“Dad, please let me go with you!” » Jean-Pierre Gazeau was 12 years old on Tuesday, July 4, 1944, and he had just returned from school by bike from Niort. It was barely 6 p.m. and his father, a country doctor in Prahecq, had just taken out his car, a Peugeot 402, to go see a patient in Triou. But Doctor Gazeau preferred to leave alone.
A few minutes later, Jean-Pierre heard the sound of gunfire. He would later learn of his father’s death because his mother had taken him and his sister away to stay with grandparents in the village. She had just been informed that her husband had been machine-gunned by an allied plane in Triou and had died from several bullets, including one to the head.
Left to glean information on a German armored convoy
The collaborationist newspaper of the Mémorial des Deux-Sèvres will take advantage of this the day after to fire broadsides at these so-called ” liberator planes » et « this new victim of Anglo-American barbarism”… The newspaper had just unknowingly glorified a local leader of the Resistance, a member of Triangle 20 of the secret army commanded by Colonel Proust-Chaumette.
A valued doctor
Born in 1905 in Rochefort, Marius Gazeau was the son of a railway worker who ended his career as a station master in Niort. A pupil in Fontanes, a rugby player because he had a good build, he studied medicine in Poitiers where he met his wife Madeleine, the daughter of teachers, before they continued their studies together in Paris.
And since Dr. Reynaud offered him his medical practice in Prahecq, Dr. Gazeau moved there in 1932 because he wanted to become a country doctor. Those who knew him, in Prahecq and the surrounding area, were full of praise for this close, available, competent doctor.
Resistance fighter in 1942
In 1939, he enlisted and joined a regiment in the Ardennes, before returning to Tours then the Dordogne and reuniting with Prahecq in October 1940. A free thinker, a Gaullist, he joined the Resistance in 1942 in particular with Doctor Laffitte, from Niort hospital.
Doctor Gazeau signs medical certificates, treats the wounded, hides airmen or fleeing resistance fighters in an isolated farm that he owns in Brûlain. He also uses his car to transport parachuted weapons or to do reconnaissance. This is how he left, alone, on July 4, 1944 to glean information on a German armored convoy traveling towards Celles-sur-Belle.
In Triou de Mougon, at the place where Doctor Gazeau was killed, a stele was erected in 1946 thanks to the doctors, including Doctor Laffitte who returned from deportation. A memorial plaque was also placed in Prahecq, in the town centre, near the medical practice.
On Thursday, July 4, 2024 at 6 p.m., a commemorative ceremony will take place at Espace du Docteur-Gazeau in Prahecq, in the presence of the daughter and son of Doctor Gazeau.
