Monument to the massacre of Ville-le-Marclet Castle

​​On 27 August 1944, in reprisal for an act of Resistance, the SS surrounded the village of Domart-en-Ponthieu (Somme) and rounded up all the men of the village aged between 16 and 60.

The day before, Marcel Bodelu and Pierre Wimart, two Resistance fighters of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP) of Berteaucourt-les-Dames, were caught during an act of road sabotage near Saint-Léger-lès-Domart. They were found placing homemade tyre crushers on the road and were both taken and tortured at the Kommandantur in Domart-en-Ponthieu. As they refused to divulge any information about their Resistance network, the German soldiers organised the roundup of Domart-en-Ponthieu.

Eleven men were arrested that day. They were all taken to Ville-le-Marclet Castle, about ten kilometres from Domart-en-Ponthieu, for interrogation. The same day, six of them - Marcel Bodelu, René Démarest, Vincent Ferrari, Gaëtan Guillerand, Achille Monflier and Pierre Wimart - were shot in the castle grounds. A few days later on 31 August 1944, Gaston Morin was arrested for a similar act of Resistance and shot in nearby Abbeville.

Today, four streets in the municipality of Domart-en-Ponthieu bear the name of a victim who was shot in the municipality: René Demarest, Vincent Ferrari, Gaëtan Guillerand and Gaston Morin. Marcel Bodelu and Pierre Wimart have a street named after them in their village of Berteaucourt-les-Dames.

​In August 1969, a commemorative plaque was installed at the entrance to the Ville-le-Marclet park. It reads "To the Resistance fighters tortured and murdered on 27 August 1944 in the Ville-le-Marclet Castle and buried in a mass grave in the castle park".