At 92, Jean Pontoire is still very valiant. Sitting on the bench facing his grand piano, he plays Chopin with a certain ease. His wife looks at him with affectionate eyes.
“Jean is starting to forget some things a bit,” she says, with a little concern, but not the music. He doesn’t answer and seems to prefer to continue the conversation, this time sitting on the sofa.
A synthesis and memories
In his hands, the book he wrote and published in 2014: The Second World War in Eure-et-Loir and beyond. For him, it is “a synthesis” of all the documents published on this conflict locally, accompanied by his own memories and the testimony of twelve people linked to the events they recount.
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A writing which follows on from a “first work on the old Beauceron dialects”. His wife adds: “Jean was involved in the history of WWII. He collected a lot of memories. He wanted to leave a testimony. His father was a schoolteacher in Maintenon. “
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A few days after the start of the war, “my father put back his lieutenant’s uniform in the artillery,” recalls Jean Pontoire. He had already been mobilized at the end of the First World War. He worked in the French army on the German border before returning to Maintenon where he was arrested in 1944 by the Germans and imprisoned rue des Lisses in Chartres.Jean Pontoire, with his father and sister.
“His mother, a teacher, is one of those people who worked in the shadows, without being known great resistance fighters, but who acted in secret in the face of the occupier.” Their little story built the big story, ”his wife further points out.
“Every week, I would cycle to see my imprisoned father to bring him food and gingerbread. All the dishes were cut into pieces by the guards to check that there were no weapons or messages from outside. In fact, my mother hid little words in a macaroni that she dipped at the end of the cake. It was still happening. “
Jean Pontoire
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In August 1944, after the arrival of the allies, Jean Pontoire’s father was released from Chartres prison and mobilized by the Americans as a translator.
Jean Pontoire turns a few pages of his book. “Ah yes, there were also friends. Players from the Maintenon football team that my father coached. They were shot after acts of resistance. There is also Maurice Glédel, “a friend, older than me. He was a teacher like my father. He had been recruited as an informant for the allies, ”recalls Jean Pontoire.
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“He had crisscrossed the entire department in search of German munitions storage places, in order to pass this information on to the allies. He also gathered a lot of military intelligence. I remember that one day he asked me to go and see if the Maintenon railway bridge, destroyed by air raids, had started to be repaired. He was denounced by a maid who was pregnant with a German soldier. He was tortured and died unrecognizable from his injuries. “
Jean Pontoire’s father and mother, as well as their daughter, during the liberation of Maintenon.
Francois Feuilleux
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