vassieux, it has some really great
radios like "B2's", Paraset (yes one of the few I have ever seen), A Mark 3?
(B2 Minor), and many others...well described...plus lots of other stuff such
as frames of GOTHA (German) gliders used in the assault and Allied supples
dropped to the resistance. Afterwards, I visited the resistance cemetry nearby
and the memorial high on a hill. Many people, mostly French and some Allies
(U.S. and British) had died in the VERCOR region and had been (later) interred
here.

Enough of the tour..!!

I guess today driving down the mountains back to the small town I am staying
in, it gave me time to think about my (mostly) unspoken reason(s) for my
hobby. See..before it was called a "boatanchor?"..it was called "collecting".
I guess back then the discussion was more on the "reasons for use" and less of
"the technology". There are people who have been "collecting" for 30-40 yrs
these military radios and it is easy to forget "why?"

As I did some years ago, I refound my reason again today.......Happy
collecting. Tony. WA4MRR

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