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He shook his head. "I'd better not wait so long." He thought for a moment, and then said: "I think I'd better have your view on it. It has to do with the fishing fleet based on Douarnenez."

I wrinkled my forehead; few naval officers know much about the coast of Brittany, for all that it is only just across the way. "Douarnenez?" I said. "That's the place just by the Saints, isn't it?"

"That's right," he said. "It's on the west coast, twenty or thirty miles south of Brest. There's a long bay running inland just north of the Île de Sein, and Douarnenez lies at the head of that bay. It's time we did something for Douarnenez. They've been having the hell of a time."

"Why is that?"

He knocked the ash off his cigarette. "Well," he said, "they're a very independent sort of people round about those parts, and they don't like the Germans. And they don't like being conquered, either. You know, the Bretons never really think of themselves as French. They have their own language and their own customs, just like the Welsh in this country. There's always been a Separatist movement among their intellectuals, never very serious--Brittany for the Bretons, and all that sort of thing. And now the Bretons don't regard themselves as having been defeated. They say that the rest of France ratted on them, and let them down."