Lieutenant Edgard Dusseault, Colonel Henry's son-in-law, killed in action with the 24e RTS south of Amiens in 1940.
In April 1940, this colonial regiment departed for Alsace, to the Maginot Line. It was quickly transferred south of Amiens to slow the German advance. From late May onwards, the fighting was heroic against the German troops. The fate of captured or wounded Senegalese Tirailleurs was dramatically swift.
France called upon colonial troops and the Senegalese Tirailleurs between the two wars, particularly to compensate for the demographic deficit. They came from West and Sub-Saharan Africa. Some of them rose to become non-commissioned officers. Their fighting spirit was exemplary. (Photograph from the memorial centre, Gallieni Barracks in Perpignan).
In early 1940, he passed through Maron (near Chateauroux) for his daughter's christening. It was one of the rare occasions he was able to spend time with his child. In the background, Colonel Adrien Henry, deeply attached to his son-in-law and proud of him.
It was in the Rouvrel area, south of Amiens, that he fought his last battle. At harvest time, a farmer discovered his body, flanked by two loyal Tirailleurs.
His name appears on the Maron war memorial. On his grave there is also another soldier who died for France, Prosper Dusseault, killed on 19 October 1915 with the 290e RI in Artois.
Easter 1944: Colonel Adrien Henry, on the eve of the Liberation of France, with his granddaughter, Lieutenant Dusseault's daughter. Then a Resistance operative at the Prefecture of the Indre, he was soon to take up arms again alongside his former gendarmes against the Germans, the collaborators... and the FTP! Here, photographed in front of his house in Chateauroux, where the miliciens came to arrest him — but without success.