The funeral in June 1941 of the French soldiers killed by the German occupier during the invasion on 16 17 and 18 May 1940

 The French soldiers killed were summarily buried there.

A year after the events, formalities are undertaken by the municipality to give them a decent burial place in the cemetery.

They succeed, with the agreement of the German authorities.

In June 1941, the bodies were exhumed: a bad memory for Henri PIRLET, the gravedigger of the commune.

Orphans then remember cleaning helmets, belts...

The coffins are covered with the tricolour flag, a rest is arranged in the cloister, then in the abbey church.

Abbé MILLOT * *, parish priest of Saint-Michel, in charge of ceremonies will dedicate the Sunday Office to these dead.

The procession to the cemetery will take place on Monday early in the morning under the supervision of a German detachment.

The coffins are worn by veterans from 1914-1918 and fighters from 1940 who escaped captivity.

The burial in the Military Square of the cemetery will take place without any special ceremony, in all discretion, desired by the occupants.

* * In June 1944, for acts of resistanceAbbé MILLOT * *, was arrested by the GESTAPO is deported to DACHAU, from which he returned very severely handicapped.

Sunday at 9 o'clock 30 the body of these soldiers will be lifted.

They will be transported to church by veterans.

All volunteers would like to make themselves known at Mr. Camille PLY, Mr. Émile Delbecq or Mr. Quégniaux.

A solemn mass will be celebrated in the church immediately after the arrival of the bodies.

The coffins will remain in the church all day on Sunday.

Monday morning, departure for the cemetery at 7 o'clock.

Do I need, My Brothers, to invite you to come many to the funeral of these heroes.

Suffice it to remind you that these French, our comrades, gave their lives to defend our little homeland.

It is therefore a duty for each family to come to their coffin to pay tribute of gratitude to which they are entitled.

And then we Christians will pray for them.

Funeral prayer delivered on Sunday, June 22, 1941, by Abbé Paul MILLOT, parish priest of Saint-Michel, at the religious ceremony held in the abbey church before the provisional burial in the military square of the cemetery of Saint-Michel (Aisne).

Mr. Mayor and Gentlemen of the Municipality,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Here we are all gathered, citizens of Saint - Michel, to pay the 21 French soldiers who fell at the Champ d'Honneur in May 1940 a well-deserved tribute of gratitude and assignment to pray for them and also listen to the voice that rises to us from their coffin.

I wonder if the cloisters of our old abbey, I wonder if the centuries-old vaults of our ancient abbey, witnesses of so many events over the centuries have seen such a contest of people come to honor its heroes.

In May 1940, while most of you, frightened by the bombings and by the apprehension of the worst were fleeing in front of the invader, a handful of men remained faithful to the orders received: to hold at all costs to stop the enemy advance such was their order.

And they simply stayed at their combat post: in the blockhouses not yet completed, riveted to their machine gun, in their tanks or stationed at the edge of the forest.

21 of these heroes fell in front of the enemy, their limbs broken, a bullet in the chest, the skull broken by a gust of machine gun, the belly opened by shrapnel.

They were not all strangers to you.

Although coming from the western and southwestern regions, Brest, Vannes, Angers, Angoulême, Bordeaux, Toulouse.

You knew many of them and your heart bleed upon learning of the death of these little soldiers, scattered in the territory of your commune, many were temporarily buried by pious hands: veterans who have been able to maintain the spirit of true camaraderie with their dedicated cadets, women and girls who, to bring happiness to their prisoner husband or fiancé, have come to bloom these temporary graves.

But that was not enough for our recognition.

It was necessary that the entire population of Saint-Michel could be officially associated, in a grandiose way, with this tribute.

That is why you are all here, ladies and gentlemen, your leaders at your head.

You too are the Veterans of the other war, with the coffins of your cadets, you see all your suffering, all your miseries of the terrible four years.

You are here the mutilated of this last war.

You too have been lying on the land of France, you too have watered it with your blood.

God allowed you to come back to us to be living witnesses and to affirm that in the French army there were still soldiers, real ones.

You are there, the 200 prisoners of Saint-Michel. We have not forgotten you and we want to associate you with us on this day of gratitude.

You are here above all our dead of Saint-Michel mourned by your wives, by your parents and by your children.

You too have done your duty.

We are proud of you, as we are of those who lie on the slabs of this church.

To you and to them we shout our deepest and most emotional thanks.

But it seems to me, My Brothers, that it would really be too little to give to our dead to come this morning crying on their coffins and praying once in passing.

This France that we loved up to the total gift of ourselves.

Love it too.

Obey your leaders, the one in particular who, after a past of incomparable glory and military honor, at more than 80 years, wanted to stop the immense killing and keep the sons to their mother.

Love him, this human leader.

Follow this loyal leader.

Obey him because he is worthy of your trust.

We will do better, we will remember that all these men had an ideal, that most wore on them a rosary, a medal, a godly image, that the best witness of gratitude to them is to pray often that God grant them, if not already done the reward of heaven.

We also listen to what they tell us. For, ladies and gentlemen, if in their graves we have found only corpses very sadly damaged by the elements, we know that their soul lives, we know that they see us, hear us. let them speak to us.

Let us listen to their voices this morning. What do they tell us?

It is a very austere language that they hold us, there are no vain artifices in their words.

It is the raw truth that they throw at us.

For they see the truth better than we do.

French, our brothers, they tell us, we gave our lives so that you would live better than before the war.

The supreme sacrifice we have willingly made so that you understand that you must reform and above all remain united with one another.

We are all sons of the same mother: France.

But it would be vain, add our dead, to make profession to follow our great marshal, to shout lively Pétain and to display his portrait if you do not want to follow his liberating directives.

Comrades, they shout, you were deceived before the war.

The people of France had been promised a magnificent prosperity.

You have been given war and defeat.

To us, we were given... coffins.

Bad shepherds have excited the people of France.

You were led on a path that led neither to work, nor to honor, nor to respect for the rights of others.

Fellow workers, beware if, one day, you do not want to fall back into the same disastrous wanderings, quickly shake the yoke of these evil shepherds.

As Pétain wants: be workers as are already so many of you, workers who love "the beautiful" work. "

Be courageous, organized workers, encouraging each other to learn more about your duties to better fulfill them and enforce your rights.

Our dead, they also address you, bosses,

they ask you to think carefully about this truth that being given, your intelligence, your studies, your habit of leading men, you must always be models of loyalty and justice for them.

They beg you to pay very close attention at the moment to the serious problem of wages, they tell you that you have an overriding duty to respect the contracts signed on both sides.

That you should consider your worker not as a mere number in your factory but as a man who must make his wife and children live and who needs, as Leo XIII said 50 years ago, a family and vital wage.

Our dead cry out to you this morning: beware, if you refuse to listen to our voice, you might be before it is long before there are other pitfalls on the conscience that would cry vengeance against you.

But because you are already understanding and righteous with your workers we can ask you to try to achieve with your workers the most frank and complete collaboration.