Baz Bazbey
The Sherman "Ourcq" from the 501e RCC's 3 Squadron was damaged near Le Cercueil by an 88mm gun firing from the forest's North side. Ourcq's driver succeeded in steering it into the cover of some scrub but, just as the crew dismounted the stricken tank, a second shell struck, killing its Commander, Sergeant Bouclet, and its Gunner, Trooper Cardiot. Both were young and had undertaken considerable oddysies to join the 2e DB. Bouclet escaped Occupied France by stowing away on a goods train passing through Spain, joining Leclerc when still only sixteen. Cardiot had journeyed from Peru.
Crew Tank Chief: Sergeant Jean Bouclet † Shooter: Georges Douillon Driver: Lafont Pilot Assistant: Vercher Radio-charger: Philippe Cadiot †
August 13, 1944 in the forest of Ecouves (Orne). "The 2nd section (Lieutenant Meyer) progresses in the surrounding woods when suddenly the Ourcq tank is hit in the turret by an enemy perforator and catches fire; the driver Lafont managed to avoid the second shot of the antitank, backing into the brush. The shell killed net commander Bouclet and radio charger Cadiot. The shooter Douillon, who can not go out from above because of corpses, succeeds, by tearing his clothes, to slip out of this hell by one of the front posts. He joins us running, covered with blood and brains; the way he tells us that with a smile makes us shiver: he is "sounded"! He is a brave little eighteen-year-old who has joined Spain, hooked up under a locomotive. Sergeant Bouclet had committed at sixteen, and his brother had been killed on a ship during the British bombardment of Mers-el-Kebir. It is one of the best of the company that goes away; Cadiot came from Peru; he adored poetry and, in Libya, amused us all when we heard him declaim, alone in his tent, the tirades of Cyrano. The Vercher, a Spanish war veteran, goes back on the tank, extinguishes his fire, and brings him back in spite of the anti-tank who is surely watching him. I climbed on the Ourcq, the inside of the turret is upside down. The radio went around the wall several times before falling to the bottom of the tank; the radio-charger is decapitated and the tank commander is cut in two: they have not suffered