Charles Delestraint

Delestraint retired in 1939 but was recalled to service after the outbreak of World War II.

During the Battle of France, on 3 June 1940, he led the armoured counterattack against Germans in Abbeville.

After the surrender of France on 25 June, he retired to Bourg-en-Bresse where Henri Frenay recruited him into the French Resistance.

He clandestinely visited Charles de Gaulle in London and agreed to lead the Armée Secrète.

He was taken as special prisoner (Nacht und Nebel) to Natzweiler-Struthof and then to the Dachau concentration camp, where he was executed on 19 April, only a few days before the camp was liberated and the war ended.