John Joseph Pershing was born on the 13th of September 1860 in Linn Country, a village in Missouri. His family was originally from the Alsace - one of his ancestors had emigrated to America in the middle of the 18th century. At the age of 22, after having been a teacher, he went to the West Point Military Academy. He left in 1886 and then followed a classic military career: as sub-lieutenant in Arizona, an instructor in military science and tactics at the University of Nebraska (1891) where he also studied law and in the 10th Cavalry Regiment in Montana. As a lieutenant in Washington (1897), he took part in the Cuban war and then in the suppression of the Moros uprising in the Philippines. In 1901, Captain Pershing was military attaché in Tokyo and closely followed the Russo-Japanese war. In 1906, he was appointed Brigadier General and carried out a new mission in the Philippines before taking a post in Europe, where he studied French and in 1914 he took charge of the Western Division in San Francisco. He took part in suppressing the revolt by Pancho Villa in Mexico. In August 1915, his wife and three of his children died in a fire in San Francisco. On the 10th of May 1917, President Wilson appointed him as commander of the American Expeditionary Corps in Europe. On the 13th of June 1917, General Pershing arrived in Paris.

Thirteen days later, the first American troops landed at Saint-Nazaire. Until the 11th of November 1918, General Pershing continually strove to create a vast autonomous American army along the French front. General Pershing left France on the 1st of September 1919; on the 29th of September, American Congress stated that his country could be proud of him. Just after the war, Pershing was appointed Commander in Chief of the American Army (1921). In 1924 he became a reserve officer. He thus retired from public life, only becoming involved in an official capacity for commemorative ceremonies, in which he participated every year as the founding chairman of the "American Battle Monuments Commission", the organisation that manages American graves and memorials in Europe. In 1937 he also took part in the inauguration of his own statue at Versailles. He came back to France for the last time in May 1939. He published "My Experiences in the World War" in 1931, a work that was to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize the following year (published in France by librairie Pion). On the 4th of August 1940, he addressed the American people for the last time via a radio message in which he took a stance against Hitlerism. In 1944, he was admitted to the Walter Reed hospital in Washington; that is where he was to receive General de Gaulle in July of the same year. John J. Pershing died on the 15th of July 1948 and was buried at the Arlington national cemetery in the presence of President Harry S. Truman.

Woodrow Wilson was the twenty eighth president of the United States. He committed his country to the First World War in April 1917, following three years of neutrality and at the end of the war strove for the reconciliation of the European countries, which earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. Woodrow Wilson was the son of a Presbyterian pastor who raised him with strictness and commitment to his values. Following studies in law at Princeton University, he became a lawyer (Atlanta 1882-1883) and professor of political sciences at various institutions (1890-1910). Elected Democrat Governor of the State of New Jersey in 1910, he was chosen by the Democratic party as its candidate for the presidential elections of the 5th November 1912, which he won thanks to the rift between his republican opponents, Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft. Wilson was in favour of strong executive power and set in place an ambitious democratic and economic programme. He reduced customs rights, reformed the banking system by creating a federal reserve facilitating credit and strengthened the antitrust law authorising strike and boycotting action by workers. On a political level, he had a law voted in banning child labour, introduced the woman's right to vote, established income tax and a pension system for federal employees and reduced the working day to 8 hours.

In overseas politics, Wilson was not in favour of interventionism but nevertheless expanded active diplomacy and strengthened American dominance on the continent by trying to impose American style democracy there. But he did not want the United States to become involved in European conflicts, as per the Monroe doctrine, which prevented the United States from intervening in Europe and meddling in international problems. On the 4th August 1914, he declared American neutrality in the conflict by stating "this war is not ours". He would, however, be re-elected for a second term in November 1916, most notably because "He kept us out of the war", indicating nevertheless in his inauguration speech that this position would probably be very difficult to maintain. So, falling victim to the all-out submarine warfare waged once again by the Germans - it had been suspended following the death of a hundred American citizens in the torpedoing of the liner Lusitania, on the 7th May 1915 - and outraged by German manoeuvres to coax Mexico into war against the United States - a telegram from Zimmermann, the German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs - President Wilson asked Congress for permission to enter into the war against Germany, a request that was approved on the 6th April 1917. A month later on the 18th May, he reintroduced compulsory military service which had been abolished at the end of the American Civil War (1865).
Wilson coordinated the war effort and provided the Allies with equipment and military and moral support (In October 1918, around two million American soldiers under the command of General Pershing landed to fight in France). He also sought to take political control of the coalition and defined the Allies' war aims. On the 8th January 1918, in a speech to Congress, he set out a fourteen point defining the peace objectives. These Fourteen Points advocated the end of colonialism, the abandonment of economic barriers between nations, the guarantee of freedom of the seas, nations' rights to self-determination and the creation of a League of Nations with a view to providing "mutual guaranties of political independence and territorial integrity for both large and small nations". Some of the points in his programme would serve as the basis for the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
On returning to the United States, Wilson himself presented the Treaty of Versailles for ratification by Congress, but he ran up against a powerful isolationist tide that refused to sign a treaty obliging them to intervene in a new conflict. Congress twice rejected the Treaty of Versailles, in November 1919 and in March 1920, and declared itself against joining the LON. Repudiated by Congress and the majority of the American people, Wilson thus witnessed the ultimate irony of seeing his own country refuse to join the League of Nations, whilst his efforts at reconciling the countries of Europe nevertheless earned him the Nobel peace Prize in 1919 (received in 1920). Physically exhausted by the effort he had put into establishing peace, he suffered a stroke which left him practically paralysed. He would remain shut away in the White House until 1921, after the crushing victory of the conservative republican candidate, Warren Harding. He then retired to his home in Washington where he died on the 3rd February 1924. He is buried in Washington cathedral.

