Cours Albéric Laurent

Albéric Laurent became a ward of the nation at a very young age. He was raised by his grandmother. He was destined to become a teacher and, after his schooling at the teacher training college in Aix-en-Provence, he became a teacher at the primary school in Peynier and then at the one in Marseille Saint-Louis. Albéric Laurent got married on December 28, 1933, in Peynier, with Adèle Samat. He was mobilized on August 26, 1939 as a sergeant in the 9th Battalion of Alpine Chasseurs and was demobilized in Pau on July 28, 1940. In 1943, he hid resistance fighters and transported weapons. From 6 June 1944, after the Normandy landings, Albéric Laurent directed the numerous candidates for the maquis towards the Vauvenargues maquis, in which he actively participated. At the time of the landing in Provence, on 15 August 1944, the young teacher and his comrades took the route of the Vauvenargues maquis and organised, from the Puits d'Auzon, the harassment of the German troops. On 20 August 1944, Albéric Laurent opened the road, by motorbike, to the American columns which, having left the Var, were heading towards Aix on the D10 road. On 7 September 1944, Albéric Laurent enlisted as a lieutenant in the Courson commandos, a Resistance unit integrated into the African commandos on the Vosges front in October 1944. He was mortally wounded by shrapnel during the fighting at Cernay on 21 January 1945 (Colmar pocket). He was posthumously made Knight of the Legion of Honour, decorated with the Resistance medal and the Croix de Guerre. His name appears on the war memorials of Peynier and Saint-Pierre cemetery in Aix-en-Provence. A plaque in his memory is affixed on the wall of the town hall of Peynier and the main course bears his name. A primary school in Aix-en-Provence also bears his name.