Theodosius Morel alias Tom Morel (1915-1944)

Tom Morel, Lieutenant, distinguished himself in June 1940, received two honorable mentions and was made a Knight of the , at the age of only 24 years old. Thereupon he served in the armistice army in under the orders of the commander of Valletta d’Osia and participated in concealing of weapons and equipment. In 1941, he was appointed as instructor at Saint-Cyr Military Academy, at the time relocated in the southern zone in Aix-en-Provence. Here Morel implicitly encouraged students to join the Resistance. After the invasion of the southern zone by the Germans in November 1942, Tom Morel went underground and joined the Resistance in the Haute-. Here he was instrumental in organizing the Secret Army (Armee Secrète), with its number of volunteers multiplying after the Germans implemented the obligatory labor service for French men in Germany (Service Travail Obligatoire) in February 1943. In September 1943 when commander Valletta d’Osia had been arrested, Tom Morel was appointed head of the department’s underground Resistance and he focused on the task of organizing the reception of allied airdrops on the Plateau des Glières. On January 31, 1944, Tom Morel moved onto the plateau with 120 resistance fighters. In late February, he had under him about 300 men whom he organized into three companies. Tom Morel is renowned for his ability to lead and coach men from all kinds of geographic, social and political backgrounds. He adopted the motto "Live Free or Die" and transformed his battalion into a homogeneous operational fighting force for the liberation. During February and March many collisions occurred with mobile reserve groups (GMR) and the militia of the Vichy regime, which by then encircled the plateau. On March 2, Tom Morel decided on a commando operation against the Beau Sejour hotel in Saint- Jean-de-Sixt, the local GMR headquarter. Thirty GMR were taken prisoner. They were serve as a bargaining chip against Michel Fournier, a medical student and underground assistant physician who was arrested in Grand-Bornand few days earlier. The prisoners were released, but despite the honor agreement with the police superintendent in Annecy, Michel Fournier remained detained. During March, the maquis, the rural guerrilla bands of fighters of the Plateau des Glières, are reinforced by the arrival of 120 guerrillas from Chablais and Giffre. Tom Morel decided to conduct another operation, larger and more risky against the GMR Aquitaine Headquarters in Entremont at the foot of the plateau Glières. Indeed, officer Couret, the acting commander of the GMR, had not kept his commitments to the Resistance and the GMR leader, the commander Lefebvre, who arrived March 7, by refusing to enter into discussions with the maquis. Over a hundred men were involved in the operation of the night of March 9 to 10, 1944. A group led by Tom Morel, seized the hotel , the headquarters of the General Staff of GMR. The guerrillas disarmed their prisoners, but the commander Lefebvre brandished a small revolver that he had concealed and shot Tom Morel point blank, who collapsed, killed instantly by a bullet in the heart. Lefebvre was immediately killed by a burst of fire. The body of Lieutenant Theodosius Morel was carried up onto the Plateau des Glières where he was buried on March 13 after an emotional religious ceremony. On May 2, 1944, his body was brought down into the valley and is now buried in the military cemetery of Morette, which became the National Cemetery des Glières in the Haute-Savoie.