A 16-year-old student at Lycée Victor Hugo in Besançon, Henri Fertet was arrested by the Germans on 3 July 1943 and sentenced to death for resistance activities by the Feldkommandantur 560 military court. He was executed on 26 September 1943.

Henri Fertet was born on 27 October 1926 in Seloncourt, Doubs, into a family of schoolteachers.

Once he had completed primary school, he left his home town in 1937 to attend Lycée Victor Hugo in Besançon. He was a gifted, hard-working student who was interested in archaeology and history. Living under the yoke of the Nazis since the armistice of June 1940, Fertet was inspired by the example of the subjects of his studies and joined the group led by Marcel Simon, secretary of the Catholic Rural Youth movement in Larnod, in the summer of 1942.

In February 1943, the Simon group joined the Franc-Tireurs et Partisans, calling itself the Groupe-Franc “Guy Mocquet”. It carried out underground actions.

Fertet (registered as Émile - 702) led three operations:

• an attack on the guardhouse at Fort de Montfaucon on 16 April 1943 to seize an explosives magazine, killing a German sentry;
• the destruction of a high-voltage pylon at Châteaufarine, near Besançon, on 7 May; and
• an attack on the German customs commissioner, Rothe, on the Besançon-Quingey road on 12 June 1943, to steal his weapon, his uniform and the papers he was carrying.

Fertet shot the commissioner, mortally wounding him, but was unable to steal the documents as a motorcycle pulled up. The members of the group were actively sought and were successively arrested starting in June 1943.

Fertet was arrested by the German forces on 3 July 1943: it was three in the morning and the young man was sleeping at his parents’ home at the Besançon-Velotte school. The youngest of the accused at just 16 years of age, he was sent to La Butte prison in Besançon. He appeared before the Feldkommandantur 560 military court and was sentenced to death on 18 September 1943. After 87 days of captivity and torture, this “soulmate” of Guy Mocquet was executed on 26 September 1943 in the Besançon citadel.

Like Mocquet, he sent his parents one last letter:

“My dear Parents, 

My letter is going to cause you great suffering, but I have seen your tremendous courage and I am sure that you will continue to be courageous, if only out of love for me. 

You cannot know how much I have mentally suffered in my cell, how I have suffered from not seeing you, from only feeling your tender kindness from a distance. For these 87 days in my cell, I have missed your love more than your packages, and I have often asked for your forgiveness for the suffering I have caused you, all the suffering I have caused you. Have no doubt as to how much I love you today because, before, I loved you more out of routine, but now I understand everything you have done for me and I think I have achieved true filial love, real filial love. Maybe a comrade will talk to you about me, about the love I told him about. I hope he will fulfil this sacred mission. 

Please thank everyone who has been thinking about me, especially our closest friends and relatives; tell them how confident I am in eternal France. Give a kiss to my grandparents, my uncles, aunts and cousins, Henriette. Shake Mr Duvernet’s hand for me; say hello to all. Tell our priest that I have been thinking of him and his family in particular. I would like to thank Monseigneur for the great honour he gave me, I hope I have been worthy of it. As I fall, I also send my regards to my schoolmates. Talking of whom, Hennemann owes me a packet of cigarettes, Jacquin my book on prehistoric man. Please return “The Count of Monte Cristo” to Émourgeon, 3 Chemin Français, behind the station. Give Maurice André, of La Maltournée, the 40 grams of tobacco I owe him.

I leave my little library to Pierre, my schoolbooks to my dear daddy, my collections by my dear mummy, but she should be careful with the prehistoric hatchet and the Gaulish sword sheath. 

