Six-year-old hero of Resistance to be honoured on Armistice Day
FRANCE is to finally pay official tribute this week to the youngest French Resistance hero of the Second World War – a six-year-old boy who Britain has also recognised as playing a key local role against the Nazis.
Marcel Pinte, nicknamed Quinquin, will for the first time be honoured on Armistice Day tomorrow, when his name will be officially unveiled on the war memorial in Aixe-sur-vienne, just west of Limoges.
Alexandre Brémaud, whose grandmother was Marcel’s older sister, said: “Lots of French women and children had roles as resistance liaison agents. Because their role was discreet and didn’t involve spectacular sabotage, they have remained largely in the shadows. This is a way of recognising all those who remained in shadows.”
The pint-size resistance fighter was the son of a prominent commander, Eugène Pinte, also known as Athos, who led a local movement around Limoges with 1,200 fighters by the end of the war.
More than a mere mascot, little Marcel would shuttle unseen between farms in the area to pass on messages, and smuggled key documents under his coat into central Limoges because the Nazis never frisked children. His father ran his resistance headquarters in 1941 out of an isolated farm, where he lived with his wife Paule and their five children. A radio operator nicknamed “the Englishman” kept up communication with London in the living room.
“At the start, he probably took it all as a game. But then he quickly understood how risky it all was,” said Marc Pinte, 68, the grandson of Marcel’s father.
“He understood everything at once. Naturally, no one noticed him, no one was going to pay any attention to a boy.”
Marcel’s father oversaw the collection of British arms and provisions drops via parachute in a nearby field. Its arrival was signalled by the BBC via the message: “The forget-me-not is my favourite flower.”
With the Nazis beating a retreat as the Allies surged into France, a large deployment of resistance fighters arrived by parachute in the night of Aug 19 1944. Marcel, as usual, followed his family. But then in a tragic accident, a British Sten submachine gun went off by mistake, killing Marcel instantly.
On Aug 21, a large number of resistance fighters attended his burial. That very night they would go on to liberate Limoges.
Two weeks later, British B-17 planes made a final arms drop by parachute whose canvases were black to mourn Marcel’s death.
“The English knew that little Marcel had played a real role: this parachute drop was the visiting card to the family when you can’t come to the funeral,” Mr Pinte told The Daily Telegraph.
Eugène Pinte died in 1951. He was buried next to Marcel at the cemetery in Aixe. On the pink marble tombstone is a plaque with two black parachutes in a starry sky and three fires guiding British planes with the words: “The forgetme-not is my favourite flower.”