France pays tribute to six-year-old resistance hero Marcel Pinte
France has paid tribute to a six-year-old boy regarded as its youngest resistance hero, as part of the nationwide Armistice Day ceremonies in memory of those who died in the first and second world wars.
In a special ceremony, the name of Marcel Pinte was inscribed on the war memorial of Aixe-sur-Vienne, just west of the central city of Limoges. Marcel, known as Quinquin after a children’s song, acted as a courier for resistance fighters who opposed the Nazi occupation during the second world war, slipping past enemy patrols and carrying messages under his shirt. His father, Eugene Pinte, was a local chief of the “army of the shadows” led from London by Charles de Gaulle, who set up an operations centre at a farm outside Aixe-sur… Continue Reading (3 minute read)
>Marcel died, aged just six, on 19 August 1944, when a large deployment of resistance fighters arrived by parachute ahead of an expected battle around Aixe as allied forces began to liberate France.
>They were heavily armed and Marcel was hit by several bullets when a Sten submachine gun went off accidentally.
Damn.
I’m old. The principal of our high school was a little boy in the French Resistance during the war. Once every four years at our school he’d have an assembly where he told his story. Apparently he had this bizarre knack for smelling the soap the Nazi soldiers used. If the wind was right he could smell them miles away. So some group of the Resistance took him everywhere as an early warning system. There was more but that’s all I remember. It was probably the coolest assembly in high school.
And my 5 year old can run 20 meters in rain boots without tripping.
For perspective:
“Child soldiers in the American Civil War – Wikipedia” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_soldiers_in_the_American_Civil_War
That is terrible.
I’m pretty sure his name was Gavroche… Jokes aside, that is cool and sad: a tiny hero who shouldn’t have had to be.
See people say shonen protagonists being kids is unrealistic but apparently they’re too old if anything.
Poor kid.
Yeah, we had those in Poland during WWII. Using children like that is debatable though.
There are thousands of child soldiers all around the globe, stolen from the families, forced to kill, used as sex slaves, and there are charities that bring specialist help to them, to help them recover if they are lucky enough to be rescued.
https://www.hrw.org/topic/childrens-rights/child-soldiers
https://theirworld.org/explainers/child-soldiers
https://www.warchild.org.uk/what-we-do/protection/risks-for-child-soldiers-are-huge-and-the-effects-can-last-a-lifetime
https://www.savethechildren.org/us/charity-stories/child-soldiers
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/jul/24/south-sudan-child-soldiers
https://www.unicef.org/protection/children-recruited-by-armed-forces
When I first looked at the pic I was like if that dudes 6 years old I’m a queen (assumed this was just a pic of another resistance fighter) then I saw the tiny figure next to him and my heart dropped that poor little brave boy.
And little people know
When little people fight
We may look easy pickings
But we’ve got some bite
So never kick a dog
Because he’s just a pup
We’ll fight like twenty armies
And we won’t give up
So you’d better run for cover
When the pup grows up!
What a horrible tragedy. A 6 year old doesn’t die for his or her country, they die because adults used them and cost their lives. I have a really hard time with stories presented this way as if there’s something positive or admirable about pressing children into service as warriors.
J’ai mauvais charactère,
C’est la faute a Voltaire.
Le nez dans le ruisseau,
C’est la faute à Rousseau.
The job was a lot more dangerous than one would presume. Being a little white boy afforded him no protection from the a Nazis whatsoever. They were more than willing to execute French children and did so many times.