I am dying for my motherland. I want a free France and a happy French people. Not a proud France, the leading nation in the world, but a working France, hard-working and honest. 

May the French people be happy, that is what counts most. In life, you have to know how to enjoy your happiness.

As for me, do not worry. I will keep my courage and my good humour to the end, and I will sing “Sambre et Meuse” because you, my dear mummy, taught it to me.

Be strict and tender with Pierre. Check his work and make him work hard. Do not accept any slacking. He must be worthy of me. Of three children, he is the only one left. He must succeed. 

Papa, please pray. Think that, if I die, it is for my own good. What more honourable death could there be? I die gladly for my motherland. The four of us will see each other again, soon, in Heaven.  What is a hundred years?

Mummy, remember: 

“And these avengers will have new defenders who, after their death, will have successors.”

Farewell, death is calling me. I do not want to be blindfolded or bound. I send my love to you all. Still, it is hard to die.

Love to you. Long live France! 

Sentenced to death at age 16 

H. Fertet

Forgive the spelling mistakes, no time to reread. 

From: Henri Fertet, in Heaven, with God.”

Source: Ordre de la Libération - MINDEF/SGA/DMPA

Guy Môquet was born in Paris on 26 April 1924. Shortly after enrolling in the Lycée Carnot, he developed a passionate interest in politics and decided to follow in the footsteps of his father, the railroad workers' trade union leader and Communist deputy Prosper Môquet. A First World War veteran, Prosper Môquet (1897-1986) joined the French railways, where he became a trade union activist. He joined the French Communist Party in 1926 and was elected a deputy in 1936. Despite the party's dissolution in 1939, he continued following the party line and did not condemn the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact signed on 23 August 1939. He took part in the creation of the French Workers and Farmers Group. He was arrested with 43 other deputies from the group in October 1939, stripped of his office in January 1940 and, like his comrades, sentenced to five years' imprisonment in April. In March 1941 he and other Communist deputies were deported to the Maison-Carrée penal colony in Algeria. Prosper Môquet was released in February 1943 after General de Gaulle's arrival in Algiers, and became a deputy again after the war.

After Prosper was arrested, Guy, his mother Juliette and his little brother Serge took refuge in Bréhal, near the English Channel. He returned to Paris alone and became a fervent activist in the Communist youth movement, which had been clandestinely reorganised. He distributed pamphlets and glued stickers proclaiming the party's policy, including after the Germans' triumphant march into Paris on 14 June 1940 and the proclamation of the French State on 10 July. Meanwhile, Guy kept up a correspondence with his father and tried to obtain his release. In November he wrote Edouard Herriot, president of the National Assembly, a long poem in alexandrine. Here is an excerpt: [align=center]"I am a young Frenchman, and I love my homeland I have a Frenchman's heart, which must take a stand That you return his father, he who remained true To our beautiful France with so much virtue.[/align] On 13 October 1940, French policemen looking for Communist activists arrested 16-year-old Guy Môquet at the Gare de l'Est railway station in Paris. He was interrogated. The police wanted him to give them the names of his father's friends.

The young activist was incarcerated in Fresnes prison and indicted on the same charge as his father: 'infraction of the decree of 26 September 1939 disbanding Communist organisations". On 23 January 1941, he was acquitted by the 15th correctional chamber of Paris and set to be released on probation. But Guy Môquet was not freed. Instead, he was transferred to the Santé prison in Paris on 10 February. The teenager became impatient and wrote to the prosecutor but nothing was done. He was moved to Clairvaux prison, in the Aube, and from there to the Choisel camp in Châteaubriant, in Loire-Inférieure (Loire-Atlantique today), where other Communist activists, most of whom had been arrested between autumn 1939 and 1940, were held.

He arrived on 16 May 1941 and was in barrack 10, the young people's barrack, where he made many friends. On 20 October 1941, three Communist Resistance fighters in Nantes, Marcel Bourdarias, Gilbert Brustlein and Spartaco Guisco, killed Feldkommandant Karl Hotz, commander of the occupation troops in Loire-inférieure. The occupiers decided to shoot 50 hostages in reprisal.

The Vichy government's interior minister, Pierre Pucheu, offered a list, mainly of Communists, including 27 prisoners in the Choisel camp. Among them were Charles Michels, the General Confederation of Labour's (CGT) secretary-general for the hide and leather industries, Jean-Pierre Timbaud, director of metalworking at the CGT and Guy Môquet, son of a Communist deputy. Twenty-one other people were shot in Nantes and Paris at the same time.

