The Allée des Frères Cadoret crosses the Conleau peninsula. These few hundred meters under the pines and near the sea pay homage to two brothers, two young people from Vannes, Pierre and Paul. Their parents lived on Route de Conleau.
The German offensive of 1940
In February 1939, as the threat of war approached, Pierre married. Born June 4, 1918, he worked at the Lafolye printing works in Lamarzelle, Place des Lices. A few months later, as soon as war was declared, he joined the 402nd aircraft defense regiment. At the beginning of 1940, he was granted leave. Back in Vannes, a souvenir photo also shows him in Carnac. This will be the last time he sees his family. On June 15, 1940, two days before Pétain called for an end to the fighting, Pierre died in Tonnerre, east of Auxerre, during the German offensive. He was 22 years old.
I’m going to die soon
His little brother Paul Joachim was born on May 22, 1923. On February 15, on the Rabine, he was arrested for beatings and threats against German soldiers, following an altercation. Incarcerated in the prison, Place Nazareth, he suffered ill-treatment there. On March 17, the young man was tried by the German court for “illegal possession of a weapon”.
80 years of Liberation in Vannes
When the sentence was announced, Paul wrote: “My dear parents, the terrible news that you are going to learn and which will distress you greatly has just been announced to me by the authorities. Sentenced to death by the German court, I will die shortly as a good Frenchman who will be able to redeem through his courage the stupidity he may have committed. If only yesterday I was a kid, I would soon be a man… Dear father and mother, I kiss you from afar for the last time.” A truck transferred the young 18-year-old from Vannes to the Saint-Avé polygon where he was shot.
Source: “The ways of honor”, work published in 2000 by a collective of associations.
