The Maillé House of Remembrance

124 inhabitants, aged from 3 months to 89 years, were massacred, and the village was set on fire (completely destroyed, it would be rebuilt almost identically), probably by men from the Feld-Erstatz-Bataillon (reserve battalion) of the 17th Panzer Grenadier Division SS Götz Von Berlichingen.

In August 1944, the Paris-Bordeaux line is sabotaged three times near Maillé. On August 11, local residents help a Canadian pilot whose plane has been shot down to hide and escape; he is not found by the occupying forces. On August 21, the Germans intercept an arms drop in the surrounding area, and a search of the village of Draché yields no results. On the evening of August 24, clashes between FFI and Germans in two vehicles take place at the ferme de Nimbré, north of the commune of Maillé, probably resulting in casualties on the German side. During the night, the second lieutenant Gustav Schlüter, in charge of the German post at Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine, warns the lieutenant-colonel Stenger, Feldkommandant of Tours, and presumably receives the order to retaliate.

The next morning, the day of the liberation of Paris, an Allied squadron bombed a military convoy and 88 mm DCA guns Luftwaffe at Maillé. Shortly afterwards, access to Maillé was blocked by German forces. "To the southwest, about fifty [German] soldiers begin the massacre in the first farms. Everything in front of them, men, women, children and animals, is slaughtered." Then they enter the village and continue the slaughter, systematically setting fire to the buildings. The assassins left the village around midday, but sentries prevented the survivors from leaving their hiding places. Two hours later, an 88-gun rammed the village, firing 80 shells. Of the 60 houses in Maillé, 52 were destroyed.

A quarter of the village's inhabitants, 124 out of 500, were killed directly by the soldiers, "sometimes with bayonets", or perished in the fires. Among the victims, aged from 3 months to 89 years, were 35 men, 41 women and 48 children under 14.

The Germans claimed responsibility for the reprisals, leaving two bills that stated, "This is the punishment [sic] of the terrorists and their assistants" providing "tangible proof of their deliberate desire for revenge".
Source Wikipedia
Crédit photo Joël Thibault