Guy Môquet is going to die. A few minutes before being led to the place of execution, gathered with his comrades in barrack 6, he wrote his last letter to his family, the famous letter starting with "I am going to die!" and ending with "I kiss you with all my child's heart". Then he scribbled a last little note to a young Communist, Odette Leclan (today Odette Nilès), an activist in the Union of Young Women of France. He had met her a month earlier just after she had been interned at the Choisel camp and kept in touch with her through a wooden stockade surmounted by a fence that separated the boys' and girls' sections. The young Guy quickly fell in love and, in his last lines, wrote how sorry he was that he would never have the kiss she had promised him.

On 22 October 1941, the 27 hostages were shot in three groups in the sand quarry just outside Châteaubriand. They refused to be blindfolded. With their last breath they cried out "Long live France!" The next day, the Germans scattered the bodies of those whom General de Gaulle called "martyrs" in a radio speech on 25 October in several cemeteries. "By shooting our martyrs," de Gaulle said, "the enemy thought it could frighten France. But France will show that she is fearless."

Guy Môquet's body was later transported to Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris (square 97) and buried alongside his brother and mother. Guy Môquet was posthumously made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour and given the Croix de Guerre and Medal of the Resistance.

Links to other sites Site: www.education.gouv.fr Site: www.crdp-reims.fr Site: www.cidem.org Site: www.chateaubriant.org Site sur Victor Renelle

Albert Speer (19 March 1905, Mannheim - 1 September 1981, London)

Born into a family of architects, Albert Speer studied at the technical schools of Karlsruhe, Munich and Berlin, where he was taught by Heinrich Tessenow, qualifying in 1931. On hearing a speech by Hitler in 1930, he was filled with enthusiasm for National Socialism, and joined the party in January the following year, as its 474 481st member.

Hard-working, efficient and talented, Speer excelled in many competitions and was noticed by Hitler who, on becoming chancellor, made him his own personal architect tasked with building the city of Berlin. In 1933, he received his first official commission, from Joseph Goebbels: to contribute to the restoration of the Chancellery building in Berlin. The following year, he designed the setting for the Nuremberg Rallies, based on the ancient site of Pergamon, in Turkey. In 1937, Speer designed the German pavilion for the Paris Exposition.

His organisational talents earned him an appointment as Minister for Armaments in 1942, succeeding Fritz Todt. In 1943, he assisted Herman Goering with the Reich’s economic planning, drawing on Todt’s organisational principles: forced labour for the construction of roads and strategic sites.

Coming under suspicion in July 1944, following the failed assassination attempt against Hitler, he was saved only by the annotation “if possible” made by Claus von Stauffenberg on the list of plotters contacted to form a post-Hitler government.

Speer succeeded in maintaining a high level of German activity in 1944, at the height of the Allied bombings, even going so far as to limit the scorched earth policy desired by Hitler, in the latter months of the war.

In 1946, he was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment at the Nuremberg Trials, where he sat apart from the defendants’ bench and acknowledged his own guilt, though denying any responsibility for the Final Solution. This earned him the epithet “good Nazi”, but it would later be called into question in Der Spiegel newspaper, on 2 May 2005.

Held in the fortress of Spandau together with the likes of Karl Dönitz, Walter Funk, Rudolf Hess, Konstantin von Neurath, Erich Raeder and Baldur von Schirach, he was released in 1966.

Speer’s image as a “good Nazi” enabled him to join the SPD, which saw him as a model of German repentance and renewal.

His published writings include Erinnerungen and Spandauer Tagebücher. Speer died of a brain haemorrhage in London in 1981, while participating in a series of programmes for the BBC.

Source : MINDEF/SGA/DMPA

Joseph Doumenc (Born Grenoble, 16 November 1880 – Died Massif du Pelvoux, 21 July 1948):

After graduating from the Polytechnique, a prestige engineering school, and then enrolling at the School of Applied Artillery in Fontainebleau, Joseph Édouard Aimé Doumenc joined the École Supérieure de Guerre, a French institution for military higher education, in 1907. A captain in the armed forces staff of the 19th Army Corps, he served at the border between Algeria and Morocco before being posted to the 60th Artillery Regiment in Troyes. During the First World War, as deputy to the director of the automobile section before being promoted to director in 1917, he earned a reputation for arranging the road transportation of supplies and relief troops during the Battle of Verdun in 1916. Furthermore, between November 1916 and March 1917, he, along with General Estienne, was a pioneer in the development of the first tanks. He was appointed commander in 1918. After serving on a military campaign in Morocco in 1925, he was made commander of the 1st Infantry Division then commander of the 1st Military Region. In 1938, he was appointed to the Conseil Supérieur de la Guerre (the Higher War Council or CSG). In 1939, after being promoted to army general, he was sent to Moscow as head of the French delegation tasked with negotiating a military agreement with the USSR, but a German-Soviet was signed and his mission was terminated. When war was declared, he was put in charge of the Anti-Air Defence for the country before holding the post of Major General in January 1940. He left the service in 1942. He died in a mountaineering accident in the Alps in 1948.

