WWII: In the footsteps of the African Resistance fighters who fell in the Battle of Vercors

Thousands of German soldiers moved in on southeastern France's Vercors Plateau in July 1944 in a bid to crush a regional uprising led by a rural French Resistance group. Over 100 Resistance fighters died in the bloody battles on the mountainside. Many of them were of African origin but who they were and why they decided to join the French Resistance has only recently begun to come to light.

When France on Tuesday inaugurated the commemorations for the 80^th anniversary of the French liberation, President Emmanuel Macron’s very first visit went to the tiny pre-Alps village of Vassieux-en-Vercors, in the Vercors Massif.

The choice of location was no coincidence.

During World War II, the village and its surroundings served as a refuge for a French Resistance group known as the Vercors Maquis. The group used the mountainous terrain to train its fighters and organise the wider French Resistance against the Nazis. Shortly after the Allied forces landed in Normandy in June, 1944, Vercors then became the first French region to claim its independence from German and Vichy rule, sparking the Vercors Uprising.

Croibier Muscat said that in Ben Ahmed’s file, “there is a mention of ‘six years in the army”.

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