Sometimes all it takes is a forgotten name on a war memorial for a whole story to resurface. At the beginning of the 2000s, Martine Tandeau de Marsac, then mayor of Royères, had been wondering for some time who Henri Gagnant was, the only resident of her town to have died during the Second World War, when the soldier’s sister revealed to her some fragments of the drama of May 11, 1945, in Saint-Viaud (Loire-Atlantique).
Deaths for France
“It is an episode whose memory had not been passed on even though the five deceased soldiers were from Haute-Vienne and Dordogne and had been considered to have died for France,” he is still surprised today. Martine Tandeau de Marsac, president of Knowledge and Safeguarding of Saint-Léonard.
Piqued by curiosity, she made the trip to Loire-Atlantique, where her historical research also pushed the mayor of Saint-Viaud, Roch Chéraud, to unearth a story that the town had also forgotten. “The elected official believed that we had to retrace the journey of these men who had come from far away to free them. »
The story of a drama
On May 11, 1945, the Germans had laid down their arms the day before, in the last pocket of the Atlantic, that of Saint-Nazaire, and had made themselves prisoners. Some of them had been gathered in a hangar in a place called La Brosse, in Saint-Viaud. It was near this hangar, in a barn filled with ammunition, that a grenade exploded and caused a chain reaction.
Seven people died in the explosion: two postmen from the region and five young soldiers who had joined the army in Limoges in September 1944: André Réjasse (Saint-Mathieu), Jean Guy (Le Chalard), Henri Gagnant (Royères), Robert Nanay (Saint-Léonard) and Pierre Bel (Dordogne).
The spirit of the Resistance
“Many young FFI (French Forces of the Interior), filled with the spirit of the Resistance, left to fight the enemy still present on French territory along the Atlantic coasts,” recalls Martine Tandeau de Marsac .
-It was following a call for testimony launched from the Loire-Atlantique side that the facts were reconstructed. One of the witnesses was none other than André Désourteaux, section leader, eighteen members of whose family had died in 1944 in Oradour-sur-Glane. He saw the roof of the barn lift five meters.
An accident?
“Our first thought was that the Germans had booby-trapped the munitions. They realized it and crowded together, afraid, at the back of the hangar, while we, threatening, gathered in front,” explained, after several decades of silence, André Désourteaux, who died in 2023.
The lives of the prisoners were ultimately saved. “We don’t really know what triggered the explosion, it was perhaps an accident,” underlines Martine Tandeau de Marsac, who is launching a new call for testimonies, memories and photographs.
“We are looking for information on all those who accompanied them in this commitment to defend France, in particular Captain André Audibert, who was a teacher in Champnétery at the time of his commitment in September 1944,” supports the president of the association.
To contact Martine Tandeau de Marsac: 06.21.32.98.63.
