🇫🇷 One French tank entered the village. Thirteen German tanks never left! On May 16, 1940, Captain Pierre Billotte drove his Char B1 bis Eure into Stonne, where German Panzers and antitank guns lined the main street. Firing almost point-blank with its 75mm hull gun and 47mm turret gun, Billotte’s crew was credited with destroying 13 German tanks and two antitank guns. The Eure was reportedly struck 140 times. Not one round penetrated its armor. Captured and badly wounded weeks later, Billotte escaped from a German POW camp, crossed into the Soviet Union, and was imprisoned there as a suspected spy. After Germany invaded the USSR, he was released and traveled through the Arctic port of Arkhangelsk to Britain, where he joined de Gaulle’s Free French. In 1944, Billotte returned to France with Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division and helped liberate Paris. After the war, he became a general, member of parliament, government minister and mayor. But his legend was forged in a few extraordinary minutes at Stonne, when one French tank drove alone through a German armored column and emerged alive. If Pierre Billotte’s extraordinary story deserves to be remembered, share this post, and follow @Vanguard_WW2 for more forgotten stories from World War II.