Memorial Maquis de bagatelle - Marchin

The Monument aux morts du Maquis de Bagatelle is a monument to fallen soldiers and resistance fighters at Flouer Fond d'Hôtû in the Belgian municipality of Marchin, near Pailhe.

The maquis takes its name from the castle Château de Bagatelle , which is located 500 meters northwest in the valley of the Vyle, and in the vicinity of which the maquisards met and hid to carry out their actions.

One of their main activities was to mark a field on the flat fields on the heights between Tharoul and Pailhe, onto which the Allies parachuted weapons and ammunition at night. In one such action on the night of September 6 to 7, 1944, thirteen resistance fighters were killed fighting the Wehrmacht.

The monument consists of two parts. On the field path leading up past the castle, there is a small chapel on the right side of the path, upside down at the exit of the forest, on the sides are the names of fallen and murdered soldiers and members of the Maquis. About two hundred yards west of that in the woods is a spot where there are three crosses with the names of the maquisards who fell on that spot on September 7, 1944.

On the night of 6/7 June 1944 , at around 1 am, as the Flying Fortresses were returning to England from their bombing missions in Germany, a softly purring aircraft appeared west of the plain. The cold of the night and the continuous rain numbed the fingers of the team of 4 signalers in charge of using their flares to mark the parachute drop zone , to indicate the direction of the wind and to prepare themselves with security to identify the aircraft. The aircraft continued to fly east, then turned off the wing and returned to a lower altitude in line with the lights. A green light, then three white lights... and the rustle of parachutes in the sky heralds the arrival of the heavy containers loaded with weapons and ammunition . Fourteen containers are picked up from the ground by the reception team (24 men) and taken to the headquarters in the middle of the large grove. Around 3:45 another plane came from the north and accidentally dropped its containers in the middle of the forest (in the direction of Saint Fontaine), some of which were found ripped open on the road between Pailhe and Tahier. At around 4:00 am, long bursts of automatic weapons swept across the plain. The Germans attacked from the south and west, hiding at the edge of the forest. They targeted the 24 men responsible for the reception and the 4 signalmen and tried to surround them so that the maquisards could move north. Their leader decided to crawl through the SS lines to escape across the plain. This worked, with casualties (including the driver of the truck with the containers). In the fighting that followed that night (harassment designed to delay the German retreat) , the maquisards lost a further 12 men but took more than 35 prisoners, including a large number of SS men.
"La Baleine" was the code name for the parachutist drop zone in the municipality of Vyle-Tharoul, in the triangle formed by the municipalities of Modave-Pailhe and Vyle-Tharoul. A team of signallers beaconed the plain day and night for Allied aircraft so that containers filled with weapons and ammunition could be dropped. A personal message broadcast on the BBC in London warned shelters of the parachute drops for the night ahead.

Willem Vandenameele