Oradour sur Glane War Memorial

Week 14 in France 11/2-11/8/2025

Welcome to the 42nd weekly post of our Baby Boomers Move to France blog. We are officially into our fourth month of full time living in France.

The weather for this week has been cool and partly cloudy most of the time. High temps in the 60s. A little rain.

We are fully moved into the gite in Saint Germain de Confolens now. This part of Confolens is really quiet with some small streets more like alleys with quaint houses shoulder to shoulder on each side. I guess these are called village houses as opposed to country houses. The countryside all around this area is farmland and really pretty pastoral fields of sheep and cattle.

EB took this picture for me of one of the little alleys that I mentioned in Saint Germain de Confolens

Things on the agenda this week:

• Follow up on the final registration of the car and the license plate.
• Meet with the notaire to make our new wills.
• Zoom call with Sean regarding financial plan for the rest of the year.
• Zoom call with Cindy and Don
• Get the printer running again. Every time that we move it acts up and doesn’t want to connect to the Wi-Fi.

Why this Blog?

If this is your first visit to our blog, WELCOME!

To all of our regulars, thanks for being here. It means a lot.

If you are planning a move to France or just thinking about it or maybe you are wondering what got into our head and inspired us to make the move. If you have questions about our adventure, please feel free to ask in the comment section below.

Long story short, we are a couple of “Baby Boomers” that have moved from Venice, Florida to the beautiful French countryside as retirees. After a little over a year of planning and fretting we sold everything and made the move on 1 August 2025.

We started this blog to share the experience. We publish a brief update on our life in France every Sunday.

We will also include thoughts on the lifestyle and culture of our new home.

Check out the “Resources” tab for a list of YouTube channels that were really helpful and inspired us to start this adventure.

This Week in General

Exploring?

We needed some groceries and wanted to do a little exploring, so we started out heading for the nearest Action department store. Action has pretty good selection of everything and good prices too. The plan was to go to Action for some household items and then E.Leclerc for groceries. In so doing we would start to get to know the lay of the land so to speak. For some reason the GPS didn’t work right so of course the first turn that I made was wrong and in no time, we were lost. So, we did some exploring. LOL

EB has a better sense of direction than I do, and she figured out how to get us to the town of Saint Junien which is where the Action and the E.Leclerc stores are. It all worked out, and we saw some very pretty countryside too. No problems getting back to the gite. We had left Rosie back at the gite, so we didn’t want to dilly dally too much. Rosie was fine but when we got back, she gave us a “ration” for leaving her behind. We take her just about everywhere except for the grocery store. Yes we are “those” people.

Oradour sur Glane, a Heart Wrenching World War 2 Memorial

On Tuesday we took a field trip to Oradour sur Glane. The drive is gorgeous, and the rolling farmland is so green, and many fields support sheep and cattle and other livestock. It is hard to describe how peaceful the drive is. Oradour is a small town on the Glane River and as is the case for so many French towns, the Romans influenced the name.

During World War 2 many, many, many French towns and villages were destroyed, and the civilian populations were killed.

Oradour was one of the many villages that were destroyed. Near the end of the war on June 10, 1944, the city was attacked by the German army. The inhabitants of Oradour were rounded up and separated into 2 groups the men taken in one direction and the women and children were herded into the church. Normally the population was about 330, but the town had many nice shops and restaurants that folks from the surrounding area enjoyed and thus the SS troops found about 650 men, women and children in town. I won’t go into detail on how the people were killed. A small number of the people that were hiding did escape and were able to tell the story of the massacre. Suffice it to say that all of the 328 buildings were destroyed by fire and/or explosives.

I stopped in the middle of the main street and closed my eyes for just a few seconds and I could imagine hearing the bell of the trolley that traversed the town, I could sense the pride as I had noticed the perfect corners of the thick stone walls of the buildings that were home to bakery shops, beauty salons, and the butcher shop, the mechanics shop, the car dealership, and the many cafes and the hotels. I imagined hearing the lilt of children’s laughter from the boys’ school on one side and the girls’ school on the other side. I imagined a sense of innocence. When I opened my eyes, I saw the destruction of what must have been a very pretty and prosperous village that just happen to be on the front lines of a war. It is so sad and heart breaking.

The French government ordered that the burned out remains of the town should not be disturbed so that future generations should remember the destruction and cruelty of war. It remains to this day a memorial to the lives lost. There is no charge to visit the site. You are only asked to respect the site as a solemn reminder of the cruelty and horror of war. Elizabeth and I left the site awestruck and humbled.

Outside of the memorial the town of Oradour has been re-built and is thriving. I guess you could say that the new town is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

If you are interested in learning more about this village just type “Oradour sur Glane: Martyred Village” in your google search for an excellent write up by Sarah Farmer and contributor Connie Gentry. They have included some pictures that help to explain the condition of the town.

