workingclasshistory:

On this day, 22 December 1989, Irish novelist, poet, playwright and French resistance activist Samuel Beckett died in Paris aged 83. A French resident during the Nazi takeover, he joined the resistance and worked as a courier, on several occasions nearly being caught by the Gestapo. After his unit was betrayed in 1942, he and his companion Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil had to flee to the south of the country, where he continued to assist Maquis fighters, among other things by storing weapons at his home. He was awarded the Médaille de la Résistance and the Croix de guerre by the French government, but only rarely mentioned his resistance activities, referring to them as “boy scout stuff”. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1882200558631752/?type=3