La grotte du Gaulier

A fortnight before the liberation of Sedan by the American army, a group of French Pronazis arrived, on August 22, 1944, in the enemy's vans in full retreat towards Germany. They were not Darnand militiamen, but Francists commanded by a fanatical and bloodthirsty leader named Paoli, who had become the head of the Bourges Gestapo. Intimately linked to Bucard (founder of the Francist movement), Paoli brought with him a mad killer whose physical deformity caused the terrified Sedan population to call the whole group "the hunchback gang". These madmen lured some resistance fighters into the trap of a fake maquis, to massacre 19 of them and wound 2 others, a massacre that lasted two days, on August 28th and 29th. Nine patriots were assassinated on August 28th, one after the other in the Givonne valley and its surroundings, but one wounded survivor, Pierre Discrit, managed to escape. The day after this terrible day, it was the height of horror at the Gaulier cave: 10 Sedanese were executed with a bullet in the back of the head after being tortured. One of the torturers had the sadism to show off the ear he had cut off one of his victims. Doctor François' family was decimated: with him were executed his wife, by the very hand of Paoli, and their brothers-in-law, Jean and Robert Barré. An eleventh, Georges Cablat, of admirable courage, was a true miracle: falling slightly wounded among the bodies of the dying, he played dead but was then seriously hit by a final burst of machine-gun fire intended to finish off those who were still breathing.Thanks to a chain of solidarity of heroic people, Cablat was transported to the hospital, where he was quickly and successfully operated on by Dr. Martin, and hidden by a nun who lured a killer who had appeared to finish off the survivor, he was saved and remained an exemplary witness by his wisdom and detachment. He never took consolation in seeing his best friend, Michel Choinet, who worked in the same textile company as him, fall that day, just before him.