Ladies and gentlemen,
On June 6, 2010,
Welcome to Vierville sur mer.
It was in Bayeux on June 14, 1944 that General de Gaulle, addressing the liberated Bayeusains, declared: "You who were under the enemy's boot and were part of the resistance groups, you know what war is!
All our fellow citizens had to suffer the effects of this war, even more so in coastal areas that had become highly militarized strategic areas: the heavy presence of occupation troops will impose a brutal daily reality there - multiple prohibitions, requisitions of goods, men, chores, bullying, repression. It was the lot of everyone.
But not all came to terms with this situation: the collaborators who quickly became worse than their masters and the free men who entered resistance for the first of them from 1940.
Several groups created in our region will evolve over the years, adapting to the situations, the women, the men who compose them.
In the magnificent work carried out in 1996 by the students of the colleges Paul Verlaine and Alain Chartier with Messrs. Le Gros, Marsault and Sénécal, I read the names of the networks Hector, Those Of The Resistance, the Civil and Military Organization, Mithridate, the Liberation Committee of Calvados, Alliance.
The Alliance network created in 1940 by Commander Georges LOUSTAUNAU LACAU will see its leaders arrested one after the other, deported, massacred.
In 1942, when the occupier invaded the free zone, Alliance was reorganized into three zones. That of Western France is under the command of Jean ROGER SANTENY, known as Dragon. Risking their lives at any time, the resistance fighters were not numerous in our region. Those of the Alliance network chose animal names to hide their true identity such as Dragon, Civette, Pic, Emouchet, Bison Noir or Chordeille...
Out of mockery, the Germans nicknamed the network Noah's Ark. They had forgotten that the Ark carried the renaissance that would come after the dark times!!
Men, but also women, determined to do everything to contribute to the liberation of the Fatherland, of different social origins, the destinies of the Resistance intertersed in the performance of a multitude of tasks, a real work of ant made of patience, observation, cunning and silence!
It was important above all to collect and transmit as much information as possible to the Allied General Staff, but also to help aviators to reach England or the refractory to evade compulsory labor, to prepare the liberation of our soil without neglecting its administration when the time came by French civilians and not by allied military as some wanted.
Jean SAINTENY understood all this very early. After the armistice of June 22, 1940, he wanted to continue the fight against German oppression. Arrested by the Wermacht in September 1941, he will be released for lack of evidence.
In 1942, the Alliance network was at the service of the Allies. The Sipo-Sd, (Sicherheitspolizei), German counterintelligence service, arrested Jean Sainteny on May 16, 1943; he escaped him 2 hours later. He must then go underground. On June 7, 1944, arrested in Paris, tortured by the Gestapo, hospitalized, sentenced to death on the night of July 4 to 5, 1944, he managed to escape with the help of a guard to finally contact Patton's staff on August 16, 1944.
The arrested members of the Alliance network did not all escape their tortioners: Robert Boulard and Désiré Lemière lived in Vierville, one in Vacqueville, the other in the Fosses Taillis.
These two men loved, I think, life. Don't we say that perched on the roof of their house, they gave each other the replica from one end of Vierville to the other with the dowel and the trumpet?
Yes, they loved life! Their children remember them as loving and caring fathers. Désiré, a pre-war carpenter, continued to help his wife run her small farm. He had to look for a source of replacement income in this period of occupation without raw materials, without an order to feed their 3 children. That's how he became a postman.
Robert already a postman, also had busy days, always having to do after work at home, in the garden, so that the 4 children eat to their heart's content in these times of famine.
Désiré and Robert both spent time with their children even if often, it was to share the work!
Désiré then did not hesitate to give a small room to the one who had willingly, despite helping.
When he had to repair the garden well, Robert asked the kids to put the imprint of their hands on the fresh cement he had just put on the curb. These footprints are still there, silent witnesses of a complicity between a father and his children.
What decided these peaceful fathers to join an organized resistance movement?
I don't know and I imagine that they didn't often have to talk about all this to their loved ones.
