Milice

 Odd how words come through in dreams that you have no reason to use in waking life. "Milice" for instance. I had to look it up to check whether it meant what I thought it did. 

And it did.

Milice is the French word for militia- and more specifically for the paramilitary group set up in Vichy France to fight the Resistance. They did bad things and- after the Liberation- had bad things done to them. In Louis Malle's film Lacombe Lucien a not very nice, really rather stupid young man joins the Milice because the Resistance won't have him. All he wants is to belong to a gang- and once he does he enjoys the power it gives him. I don't suppose he is untypical....

I take heart from the observation that in my dream the Milice HQ is a ruin....