A Hero of the Resistance A Hero of the French Resistance
Andre Heintz invested as Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur - 9 July 2010
The School was delighted to welcome the daughters of an Old
Bristolian, a Frenchman with a most distinguished career. Andre was a member of
the French Resistance. He was an exchange student at BGS in the 1930s and an exchange French teacher at BGS in the 1950s. CHRONICLE MARCH 1945 Two interesting reminders have lately come to hand of links with France during the occupation. W. Botte writes from Martigues
Headmaster Jaideep barot with Clare & Anne Heintz during their visit in May 2022
Bristolienses - Issue 62
(Bouches du Rhone) telling how he worked for nearly three years for the French underground (Intelligence); he hopes some day to send his son to BGS. A. Heintz, of a younger generation, called on his way from Normandy to Edinburgh; he had lived in Caen during the occupation, and the bombardment and capture of it; he, too, had for some years collected information for the “men of the Maquis.” CHRONICLE DECEMBER 1945 Old Boy visitors are always welcome. None could have been more welcome or of greater interest than Andre Heintz. (When he was here for six months in VA, before the war, he was nicknamed “ 57.”) He started the war as one of over 3,000 working in the underground movement in Normandy. He told me : “ When I was afraid, I remembered my friends in Bristol, and thought I must be as brave as they are being. We had to invent secret ways of celebrating under the Occupation. Mine was to wear my old BGS tie.” I induced him to repeat his astonishing
story of courage and sheer human endurance to the Sixth Form. At the conclusion of a lecture, which was as brilliantly planned as it was movingly exciting, he presented to the School the badge of beautiful design which was given to him as one of the few hundred survivors of the Resistance Movement in Normandy. It was a proud climax to an affecting occasion. CHRONICLE DECEMBER 1955 Mr. Dehn has effected an exchange during the Easter term with Mr. A. E. Heintz, who was a member of this School in 1935, and who has since the war been teaching in the University of Edinburgh and his native city of Caen. There can be few men who had such a distinguished career of courageous service in the Resistance movement. He planned an escape route for shot-down Allied airmen, escaped from a forced labour camp in Germany, prepared information for the invasion of Europe, and was in charge of a sabotage plan in
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