Concarneau Cemetery
The communal cemetery at Concarneau in Finistère is home to 3 airmen's graves.
★ Sergeant DENHAM, MAURICE THORPE Pilot, 31 years old Royal New Zealand Air Force. Died December 17, 1942.
★ Sergeant Leslie Norman Follows, Pilot with the 50 Squadron, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, died March 8, 1942.
★ Flight Sergeant Lloyd Harvey Peterson, Machine Gunner with the 50 Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force, died February 13, 1943 at age 22.
Contributed and photographed by Philippe Boudot.
★ Sergeant Leslie Norman Follows, Pilot with the 50 Squadron, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, died March 8, 1942.
★ Flight Sergeant Lloyd Harvey Peterson, Machine Gunner with the 50 Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force, died February 13, 1943 at age 22.
Contributed and photographed by Philippe Boudot.
☨ Pierre Gueguin 1896-1941
Communistand trade unionist, he broke with the CP when the German-Soviet Pact was signed. A mathematics teacher in Concarneau, he was mayor and general councillor. On February 10, 1940, he was stripped of his mandates (deemed a "redoubtable element"), then dismissed from the Education Nationale in October 1940. His anti-Hitler speeches and clandestine meetings made him an early Resistance fighter. Arrested on July 2, 1941, he was interned at the Choisel camp in Châteaubriant, in barrack 19 with his friend Marc Bourhis. He was selected with 47 other internees to be shot in reprisal for the assassination of Karl Hotz (head of occupation troops in the Loire) by resistance fighters in Nantes a few days earlier.
At the announcement of his death, 1000 concarnois gathered at the Guéguin family grave, braving the mitrailleuses posted at the cemetery entrance and the ban of the Kommandantur de Quimper. In 1945, his remains were repatriated and buried in the Concarneau cemetery. It adjoins that of his friend Marc Bourhis, who also died at Châteaubriant.
An avenue and the Concarneau high school bear his name.
Contribution, editing and photo credit Isabelle Christien
☨ Marc Bourhis1907-1941
Communistand trade unionist, he broke with the CP when the German-Soviet Pact was signed. A mathematics teacher in Concarneau, he was mayor and general councillor. On February 10, 1940, he was stripped of his mandates (deemed a "redoubtable element"), then dismissed from the Education Nationale in October 1940. His anti-Hitler speeches and clandestine meetings made him an early Resistance fighter. Arrested on July 2, 1941, he was interned at the Choisel camp in Châteaubriant, in barrack 19 with his friend Marc Bourhis. He was selected with 47 other internees to be shot in reprisal for the assassination of Karl Hotz (head of occupation troops in the Loire) by resistance fighters in Nantes a few days earlier.
At the announcement of his death, 1000 concarnois gathered at the Guéguin family grave, braving the mitrailleuses posted at the cemetery entrance and the ban of the Kommandantur de Quimper. In 1945, his remains were repatriated and buried in the Concarneau cemetery. It adjoins that of his friend Marc Bourhis, who also died at Châteaubriant.
An avenue and the Concarneau high school bear his name.
Contribution, editing and photo credit Isabelle Christien
☨ Marc Bourhis1907-1941
Instituteur à Trégunc, militant communiste puis socialiste, syndicaliste, animateur de l'amicale laïque, he was a close friend of Pierre Guéguin. They organized a meeting in a café on the Pointe de Trévignon on June 23, 1941. Following a denunciation, he is arrested a few days later, on July 2, 1941.He is interned with Guéguin at Châteaubriand, in barrack 19.
He could have escaped numerous times with the complicity of a judge, but refused for fear of reprisals against his wife and son and in solidarity with his friend Pierre Guéguin. He is on the list of future executions in reprisal for the murder of Karl Hotz in Nantes.
Trucked to the carrière de la Sablière by the SS, the hostages sing the Marseillaiseand l'Internationale. All refuse to be blindfolded and their hands tied.
Shot on October 22, 1941, he was buried in Concarneau in 1945, his grave next to that of his friend Guéguin.
The Trégunc school bears his name.
Contribution, editing and photo credit Isabelle Christien