General Doumenc was made a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour. He was also awarded the Croix de Guerre 1914-1918 with nine bronze star attachments, the Croix de Guerre for overseas theatres of operations and several foreign decorations.

Publications: Commandant Doumenc Les transports automobiles sur le front français 1914-1918 (1920).

1904 Born in Neheim, Westphalia (Germany), on 21 September.

1926 Attends the conference La Paix par la Jeunesse (Peace by Youth), at Bierville (France), on the invitation of Marc Sangnier.

1928 Studies in Paris at the Institut Catholique Séminaire des Carmes.

1932 Ordained a priest in Paderborn.

1934 Rector of the German parish of Paris.

1940 German chaplain of three Paris prisons: Fresnes, La Santé and Cherche-Midi.

1944 Provides support and assistance to prisoners sentenced to death (over 1 000 at Mont Valérien) or deportation and their families.

1945 Superior of the Séminaire des Barbelés, Le Coudray (Eure et Loir).

1948 Dies in Paris on 24 February.

1963 Ratification of the Franco-German treaty of friendship and reconciliation. Stock’s body is transferred to the church of Saint Jean-Baptiste de Rechêvres (Chartres).

The séminaire des Barbelés

Few embodied the desire for Franco-German reconciliation like Franz Stock

Stock’s life was an expression of love for humanity. His moral legacy remains in the books and accounts by those who met him in the extreme circumstances of war.

The most tangible reminder of Stock in France is at Le Coudray, near Chartres

It is the building which, between 1945 and 1947, housed what became known as the Séminaire des Barbelés, or “Barbed Wire Seminary”. Under Stock’s directorship, the site received nearly 1 000 young German and Austrian POWs, priests and seminarians who would contribute to building the new Germany.

In the 1960s, organisations were set up in both France and Germany by those who wanted this exceptional individual to serve as a model on both sides of the Rhine for all those wishing to contribute to reconciliation between the two countries and to building a peaceful Europe.

The Franz Stock European Meeting Centre

Today, three organisations –

• Association Chartraine Franz Stock
• Franz Stock Komitee
• Les amis de l'abbé Stock

– have decided to set up a Franz Stock European Meeting Centre (CERFS) in the buildings of the Séminaire des Barbelés. Work got underway a few days ago, and all the French and German organisations will be contributing to the success of the project.

Source : Association Française Les Amis de l'Abbé Stock

Théodose "Tom" Morel

Théodose Morel was born on 1 August 1915 in Lyon. His father came from a long line of silk manufacturers from Lyon while his mother descended from officers and lawyers from Savoy.

After receiving his primary and secondary schooling from Jesuit Fathers, he chose to follow a career in arms and prepared, from 1933 to 1935, the competitive entrance exam for the Special Military School (ESM) in Saint-Cyr at Sainte Geneviève School in Versailles. Admitted into the ESM in 1935 (Lyautey year), his results two years’ later allowed him to choose his posting: the 27th Battalion of Alpine Hunters (27th BCA), in Annecy, where he arrived on 1 October 1937, the day of his appointment to the rank of sub-lieutenant.

Trained as a scout/skier in Chamonix, Théodose Morel, who married Marie-Germaine Lamy in November 1938, became an officer and assistant to the commander of the scouts/skier section in Abondance before being promoted to this post himself. In May 1939, his section took Savoy and the Italian border. It was stationed above Val d'Isère. On 21 September he was promoted to the grade of lieutenant and then the 27th BCA left for the Eastern Front, his section, to his great regret, staying behind to defend the borders.

He nonetheless managed to make a difference between 12 and 20 June when faced with Italian Alpine troops; thanks to a smart but risky manoeuvre, he and another hunter managed to take four prisoners during a reconnaissance operation.

Shot in the right arm on 18 June, he continued to support his hunters and consequently was awarded the Military Cross. On 21 and 22 June 1940, called to reinforce his section near Petit Saint-Bernard Pass, he managed to locate the enemy troops which allowed the artillery to launch defensive fire forcing the enemy to retreat. Lieutenant Morel received a second commendation and the Legion of Honour Cross.

He subsequently served in the Armistice Army in Annecy where Commander Vallette d'Osia took command of the 27th BCA while preparing his unit for attack.

