“I wouldn't have given up! I didn't have the right.” Marcelle Mercier-Fages had the name of her uncle Samuel Jeanjean, who died for France, inscribed on the war memorial in Nîmes

Marcelle Mercier-Fages et son mari Alain Mercier. – Pierre Meuriot

À l’occasion de recherches généalogiques, Marcelle Mercier-Fages a découvert l’existence d’un oncle mort pour la France dont le nom n’était gravé sur aucun monument aux morts.

On November 11, at the end of the ceremonies commemorating the Armistice, Marcelle Mercier-Fages slipped between the officials and went down the steps of the Nîmes war memorial to see the name engraved two weeks earlier, that of Samuel Jeanjean. For her, it was the culmination of more than two years of commitment to the service of memory. “It was a duty, for me and for my descendants.”

Several years ago, Marcelle Mercier-Fages began genealogical research, she found traces of her family in the Cévennes up to the 17th century, and followed the trail of her Reunion family all the way to India. But a mystery was more recent… She also discovered that her uncle Samuel Jeanjean, born in 1898, was awarded the Legion of Honor for his feat of arms during the First World War, from which he returned gassed, and was declared dead for France, after being killed by the Germans in 1944.

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“A story I didn't know”

Little by little, she manages to piece together this tragic end. “My aunt always told me that he had been killed by the Germans, but never went into detail. I found myself faced with a story that I didn't know. I did everything I could to find his file”, she explains. “It was a big enigma but genealogists are persistent”, smiles her husband, Alain Mercier.

The railway worker left for the Cévennes after the bombing of Nîmes. On August 3, 1944, he was stopped for a check by the FFI near Florac. “As he was presenting his personal papers, […] a German column, coming from Mende, rushed out”, notes the information sheet from the General Secretariat of Veterans. The Nazis opened fire. “Only Jeanjean was […] seriously injured by several bullets”. In his death certificate, Dr. Rouvière states: “multiple abdominal perforations by German machine gun bullets”.

Samuel Jeanjean and his wife Julia Fages.

“Why didn't anyone tell me about it?”, wonders Marcelle Mercier-Fages, who knew nothing about this story and wants to know on which war memorial her name was engraved. “I looked for his name in Les Plantiers, where he was born, it wasn't there. I turned to Nîmes, where he lived and where he was buried, it wasn't there either.” She got in touch with several other genealogy enthusiasts. No trace… She then contacted the Order of the Legion of Honor and launched a new fight to have this story engraved in stone.

After a refusal from Gatuzières, near Florac, she turned to Nîmes. Through Pascal Coget, from the National Office of Veterans, she got in touch with Monique Boissière, municipal councilor delegated to the Armed Forces and the combatant world. “You have to do some research with the prefecture, put together a file, in particular with the birth certificate extract indicating death for France. Then the town hall takes charge. For the elderly, it is very rare. On the other hand, we recently registered the names of two people who died for France in foreign operations in Mali”, explains the elected official, for whom it is important that families continue to keep this memory alive. “That's very good, it means that we don't forget them.”

In October, the name Samuel Jeanjean joined the thousands of people from Nîmes who died for France. “I'm proud that his name is finally on a monument. I would never have given up. I had no right to leave him in the wild, after what he had been through.”