Long forgotten, the child-resistant Marcel Pinte, accidentally killed at the age of 6 on August 19, 1944, will have his name inscribed on a monument to the dead in Aixe-sur-Vienne (Haute-Vienne) during the ceremonies of the 11 -November.
Fallen at the age of "6 years, 4 months and 6 days" according to the Mémoire des Hommes site, Marcel Pinte is one of the 600,000 names of resistance fighters listed on this platform of the Ministry of the Armed Forces, which since 2018 has been collecting the archives of the Resistance during the Second World War.
Nicknamed “
Quinquin
” (“
little child
” in ch'ti), a reference to his northern origins and to the lullaby
Le P'tit Quinquin
by the Lille poet Alexandre Desrousseaux, he is considered “
the youngest of the resistance
” to the Liberation, and was "
symbolically promoted to the rank of sergeant
" after his death, according to the specialized military site Opex360.
It is the work of Alexandre Brémaud, descendant by marriage of Eugène Pinte, father of Marcel, which is at the origin of this posthumous tribute in Haute-Vienne, as announced by the daily Le Populaire du Center.
Born in 1938 in Valenciennes, Marcel Pinte and his family were part of a pocket of resistance in Aixe-sur-Vienne.
His father, Eugene, alias Commander Athos, was a figure in the movement, working for the Secret Army, the Army Resistance Organization (ORA) and the French secret service in London, the BCRA (central intelligence office) and action).
As early as 1941, he had created a resistance center, where his son Marcel transmitted his parcels and messages to the maquis.
“
There was an element of recklessness due to his age.
A resident had told his father to be careful because Marcel sometimes sang at the top of his lungs tunes learned in the maquis ...
", notes Alexandre Brémaud.
Marcel Pinte had been killed by accidental shooting from Sten, a British submachine gun, during a parachute drop on August 19, 1944. He was buried on August 21 with the honors reserved for the resistance fighters, in the presence of many resistance fighters.
“
Former members of the maquis had gathered documents so that Marcel's action was recognized.
But this approach had been abandoned.
I took it up in his memory,
”testifies Alexandre Brémaud, also deputy chairman of the coordination committee of resistance associations in Haute-Vienne.
On October 16, 2018, the National Office of Veterans of Caen recognized that Marcel Pinte, belonging to the French Internal Resistance (RIF), was indeed “
Dead for France
”.
"
The purpose of this tribute is that its history goes beyond the family circle, that its memory is adopted by the Nation
", concludes Alexandre Brémaud.
