Jacques Voyer Project

In August 2017, at the passing of Jeannette Voyer Vincent, Jacques Voyer’s little sister, our family started working on putting in order “Jacques things”. There was his belongings, repatriated from Great Britain by his friends Gladys Arrowsmith and Georges Ledoux, but also the family counterpart: the letters and postcards sent by Jacques, the contacts made by Jean Voyer, Jacques’ father, at the end of the war.

Jean Voyer, devastated by the death of his son, did not stop at assimilating his son’s military rank. He had scoured Free France to reconstruct his journey, to find his comrades in combat. Jean Voyer had noted down all the names that could help him in his search. At each commemoration, each ceremony, each wedding. You can find his Free French magazines, annotated, or a wedding announcement with names scribbled on the back of the cardboard. Jacques’ parents had kept in touch for a long time with their son’s friends, but also with the FFI resistance fighters with whom Jacques had worked.

The Jacques Voyer Project undertaken by Jeannette’s grandchildren is multifaceted. First of all, it includes the inventory and cataloguing of Jacques’ and the family’s belongings during these pivotal events. Organized under ten headings, the collection covers the entire life of Jacques as well as the posthumous tributes and administrative records concerning him. To date, the catalogue contains more than 800 entries: photographs, objects, letters and documents. Each entry is scanned or photographed before being added to a summary file.

The inventory of the Jacques Voyer collection is also an opportunity to resume the work undertaken by Jean Voyer after the war. Once again we have tried to find Jacques’ friends, their descendants or their families. We have thus reconnected with several families of Free Frenchmen, FFI resistance fighters, Sussex agents and RAF pilots. Beyond Jacques’ story, it is important to “meet” his friends and comrades. This research has also taken us several times in many archives, such as:

  • Le service historique de la défense à Vincennes (The historical service of the defence in Vincennes )
  • La division des archives des victimes des conflits contemporains à Caen (The division of the archives of the victims of contemporary conflicts in Caen)
  • Les archives nationales à Pierrefitte-sur-Seine (The national archives in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine)
  • Les archives départementales de l’Eure-et-Loir à Chartres (The departmental archives of the Eure-et-Loir in Chartres)
  • Les archives départementales du Var à Toulon (The departmental archives of the Var in Toulon)
  • Les archives de la Fondation de la France Libre à Paris (The archives of the Free French Fondation in Paris)
  • Le dépôt central des archives de la justice militaire au Blanc ( The central repository of the archives of military justice in Le Blanc)
  • The National Archives at Kew (UK)
  • The Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King’s College (UK
  • The Scouts Archives at Gilwell Park (UK)
  • The National Archives and Records Administration at College Park (USA)
  • The CIA’s Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room (USA)

We went to the shooting range in Lèves, where Jacques died. We walked the streets of Chartres to try to unravel the contradictions in the accounts of the arrest of June 10, 1944. We read countless books on the Resistance, on radio operators, clandestine landings, the SOE, MI6 and BCRA, not to mention the OSS. The testimonies of Free Frenchmen from all walks of life have passed through our hands.

Little by little, we are reconstructing the Free France of Jacques Voyer. Thanks to his belongings, the stories of his comrades, the documents found in the archives, and our readings, we are writing his history. We hope that you will be able to read it soon.

In the meantime we are launching this website, in order to start sharing this project with you.