Michel Torrent (code name Milor René Jules) fled Saint Malo under German occupation and found refuge for himself and his family with his grandparents in Perpignan.

He joined local resistance group “Gallia” where he became an ‘agent de renseignement’ and ‘passeur’, helping escapees over the Pyrenees. Betrayed, he was picked up by the Gestapo in 1944 at his workplace in the ‘Dames de France‘, tortured and imprisoned in the Citadelle in Perpignan, and deported to Buchenwald and Flossenburg where he died.

His daughter, Josette Forgues-Torrent, possibly the youngest member of the Maquis in France at just 12 years old, helped her Dad in the Resistance by carrying messages between members of the group and accompanying him to Las Illas where he guided the long climb over the border.

After his betrayal and arrest, she rushed home from school, burnt all incriminating evidence, and warned other members of the group, allowing them to flee.

After the war, she wrote “Je ne regrette rien, au contraire, je suis fière d’avoir été du “bon côté”…….. Toutefois, il restera en moi une plaie qui jamais ne se cicatrisera. J’ai perdu mon père, mon complice, mon guide. Il avait 36 ans et moi 14”.

fière – proud
Toutefois – however
une plaie – a wound
qui jamais ne se cicatrisera – which will never heal