La Grande Moucherolle
by Kadomatsu
Black Cat society member
9 years ago
The Grande Moucherolle is the second highest summit of the Vercors massif with its 2 284m of altitude. It overlooks the Lans valley which is one of the two valley of the region and which were highly strategic during WWII, during the battle of Jully 1944 when the Wehrmacht fought the French resistance and comitted one of the few village slaughters comitted in France between the 21st Jully and the 15th August 1944 in the village of Vassieux-en-Vercors. There, Fallschrimjägers (paratroopers), Osttentrupers (Volunteers from sovietic countries) and some French volunteers engaged in the Wehrmarcht arrived by gliders and by airdrops and attacked the civilian village with flamethrowers and comitted horrible crimes to the civilians who hadn't the luck of dying in the attack or to flee.
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And as some village histories, there was in the village were a part of my familly lived a family whose one of the son, in spite of being from a neighbourhood massif, was engaged in the Vercors Resistance and has been executed during the attack on Chapelle-en-Vercors on Jully 25th 1944. There, the Wehrmacht came by the road to the village surrounded it, gathered all the population in the main place and they selected 16 young men and killed them in a farm as they set fire to the village, the remains were discovered days after and his mother only was able to identificate him thanks to his socks, he was only 18 years old. But that kind of arbitrary executions weren't uncommon in France, it was a mean for the Wehrmacht to put a pressure on the Resistance fighters by taking hostages and to kill them, though it most ended by an execution than by a surrounding of the Resistance fighters.
And today, the remembrance of the war is still very present and a lot of villages quarrels are due to this time, generally it opposed the famillies of pro-Resistance against famillies of collaborators though the children have done nothing and probably disapprove the act comitted by their parents or grand parents.