Marcel Pourchier was a French officer who served in World War I, where he became a victim of a gas attack. Between 1920-24 he served in the French mandate territory Syria. After his return to France, he was stationed in various places, before he became head of the military skiing school in Beuil in the French Alps, his place of birth. There, he initiated the construction of the first jumping hill. In 1929 he was appointed Knight of the Legion of Honor. Pourchier was appointed captain in 1931 and was commissioned to implement and organize a military school for skiing and Alpine regions called École de Haute Montagne in Chamonix. He commanded this school until the outbreak of World War II. During the war, he was responsible for logistics in the Norwegian campaign of the French Army. He returned to France and was demobilized after the armistice in 1942, but the following year joined the resistance again, taking care of logistics in the short-lived République du Vercors. In January 1944, he was captured by the German Gestapo. Some months later he was among 471 deportees who were executed at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in Alsace. Pouchier was awarded the Croix de Guerre in both world wars and was posthumously appointed lieutenant-colonel.
France