This little lion man is Marcel Pinte, codenamed QuinQuin after a children’s song.
Despite his size and youth, as his papa Eugene was a French Resistance chief during the Nazi occupation of their country, Marcel became a courier for his Dad’s shadowy friends.
He very bravely carried messages and vital information to and fro under the noses of the Nazis, who took no notice of a small French boy knocking about on his bicycle with muddy knees.
On 19th August 1944, a large contingent of resistance fighters parachuted into a field near Quinquin’s village of Aix-sur-Vienne near Limoges.
The liberating Allied forces who’d fought their way onto the Normandy beaches on D-Day were now approaching, driving the Germans back, and the Resistance wanted to do all it could to help.
But as QuinQuin rushed to meet them, a Sten gun accidentally went off and he was hit by two bullets.
Aged six, he is the youngest member of the French Resistance to give his life for his country.
In 1950, he was posthumously promoted to Sergeant of the Resistance.