Henri Fertet
A 16-year-old student at Lycée Victor Hugo in Besançon, Henri Fertet was arrested by the Germans on 3 July 1943 and sentenced to death for resistance activities by the Feldkommandantur 560 military court. He was executed on 26 September 1943.
Henri Fertet was born on 27 October 1926 in Seloncourt, Doubs, into a family of schoolteachers.
Once he had completed primary school, he left his home town in 1937 to attend Lycée Victor Hugo in Besançon. He was a gifted, hard-working student who was interested in archaeology and history. Living under the yoke of the Nazis since the armistice of June 1940, Fertet was inspired by the example of the subjects of his studies and joined the group led by Marcel Simon, secretary of the Catholic Rural Youth movement in Larnod, in the summer of 1942.
In February 1943, the Simon group joined the Franc-Tireurs et Partisans, calling itself the Groupe-Franc “Guy Mocquet”. It carried out underground actions.
Fertet (registered as Émile - 702) led three operations:
- an attack on the guardhouse at Fort de Montfaucon on 16 April 1943 to seize an explosives magazine, killing a German sentry;
- the destruction of a high-voltage pylon at Châteaufarine, near Besançon, on 7 May; and
- an attack on the German customs commissioner, Rothe, on the Besançon-Quingey road on 12 June 1943, to steal his weapon, his uniform and the papers he was carrying.
Fertet shot the commissioner, mortally wounding him, but was unable to steal the documents as a motorcycle pulled up. The members of the group were actively sought and were successively arrested starting in June 1943.
Fertet was arrested by the German forces on 3 July 1943: it was three in the morning and the young man was sleeping at his parents’ home at the Besançon-Velotte school. The youngest of the accused at just 16 years of age, he was sent to La Butte prison in Besançon. He appeared before the Feldkommandantur 560 military court and was sentenced to death on 18 September 1943. After 87 days of captivity and torture, this “soulmate” of Guy Mocquet was executed on 26 September 1943 in the Besançon citadel.
Like Mocquet, he sent his parents one last letter:
“My dear Parents,
My letter is going to cause you great suffering, but I have seen your tremendous courage and I am sure that you will continue to be courageous, if only out of love for me.
You cannot know how much I have mentally suffered in my cell, how I have suffered from not seeing you, from only feeling your tender kindness from a distance. For these 87 days in my cell, I have missed your love more than your packages, and I have often asked for your forgiveness for the suffering I have caused you, all the suffering I have caused you. Have no doubt as to how much I love you today because, before, I loved you more out of routine, but now I understand everything you have done for me and I think I have achieved true filial love, real filial love. Maybe a comrade will talk to you about me, about the love I told him about. I hope he will fulfil this sacred mission.
Please thank everyone who has been thinking about me, especially our closest friends and relatives; tell them how confident I am in eternal France. Give a kiss to my grandparents, my uncles, aunts and cousins, Henriette. Shake Mr Duvernet’s hand for me; say hello to all. Tell our priest that I have been thinking of him and his family in particular. I would like to thank Monseigneur for the great honour he gave me, I hope I have been worthy of it. As I fall, I also send my regards to my schoolmates. Talking of whom, Hennemann owes me a packet of cigarettes, Jacquin my book on prehistoric man. Please return “The Count of Monte Cristo” to Émourgeon, 3 Chemin Français, behind the station. Give Maurice André, of La Maltournée, the 40 grams of tobacco I owe him.
I leave my little library to Pierre, my schoolbooks to my dear daddy, my collections by my dear mummy, but she should be careful with the prehistoric hatchet and the Gaulish sword sheath.
I am dying for my motherland. I want a free France and a happy French people. Not a proud France, the leading nation in the world, but a working France, hard-working and honest.
May the French people be happy, that is what counts most. In life, you have to know how to enjoy your happiness.
As for me, do not worry. I will keep my courage and my good humour to the end, and I will sing “Sambre et Meuse” because you, my dear mummy, taught it to me.
Be strict and tender with Pierre. Check his work and make him work hard. Do not accept any slacking. He must be worthy of me. Of three children, he is the only one left. He must succeed.
Papa, please pray. Think that, if I die, it is for my own good. What more honourable death could there be? I die gladly for my motherland. The four of us will see each other again, soon, in Heaven. What is a hundred years?
Mummy, remember:
“And these avengers will have new defenders who, after their death, will have successors.”
Farewell, death is calling me. I do not want to be blindfolded or bound. I send my love to you all. Still, it is hard to die.
Love to you. Long live France!
Sentenced to death at age 16
H. Fertet
Forgive the spelling mistakes, no time to reread.
From: Henri Fertet, in Heaven, with God.”