In August 1941, Lieutenant Morel was appointed to the post of instructor in Saint-Cyr, transferred to Aix-en-Provence, and it was driven by this spirit of combat that he directed and instructed his students. After the invasion of the southern zone by the Germans in November 1942 and the demobilisation of the Armistice Army, he joined the Haute-Savoie resistance movement and took part in covert operations working undercover at a weaving company. Teaming up with Vallette d'Osia, commander of the Secret Army (AS) of the département, and Captain Anjot of the 27th BCA, he endeavoured to set up the AS for Haute-Savoie, inadvertently helped by the introduction of the Compulsory Work Service (STO) in February 1943. Following Vallette d'Osia’s arrest in September 1943 by the Germans, who had replaced the Italians, then his escape to England, the AS of Haute-Savoie lost its leader. He was replaced by Henri Romans-Petit, chief of the AS of Ain. Morel doubled the army’s activity, while his family narrowly escaped arrest.

By late January 1944, Lieutenant Théodose Morel, alias Tom, received the order from Henri Romans-Petit, commander of the Maquis in Haute-Savoie and the mission, to receive the parachute drops on the plateau in Les Glières at 1,500 metres altitude and 15 kilometres from Annecy. The resistance and sabotage actions were intensified and martial law was declared in the département. Tom then decided to unite 120 resistance fighters in Les Glières. Two companies were formed. From February, over six weeks, the number of clashes multiplied with the Gardes Mobiles de Réserve (mobile reserve groups) surrounding the plateau on which they were stationed. At the end of February, over 300 men formed three companies.

Using the resources at his disposal, Tom energetically organised the defence of the site in Les Glières and instructed his battalion to establish a strong and homogenous unit to fight for liberation. Under his command, the battalion – which adopted the motto vivre libre ou mourir (live free or die) – regrouped battalions from the AS (Secret Army) but also from the Franc-Tireurs et Partisans (literally ‘free shooters and partisans’) and several dozen Spanish Republicans, effectively merging different branches of the Savoy resistance movement.

A first parachute drop of 54 containers supplied the fighters with small arms. On 2 March, he decided to lead an operation against the Hôtel Beau Séjour in Saint Jean de Sixt, where members of the GMR were stationed. Thirty GMR soldiers were captured, a bargaining chip to negotiate the release of Michel Fournier, a student of medicine and nurse for the maquis, arrested in Grand Bornand a few days earlier. But despite the gentlemen’s agreement made with the police intendant Lelong from Annecy, Fournier remained imprisoned.

On 5 March, a second parachute drop was made on Les Glières, supplying 30 containers. To force Lelong into keeping his promise and after receiving precise information, Tom decided to lead, on the night of 9 March 1944, an important operation against the GMR's headquarters based in Entremont, for which he rallied together some 100 men. He saved himself for the main objective: the attack on the Hôtel de France, the headquarters of the police staff. The scouts/skiers section succeeded in penetrating the building following a fierce battle.

At the moment the hunters released their prisoners, Commander Lefèvre, head of the GMR, took out a concealed weapon from his pocket and cowardly shot Tom Morel who fell, hit in the heart, before being killed himself.

Lieutenant Théodose Morel was buried by his comrades, on Plateau des Glières, on 13 March. On 2 May 1944, his body was brought down into the valley. He was later buried at the military cemetery in Morette, today the National Necropolis of Les Glières, in Haute-Savoie.

• Knight of the Legion of Honour
• Companion of the Liberation - decree of 20 November 1944
• Military Cross, 1939-1945 (two commendations)

Source: http://www.ordredelaliberation.fr

Jean-Dominique Larrey (Born 8 July 1766: Died Baudéan - 25 July 1842: Lyon)

Dominique Larrey is a key figure in the history of military medicine. Dubbed the “Providence of Soldiers”, he was a surgeon who performed 800 operations at the Battle of Eylau and is credited with creating mobile ambulances.

Born in Baudéan, near Bagnère-sur-Bigorre, in 1766, into a protestant family from the Pyrenees, Dominique Larrey is the figurehead of Napoleonic battlefields. He studied medicine at the Hôpital Lagrave in Toulouse, under the tutelage of his uncle, Alexis Larrey, a correspondent at the Royal Academy of Surgery. He submitted a thesis on bone decay when he was just twenty-three years old and then left for Paris where his uncle had recommended him to Desault, chief surgeon at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital. He enrolled at the Naval Surgery School in Brest, where he learned the rudiments of early surgery that he was able to apply as chief surgeon on the frigate Vigilante.

In 1791, after passing the highest examinations in his field, he worked at the Hôtel National des Invalides under the protection of Sabatier.

In 1792 he joined the Rhine Army and accompanied it as a doctor on a military campaign in Germany. It was at the Battle of Spire, in September 1792, that he was able to apply the principles of naval surgery. He defied the ban which prohibited medical officers, on land, from being within one league of the battlefield and making them wait for fighting to cease before attending to the injured. 

This gave him the idea to improve the poorly organised health service by creating, in Mayence in 1793, an advanced training course for his colleagues. In the Rhine Army, the surgeon Baron François Percy created light ambulances, small chests on wheels used to transport not only nurses but also collapsible and folding stretchers.

