Carrier, Jean-Claude

Date of birth:: January 30th, 1897 (Mieussy, France)
Date of death:: January 28th, 1944 (Saint-Jeoire-en-Faucigny, France)
Nationality:: French

Biography

Called up in the Army in 1915, he was transferred to the 1st Mountain Artillery Regiment (1st RAM) in Grenoble. Wounded in 1917, he was demobilized in September 1919 with a citation and the rank of brigadier.

After his marriage to Léonie Presset in 1920, he moved to Paris, became an SFIO activist and, after a ten-year stay in the capital, returned home, to Ville-en-Sallaz, where he bought a property that he transforms into a modern cabinetmaking workshop.

Jean-Claude Carrier also continued his union and political activities in Haute-Savoie and joined the League of Human Rights in 1933.

Mobilized in 1939 in Grenoble, he was assigned to control the metallurgy factories of Haute-Savoie.

From June 1940, he refused defeat and sought the means to oppose the armistice.

He brought together friends and, through one of them, Jean Rey-Millet, from its creation in September 1940, came into contact with the movement "The Last Column", founded by Edouard Corniglion-Molinier and Emmanuel d'Astier de la Vigerie.

Naturally, he adheres to the "Liberation" movement that Emmanuel d'Astier founded at the beginning of 1941 to replace "The Last Column" decimated by the arrests. Jean-Claude Carrier is the pioneer of "Liberation" and the organization of the Resistance in Haute-Savoie.

Joined by friends including Henri Plantaz, he distributed underground newspapers and set up regional intelligence networks. In March 1942, wanted by the Vichy police, he went into hiding, sacrificing all family life, when his wife had just given birth to their third son.

In the summer of 1942 he created the Mole camp, the region's first resistance camp.

At the beginning of January 1943, following the dissolution of the Armistice army after the invasion of the southern zone and the occupation of Haute-Savoie by Italian troops, Jean-Claude Carrier joined the Army with his men. Secret (AS); he was entrusted with the command of armed action because of his perfect knowledge of the terrain and his influence over his troops. From then on, he directed the armed action in Faucigny and Haut-Chablais; he creates and locally directs the "Maquis Police" which guarantees the integrity of the resistance.

In 1943, a price was put on his head, he was therefore constantly obliged to change his domicile, physiognomy and identity and took the name of Jean Cheminal.

In June 1943 he led an ambush in Ville-en-Sallaz which put to flight an Italian detachment that had come to arrest a resistance member from the Verteau maquis. From then on, he increased his help while the paramilitary forces of the Secret Army (AS) of the three cantons of the Giffre valley were placed under his command.

Identified at the London BCRA under the names of "Burin" and "Rabot", he met on several occasions in the autumn of 1943 Jean Rosenthal, alias Cantinier, sent on mission from London and charged with the British colonel Richard Heslop (alias "Xavier ") of the Special Operation Executive (SOE) to assess the situation of the maquis of Haute-Savoie.

On January 28, 1944, following a denunciation, the Germans surrounded the hamlet of Pouilly-sur-Saint-Jeoire where Carrier and his family lived. An AS car with three guerrillas leaves the village and is ambushed. Injured, the occupants of the vehicle try to escape. One of them, Robert Desbiolles, manages to reach the house of Jean-Claude Carrier which is quickly surrounded; while the Germans kill the men of the village, the latter seizes his karabiner and gains the upper floors from where he shoots the attackers; his children are pushed out of the house while the young Desbiolles is shot on his bed by an agent of the S.D.

The Germans, failing to stop the shots which decimated them, set the house on fire; the wife of Jean-Claude Carrier who has joined her husband, throws herself into the void with her last-born, both are unharmed and manage to escape thanks to the intervention of a German officer. But, after having shot down eleven enemies, including an officer, Jean-Claude Carrier was burnt alive.