Wills

On Wednesday we drove to Ruffec to talk with the Notaire (lawyer) regarding our wills. We have US wills, but because of French inheritance laws we wanted to make sure we had this important detail locked down. Within the house purchase contract, we will have a clause included so that we get past the French law that defines the home inheritance that is not beneficial to a wife. Separate from the house all other details of the estate must also be clarified to protect the spouses in the event of death. As I have mentioned before French law is way different than the States. I do not pretend to understand it so I’m glad that we have a good lawyer. He knows what we want and he will prepare the will for our approval. This will happen in a couple of months.

Afterwards we stopped for lunch and then went over to Angouleme because there is a Hemisphere furniture store there. Just to look. We did see some nice things. It is another resource for us to tap into when we move into the house in Chabanais.

On Thursday we were supposed to have a zoom call with our financial advisor, but he is in the process of moving into a new house and asked to postpone the meeting until Monday of next week.

We had to stay at the gite anyway as I was expecting a package that required a signature, so Rosie and I stayed at the gite and EB took her walk. The package arrived while EB was out and Rosie went apesh*t when the Le Poste driver delivered the package. I’m glad that I waited and was able to sign for our final car registration paperwork. I contacted HCB and they followed up on the tags, and the tags arrived Friday morning. Next step: have the tags installed at the car dealership.

That left the rest of Friday to go to the British Sofa Outlet to do a little shopping. EB had heard about the shop, so we checked it out. The shop is located in the town of Saint Pierre d’Exideuil. They do have some things that we liked so we took the measurements. We might have found our new couch for the Chabanais house but we will see. The weather was nice, so we took the opportunity to explore some more.

We found a really cool brocante not too far from Confolens. There were some really nice pieces of furniture for really good prices. There were whole place settings of silverware and dishes and wine glasses super cheap. This might be the right place to go when it is time to buy stuff for the house. I should have taken some pictures. I had Rosie in the backpack, and everyone wanted to see her. That’s my excuse for not taking pictures.

We had lunch at the gite on Sunday and then walked up to Cafe Naomi for a coffee and dessert. As usual EB had cafe Americano and I had Cafe au Lait. We took Rosie and she was the belle of the ball as every lady that sees her wants to be her friend. This cafe is upstairs over the brocante that is jam packed with stuff. Up on the 3rd floor there are some more furniture pieces that are for sale. A nice old wood dining room table with 6 chairs looks like a good buy to me.

French Lifestyle and Culture

French Holidays

Last week I mentioned that it seems like there are a lot of national holidays in France. EB wants to print a calendar with all of the holidays displayed so I decided to do a quick check on it. There are 11 national holidays in France:

• New Year Jan 1
• Easter Monday Apr 6
• Labour Day May 1
• Victory May 8
• Ascension Day May 14
• French National Holiday 14 of July (Americans call it Bastille Day)
• Assumption of Mary August 15
• All Saints Day Nov 1
• Armistice 1918 w/ Germany Nov 11
• Christmas Dec 25

It should be noted that all employees are entitled to at least 5 weeks of paid vacation every year.

By the way the United States has 12 Federal holidays.

Next Week (la Semaine Prochaine)

• We keep adding to an already long list of items we will need to purchase for the house. We are starting from scratch. This coming week we will continue to add to the list.
• Check out potential furniture stores available around Chabanais. EB has already started this, but it is time to get serious.
• Get online to research the solar power equipment and water boiler.
• Follow up on our applications for our Carte Vital (health insurance cards). There is some news from the federal government that the famous free health care will probably end in the coming months. We expect that there will be some nominal charge for all of us non-citizen, non-working retirees. We have been expecting this and in fact are happy to be contributing our share to keep this health care system healthy

Weather for next week

Weather forecast for next week in Saint Germain de Confolens is going to be nice with highs in the upper 50s and even up to 68 degrees F and lows in the upper 40s and low 50s with slight chance of rain on the weekend.

Speaking of weather, I saw Bob Pfohl’s Grand Palm Golf league report, and it looks like golfing weather was great on Thursday and Shannon Davidson was champion of the week! Congrats to Shannon.

Signing off for the week

As always, we sign off wishing you all a good week and remind you to take care of yourselves and your family.

Keep in touch and leave questions, suggestions and comments below. We really enjoy hearing from you. Your kind and encouraging words remind us that we can do this.

I expect everyone is gearing up for the holidays. We are starting to see Christmas decorations in the stores and towns now. Of course, the French don’t celebrate Thanksgiving but hopefully we will celebrate Thanksgiving by collecting the keys to our place in Chabanais.

A bientot (see you soon)

Mark and Elizabeth Beiley

Babyboomersmovetofrance.com