Back in Paris, Larrey, his second in command, came up with the idea of "flying ambulances", horse-drawn carriages used to transport the wounded, which would provide a means to evacuate incapacitated soldiers from the battlefield and operate on them within twenty-four hours. Until then, wounded soldiers were left abandoned on the battlefield for several days, laying amongst the dead, until they were eventually gathered up by peasants.

In 1796, Larrey was appointed as professor of surgery at the recently opened military teaching hospital in Val-de-Grâce. An experienced field surgeon, he took part in campaigns for the Revolution, Consulate and Empire. He also founded a school of surgery in Cairo. 

Surgeon-in-chief to the Consular Guard (1800), general practitioner for the health service, and surgeon-in-chief in Napoleon’s Grande Armée, Larrey travelled across Europe, visiting Germany, Spain and Austria. At the Battle of Eylau (8 February 1807), he performed some 800 operations in three days. Napoleon I offered him his sword and soon appointed him Commander of the Legion of Honour. He was ennobled as a Baron on the field of Wagram (1809).

His experience in amputation saw him save the lives of nearly three-quarters of the soldiers wounded and avoided the spread of tetanus. He continued to accompany troops on the road and battlefields, which earned him the nickname of the "Providence of Soldiers” during the French Invasion of Russia (1812). Emperor Napoleon, who described Larrey as "the most virtuous man I've ever known", bequeathed him 100,000 francs.

In 1813, in Lutzen-Bautzen, Dominique Larrey is credited for practising the first case of forensic medicine.

Injured and imprisoned in Waterloo, on the verge of being shot, he was saved by a Prussian officer, Blücher, whose son he had already treated.

Liberated, he was concerned about his fate under the Restoration, but eventually received confirmation of his title of Baron in 1815. He was a member of the first year of the Academy of Medicine and made a member of the Institute of Medicine in 1829.

Dominique Larrey died in Lyon after returning from an inspection in Algeria, in 1842, aged 76.

Louise, the "Joan of Arc of the North", was the daughter of Julienne Mabille de Ponchevillle and Henri de Bettignies, an old Walloon noble family from Hainaut which established imperial and royal earthenware manufacturing in Tournai in the XVIII century. Her great-grandfather, Louis-Maximilien, opened a china shop at the "Moulin des Loups" in Saint-Amand-les-Eaux. Due to financial difficulties, Henri de Bettignies sold the business shortly before his daughter was born. Despite being penniless, the young girl was taught the values and given the education of her peers. She completed her secondary education in Valenciennes, finding in education an escape from her poverty and the death of her father in 1903. Following in the footsteps of her priest and sister, she then went to Carmel before using her intellectual abilities to become a housekeeper to English and German families, so as to learn their languages and discover Europe. In 1914, German troops invaded the north of France. In October, Louise, together with her sister, participated in the defence of Béthune, providing the besieged with fresh supplies.

During a visit to Saint-Omer in February 1915, the young woman was contacted by a French officer from the 2nd Bureau, who suggested to her that she serve her country as an intelligence agent. This proposition was again put to her shortly thereafter, but on behalf of the British intelligence service, by Major Kirke. After receiving the consent of her spiritual adviser, father Boulengé, who nicknamed her "Joan of Arc of the North", she put in place, in the Lille sector, and under the guidance of the duke of Charost, the bishop of Lille, the foundations for the future "Service Alice" or "Service Ramble". Travelling through Belgium and the Netherlands, the now Alice Dubois passed on information to Great Britain. From the spring of 1915, she was assisted in her duties by Roubaisienne Marie-Léonie Vanhoutte, alias Charlotte Lameron. Ms Vanhoutte, who had worked on the installation of ambulances since August 1914, used her status to procure information. She used her trips to Bouchaute-Gand-Roubaix, where she would pass on news to families of soldiers and deliver mail, to inform the English of troop movements and strategic locations. The Alice network had eighty people, and was so effective that information was collected and transmitted within twenty-four hours. It consisted of two divisions. The first kept an eye on the Belgian border and the movements of German troops. As such, it was made up of observers and couriers placed at strategic locations: level crossing-keepers, station masters and local members of the Resistance, such as Mr. Sion and Mr. Lenfant, the police commissioner of Tourcoing. The second division was made up of people who lived in the region of Lille, Frelingues, Hellemmes, Santes and Mouscron who could justify frequent movement to the occupying authorities. These people, who included Comboin a.k.a. José Biernan, Madeleine Basteins, Mrs. Semichon, Mrs. Paul Bernard, Mrs. de Vaugirard, Victor Viaene and Alphonse Verstapen, provided information on sensitive areas (artillery battery areas, storage areas, TSF posts, etc.) and occasionally served as couriers. The team was complemented by a chemical laboratory provided by Mr. and Mrs. Geyter which was used to reproduce maps, plans and photographs. Information gleaned was retranscribed on thin sheets of Japanese paper and transported to the Netherlands mainly by Louise de Bettignies and Marie-Léonie Vanhoutte, mainly on foot, between Gand and Bruxelles, then Beerse.

