France’s martyred village tries to come to terms with tragedy

Five thousand people walked in silence through the streets of this village of 700 souls yesterday, to remember 43 French citizens who perished when a coach collided with a trailer lorry last Friday.

President François Hollande will attend another service in Petit-Palais tomorrow. Then the journalists will go and attention will shift elsewhere.

But Petit-Palais, home to 28 of the 43 dead, will remain France’s martyred village, forever pondering its tales of love, community and loss.

The custom in Petit-Palais is to join the pensioners’ club at age 60. Nearly half the club’s members perished in the burning coach.

“The fire started immediately, like lightning,” said Jean-Claude Leonardet (73).

He and his wife Josette were seated next to the door and got out in time.

Residents say their roots have been torn out, that they have lost their collective memory.

“I had known all of them since I was an infant. They carried us,” says Marie-Claude Clion (60), whose husband Gilles owns the village’s only bar and restaurant.

“Some say it would be worse if the victims were children. But we knew them so well. It was as if we were their children.”

Young victims

Not all who died were elderly. Cyril and Théo Aleixandre, the lorry driver and his three-year-old son, burned to death in the cab of the lorry.

Élodie, the bubbly 28-year-old guide for the one-day excursion, also died.

The Clions distinguish between “old families” like their own, who have lived in Petit-Palais for generations, and the blow-ins who’ve nearly doubled the village’s population since the motorway to Bordeaux opened.

It is the old-timers who are grieving.

“Gillou” Clion stands behind the bar his grandfather built. Its shelves are laden with football trophies.

“Property’s much cheaper here than in Bordeaux,” he explains. “The new arrivals leave in the morning and come back at night. Before, people spent time together. Now they have television and the internet.”

A black sash is tied to the road sign at the entry to the village. Until Friday, the region’s tragedies had been more manageable: a man accidentally killed his brother with a hunting rifle; three priests were murdered; a train collided with a fuel lorry in Sainte Foy . . .

Some victims’ names come up in every conversation. There was Michel Rogerie (84), the widowed winegrower who stepped down as mayor of Petit-Palais in 2014, then threw all his energy into his duties as president of the pensioners’ club.

Rogerie had asked his son Florent to look after his dog and cat on the day of the outing.

Lucienne Guerino (71), née Raichini, was the club’s treasurer. Known to all as “Lulu”, she had run the grocery shop for decades.

She retired in 2005 when her husband Guy, the village postman, died of cancer. The grocery shop closed.

After a decent interval, “Lulu” set up housekeeping with Raymond Silvestrini, the head of the Aquitaine hunting federation, whose wife died of heart disease in 2007. Lulu and Raymond were the village lovebirds, proof that life resumes after bereavement.

She and her sisters Emma (81) and Ausilia (83) perished in the coach. Raymond broke a window and escaped with several broken ribs and vertebrae, after trying to pull Lulu from the inferno.

Marie-France Terrasson had recently retired as a nurse from Pellegrin Hospital in Bordeaux.

She was the club’s secretary and one of its youngest members. Marie-France too had a late-flowering romance, with Daniel Lobit, who had survived a serious illness and “followed her everywhere”, Marie-Claude Clion recalls.

“She really cared about old people. She was very organised and kept the club going.”

Marie-France, Daniel and Daniel’s father all died in the crash.

Since the tragedy, the hall where villagers celebrated has become a place for communal grieving and psychological counselling.

Jérémie Bessard (26) rushed about, keeping the salle des fêtes stocked with coffee and snacks from the Clions' restaurant.

Heart and soul

A winegrower and town councillor, Bessard takes after his deceased great uncle, Michel Rogerie.

It was the old people who kept Petit-Palais alive, he explains. Rogerie, Lulu and Marie-France were deeply involved in village social life.

“Without the associations, nothing happens in these villages,” Bessard explains. “It’s impossible to work or study here. Aside from the vineyards, there is nothing.”

Marie-France had been the driving force behind the village dinner last June, setting up tables and chairs on the square beside the salle des fêtes.

At the beginning of October, the hunters’ federation held a dinner dance in the same hall.

Six days before the accident, Terrasson had organised a giant screen for the France-New Zealand rugby match. It was the last time the villagers were all together.

Just last week, Daniel Lys (73) went to pick up his hunting permit at the home of Lulu and Raymond.

“We sat at the table and laughed,” he recalls wistfully. “Raymond had a shoulder operation last year.

“He was so happy he was going to shoot woodcocks again . . . He’ll be lost without Lulu . . .It’s intense when you know people [who die]. You think about them day and night. It doesn’t leave you.”

Lys was a school bus driver for 20 years, and he often took the road where the crash occurred, just 7km from Petit-Palais.

“It’s more than dangerous,” he says. “There’s no visibility, and a very sharp curve. It’s just not wide enough for a coach and trailer lorry to pass at the same time.”

Town councillors are discussing whether to hold a group funeral or individual services.

They’re not sure that Petit-Palais’s 13th century Romanesque church is big enough to hold all the mourners.

In the meantime, it’s a complex task for forensic pathologists to extract the charred remains from the carcass of the incinerated coach.

Only 21 bodies had been removed by Saturday night. It will take three weeks to identify them.

“The hardest thing is knowing they’re still in the bus, that they spent the night in the bus,” says Marie-Claude Clion.