Marcel Pinte
Marcel Pinte was a member of the French Resistance opposing the Nazi occupation of France during World War II. He was notable for his youth, dying at age six, and is regarded as France's youngest resistance hero.
Life
Pinte was born in Valenciennes in April 1938, the youngest of five children. His father, Eugene Pinte, was a local resistance leader who used his farmhouse in Aixe-sur-Vienne to receive coded messages from London and coordinate parachute drops in a field nearby.From a young age Marcel acted as a courier for local resistance fighters. He was given the nickname "Quinquin" after a children's song.
He was killed, aged six, on 19 August 1944 when he was hit by several bullets from an unintentional discharge by a Sten gun shortly after a large group of resistance fighters had landed by parachute.
Pinte was buried by local resistance fighters on 21 August shortly before the liberation of Limoges, in which his father participated. According to a relative, Marc Pinte, the next supply drop, a few days after Marcel's death, used black parachutes: "The British knew that the little Marcel played a real role. This parachute was the calling card sent to the family".