How My Dead Father Led Me to Brittany's Beautiful Pink Granite Coast ; a Visit to His Father's Grave Inspired Ray Connolly to Explore Part of the Stunning Cotes D'Armor

Summary

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My father never visited France, although he is buried in the tiny village of Servel, near Lannion, in Brittany. He was on his way to the Far East when he died in October 1944, the huge tank landing craft on which he was a passenger, and which was being towed in a flotilla, being sunk in the Western Approaches in what was then described as 'the worst storm of the war'.

Fifty-four other men were lost and his body was one of the only two that were ever found. Two young Breton boys discovered it six weeks after the storm while playing ship-looters on the beach at the mouth of Lannion's river, the Leguer. His papers were still on him, wrapped in a waterproof folder, and included sea-stained photographs of my sister and me, aged two. I still have them.

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Extract

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How My Dead Father Led Me to Brittany's Beautiful Pink Granite Coast ; a Visit to His Father's Grave Inspired Ray Connolly to Explore Part of the Stunning Cotes D'Armor

I'd visited his grave twice since it was first located for me while working on a BBC-TV documentary in 1994. But my third visit last summer afforded me time to look around a little bit more and to reflect upon the irony that through the loss of a parent whom I never knew, I discovered one of the most lovely and dramatic stretch...

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