3

In May 1943, Pierre Deconde, then twenty-one years old, was enrolled in the Forced Labour Service and sent to the base at Peenemünde, where the German “retaliation” weapon V2 was under study, construction and trial. By being present at such a secret site, it allowed him to see the project’s importance to science and technology and, no less, to witness the brutality shown to the prisoner-labourers. He could observe the firing of the V2 and was witness also to a raid on the base by the Royal Air Force.