FRBV25 LC- ENGAGE: Courage Visit to the Fort des Dunes

As part of the itinerary of the hosting week in France, whose theme was « The Paths to Peace », we went to Leffrinckoucke, a city about 7kms from Dunkerque to visit the Fort des Dunes, which had a significant role at both the beginning and end of World War II. During the Battle of France in 1940 and the Dynamo Operation, large numbers of French and British troops arrived in the Dunkirk area, separated from their units. The ‘Camp des Dunes’ was established at the fort to process French soldiers and to assign them duties. Following the last evacuations from the beaches and port of Dunkirk on 4 June 1940, German forces took possession of the fort. The Fort witnessed the soldiers' distress, their courage and resilience. The place now calls itself a "Musérial", as it is both a museum and a memorial.

We were welcomed by a guide who gave us information about the buildings and their history and the students were given audio-guides to complete the visit. They also had a booklet with testimonies of soldiers who at one point during WWII were in the fort. Some information in the document was missing so the students had to look for it in the museum. We walked through the different parts of the fort, inside and outside. The fort's barracks and service areas are recessed into the surface and covered with soil and turf. The visit ended at the small nearby cemetery where some soldiers killed at the fort are now buried.

After that, we all gathered together in a large room where the students could choose a comic strip representing one of the episodes related in the booklet. They had to identify the event and the characters. Some parts were blank, so after writing the script of the comic strip, they had to draw the missing pictures, create the dialogues and personalize the drawing.

The students were first impressed by the remarkable architecture of the fort. They  were really interested in its painful  history . They realized how much people suffered for their and our freedom and the price they had to pay for it.. ...The videos they made during the visit will be used for a competition organized by a local newspaper for the commemoration of the 85th anniversary of the Dynamo operation