Classic reaction against an occupant? Refusal of defeat? Help your country regain its freedom? Ensure a future of peace and freedom for their children? Only they knew!
These men of character, both factors, went through the paths of our villages every day, observing in detail the activities of the occupation troops.
They will be active in the search and transmission of information until this morning of May 05, 1944 when they are arrested by the henchmen of the "Hervé gang". These French auxiliaries of the Sipo-Sd, escort their prisoners to the Caen prison where they are interned.
They are regularly removed from their jail, to be questioned, under torture, rue des Jacobins.
News is rare, a few short messages manage to cross the walls of the prison. The time seems very long to their wives, to their children, so young still for some. Désiré's youngest son is 3 years old, Robert's, 6 years old.
On the morning of June 06, the Sipo-Sd, understanding that the allies have engaged in Europe's liberation operations on our beaches, decides to eliminate the resistance fighters imprisoned in Caen. They must not survive the Nazi defeat, they must pay the price for contributing to the preparation of the liberating battles.
Summary executions are quickly organized; about 80 people will be shot during the day in the small courtyards of the prison, then buried on the very site of their martyr.
A few days later, the bodies were exhumed, loaded into trucks, transported to a destination that remained unknown to this day.
Fear of being accused of war crimes, last revenge or skillful executors of the "Nacht und Nebel" procedure Night and Fog, the procedure that foresees and organizes the total disappearance of the enemies of the Reich, leaving the relatives of the victims forever without news? I don't know.
The gradual liberation of the Normandy countryside and then of Caen maintained the hope of seeing Désiré and Robert liberated return home; in September 1944, the news of their disappearance reaches the families.
Four months of waiting already! And the nightmare continues. If they are dead, let them return their bodies to us!
A new wait begins, to give a decent burial to these poor victims of barbarism, a burial on which to collect themselves! In vain!
The Spanish poet Luis Cernuda wrote in this period:
"The days of life are bitter for those who, by dint of memories, live only a very long wait".
66 years later, no one has yet been able to provide an indication of the disappearance of Robert and Désiré and all their companions who fought for the return of a better world.
Their wives force admiration for their strong courage, and their discretion in those terrible days, in the following years, leading their children to adulthood with very little help.
It is therefore legitimate that the names of these men keep a place in Vierville in our ordinary and free life, so that we remember who they were, what they did for our country.
Whatever the distance in time of these events, we say we do not want to forget the suffering that the madness of men has inflicted on other men.
That would be too unfair:
-Unfair for all the allied soldiers who fell into battle
-Unfair for these shadow men murdered under torture
-Unfair for these civilians, children, women, men, killed by fatal chance of the bombings.
And how can we forget the moral, emotional, even economic misery sometimes, that all these disappearances have generated in these dark years!
How many families had to go through these trials because one of them had donated his life to the Fatherland?
These answers, ladies and gentlemen, we know them; they guide our steps this morning towards this place where we pay tribute to the memory of these missing human beings.
We wish so much that all this energy of life had not been burned in vain. Our children live in peace.
Let's help them understand that they too will one day be the depositories for future generations, that it is fragile, that this magnificent word makes more sense than ever in our country of freedom.
By baptizing these streets in Vierville, we pay tribute to the men of action, we also pay tribute to all the members of the Alliance network, and more particularly those of the Bessin who died under torture, deported or shot to the Caen prison on the morning of June 6, 1944, where Robert BOULARD and Désiré LEMIERE disappeared forever, as well as their companions Albert ANNE, char in Asnières, Georges THOMINE in Port en Bessin, and many others.
As Mr. Jacques Vico, himself a resistance fighter and current great witness to history, president of the Union of volunteer fighters of the Calvados Resistance and national vice-president of this organization, wrote so well:
"Resistance is not stories of the past, it is both eternal and universal. It is an everyday fight for the freedom and dignity of Man.
Jean-Marie Oxéant
Mayor of Vierville sur mer