From May 1915, Alice Dubois worked sporadically with the 2nd Bureau of Commander Walner under the pseudonym Pauline. Through her actions, the Allies were able to wipe out two thousand pieces of artillery at the battles of Carency and Loos-en-Gohelle. In the summer of 1915, a new information network was put in place in the sector of Cambrai-Valenciennes, Saint-Quentin and Mézières. In autumn 1915, it provided information on preparations for an attack on Verdun. After creation and administration, Louise de Bettignies had to withstand a counter-offensive by the German intelligence services. Moreover, Alice and Charlotte felt they were being followed. After a meeting at Lion Belge (Brussels), Marie-Léonie Vanhoutte was arrested at the boarding house of the Adriatiques on 24 September 1915 and incarcerated at Saint-Gilles prison. The circumstances surrounding her arrest are vague. At first, Charlotte was asked, at the insistence of Messrs Lenfant and Sion, to return to Brussles to deliver a letter. She then missed the planned rendez-vous, but became aware of two postcards addressed to her at the boarding house. One was from Alice while the other, from a person called Alexandre, contained a message which read as follows: "Come as soon as possible, tonight or tommorow, around 8h to Lion Belge. Paper in hand; it is about Alice". The German police follow her, without success, in the streets of Brussels and ask her to identify Louise de Bettignies from a photograph. Louise, at that time in England, returned to France to direct operations.

She was arrested in Tournai on 20 October, as she attempted to cross the Franco-Belgian border using false identification documents. Her driver, Georges de Saever, suffered a similar fate. The German authorities then organised a confrontation and search and the Geyter residence. On the ground, British intelligence services, dependent on the information collected by the Alice network, continued their activities in the organisation of "La Dame Blanche", which was led by the Tendel women. Louise was reunited with her friend at Saint-Gilles prison from 26 October, where they communicated by tapping on the pipes. The sentence was handed down by judge Goldschmidt. During six months of questioning, Louise de Bettignies never wavered: "like a fox in its hole, she never showed signs of faltering, saying little and denying everything". Unable to establish with certainty the relationship between Louise de Bettignies and Alice Dubois, the Germans used stratagems to collect numerous pieces of information to support their case. It was in this way that Louise Letellier, a "compatriot" also apparently subject to questioning, ended up obtaining a confession from Louise de Bettignies and five letters. With the first phase of his plan complete, judge Goldschmidt used the information contained in the letters to try to convince Marie-Léonie Vanhoutte to betray her companion, but in vain. On 16 March 1916, the German war council based in Brussels, which included General Von Bissing and war advisor Stoëber, sentenced Louise de Bettignies to death for espionage without being able to prove that she was the head of the network. Her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, probably due to the notoriety of the de Bettignies family. Marie-Léonie Vanhoutte and Georges, initially sentenced to death, were given fifteen years' forced labour for treason during wartime by aiding espionage. This revision of the ruling was probably the result of the statement made by Louise de Bettignies to the judges hearing her case - the only time she spoke in German during the whole case - in which she acknowledged her role and sought mercy for her companions. From April 1916 onwards, the condemned prisoners served their sentences at Siebourg prison, near Cologne. On 20 April, Marshall Joffre granted Louise de Bettignies a mention in dispatches. At the end of January 1917, Louise de Bettignies was imprisoned for refusing to produce arms for the German army and having instigated an uprising by her fellow prisoners. Louise de Bettignies died on 17 September 1918 as a result of a complications during an operation on a pleural abscess. She was buried at Bocklemünd cemetery in Westfriedhof. Her body was rapatriated on 21 February 1920 on a gun carriage. On 16 March 1920, the Allies organised a tribute in Lille in which "Joan of Arc of the North" was posthumously awarded the Legion of Honour, the Croix de Guerre 14-18 With Palm medal, the British military decoration for oustanding bravery and was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Louise de Bettignies, a.k.a. Alice Dubois, is buried at Saint-Amand-les-Eaux cemetery. On 11 November 1927, on the initiative of Marshall Foch and General Weygand, a statue was inaugurated in Lille on Boulevard Carnot. In Notre-Dame de Lorette, a display cabinet houses the cross on the tombstone that marked the grave of Louise de Bettignies at Cologne cemetery, as well as the mention in dispatches.