COMMEMORATION OF 8 JUNE
On the site of today’s Gendarmerie School once stood an old bourgeois house dating from the 17th century.
On the evening of 8 June, SS soldiers from the Das Reich division burst into the property where two families lived: the Presset family on the ground floor and the Bordes family on the first floor. Gunfire broke out. Two people lost their lives: Joseph Presset, the 15-year-old son, and Mr. Presset’s son-in-law, Louis Chauzeix.
In addition, Marcel Chassaing, the son of a farmer, who had been wounded the previous day on the road from Bachellerie to Blaye and taken to the hospital in Tulle, died on 8 June.
To this dreadful toll must be added the death, under the most horrific circumstances, of Madame Catte, née Marcelle Carré, who, mortally wounded, agonized throughout the night in the arms of her daughter Anne Marie, only four and a half years old, as attested by the account accompanying photo 1, “My Mother’s Blood.”
This tragedy therefore took place on the site of the present-day gendarmerie barracks, known as La Bachellerie. In tribute to the victims, the various authorities agreed that the memorial stele should rightfully be installed within the grounds of the Gendarmerie School. The photographs below capture this moving ceremony.
