A Lazy Day

Once again I spent today sat around on my bum eating rubbish and watching even worse. I have, however, decided to enter a writing competition (different to the others I have written about). You have to write a short story that is inspired by France. Now luckily my dad lives in France so it's not an uncommon ground for me, although I haven't been for a while. I am thinking about submitting my story I wrote based on what happened to the village of Oradour. If you have never been there you really should see it. Not because it's a fantastic day out, but just because it is so eerie and haunting, but it was the first time I have really seen how brutal humanity can be. And this is what happened: 

On the 10th of June 1944, around 150 German soldiers entered the village of Oradour. For no apparent reason, Hitler's elite troops destroyed every building in the village and murdered a total of 642 innocent men, women and children, an unexplained tragedy which has gone down in history as one of the worst war crimes committed by the German army in World War II.

The soldiers rounded the men up and divided them into groups, locking them in different buildings in the village. They were shot with machine guns and then were burned alive when every building was set on fire. The women and children were herded into the church, where they were locked inside. 245 women and 207 children were inside. A gas bomb was set off inside the building before the soldiers started shooting inside, low to hit the children. Then the bodies were burnt inside the church to kill the ones still alive. Only one woman and 5 men survived the whole massacre. The village was left as it was destroyed to serve as memory to the tragedy in hopes that it would never happen again.