He had taken part in one of the most renowned acts of resistance of the Second World War. President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute on Saturday to “the bravery” of the resistant Edmond Maudière who fought in the Glières maquis, in the Alps, during the Second World War, and died on Tuesday at the age of 96.
Born in 1926 in the Marne, Edmond Maudière took part in the defense of this symbolic high place of the Resistance, despite a recent questioning of the scale of the battle which was played out there.
“He was one of the ultimate figures of the Glières epic”, greeted the Head of State, paying homage, in a press release published by the Elysée, to the “memory of these dark silhouettes on a white snow and under a tricolor flag.
124 killed or shot during the fighting
Succeeding in exfiltrating, Edmond Maudière had returned to the Marne, before becoming a liaison officer in the 5th American army of the famous General George Patton. After the war, he became an oenologist, a career that took him to the management of Moët & Chandon in the United States and Australia.
On March 31, 2019, Emmanuel Macron commemorated, with former President Nicolas Sarkozy, the 75th anniversary of the fighting on the Glières plateau.
From January to the end of March 1944, 465 guerrillas had gathered there to receive parachute drops of weapons from the allies. Attacked by the German army and the Vichy militia on March 26, 124 of them were killed in combat or shot, nine disappeared and 16 died in deportation.