It is a "
funeral outfit
" that turns into a fiasco.
A sinister farce that keeps the French in suspense for three days to end in the anonymous box of a building courtyard in the Paris suburbs.
The case begins on Monday, February 19, 1973, when incredible news spreads on the airwaves: the coffin of Marshal Pétain has disappeared from the communal cemetery of Port-Joinville, on the island of Yeu.
It is here that the head of the Vichy government, placed under house arrest in the small Vendée island after his trial in 1945, had rested since his death twenty-two years earlier.
The case made headlines.
Who did it?
A strange team made up of former Algerians and a marble worker with a taste for adventure, all under the leadership of lawyer Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, far-right candidate for the election of 1965 and his acolyte, Hubert Massol, an advertiser, future elected municipal official of the Front National.
What's their point ?
Transfer the marshal's ashes to the Douaumont ossuary, where the winner of Verdun would have liked to be buried.
The time was right, recently confided Hubert Massol in an episode of
A special story
on France Culture.
According to a poll, 72% of French people were in favor of his transfer and the March legislative elections were approaching.
But that, we will learn later.
The gravedigger sounds the alarm
The alert was given by the gravedigger who, according to
Le Figaro
, came to "
prepare the grave of a small islander
".
He is then intrigued by "
fragments of concrete
" fallen on the sand near the tomb of Philippe Pétain.
The authorities were immediately notified.
At 12:51 p.m., an AFP dispatch announced that “
unknown people have unsealed the tombstone of Marshal Pétain
”.
Gendarmes, police and the Minister of the Interior Raymond Marcellin landed on the island, soon followed by journalists.
The tomb is open: it is empty.
Download document
Stunned, we wonder.
Did the blow come from those nostalgic for Vichy or from "agents provocateurs"?
Master Jacques Isorni, Marshal Pétain's defender, fumed and declared to Le
Figaro
that he had been warned of an operation in progress: “
I thought that all of this would not go through to the end.
I continue to think today that the transfer of the marshal's ashes was placed on a higher level, the level of justice, national recognition and rediscovered unanimity
”.
Tixier-Vignancour is playing with fire, and announces that he has been contacted by the kidnappers, "
veterans from Indochina and Algeria
".
"
My reaction was to rejoice,"
he brags.
Hoping for this real translation, because more than three hundred times I have asked for it in public meetings.
»
On the sodden ground of the small cemetery, the police dogs search in vain for a track.
Many assumptions are made.
There is talk of a yacht cruising a few miles from the coast, of a helicopter flying over the island, we are following a Spanish trail because an Iberian newspaper was used to fill in the holes in the tomb.
The reality is much more amateurish, and it was in a blue Renault courier embarked on the ferry at 4 a.m. that the body of the Marshal was taken away.
“Marshal, here we come!”
The commando recruited by Hubert Massol is a heterogeneous assembly: a former Hungarian legionnaire, a Yugoslav, an ex-French paratrooper called Pierre Garau, the father of the latter, Armand, and a professional marble worker, Michel Dumas, who will tell in a book the crazy adventure.
The van arrived on Friday, driven by Armand Garau, accompanied by a certain Madame Boche (a name which is sure to make commentators smile), a traveling woolen merchant in the markets.
The latter leaves as a foot passenger on Sunday while the rest of the group settles discreetly at the Hôtel des Voyageurs run by Gilles Nolleau, an accomplice recruited during a scouting trip in January.
Hubert Massol speaks to journalists at the Café Cristal avenue de la Grande-Armée on February 21, 1973. AFP
At 1 o'clock in the morning, the commando enters the cemetery, unseals the tomb, a heavy mass of some 800 kilos, with crowbars.
“
Marshal, here we come!
exclaims Hubert Massol, while Dumas straps the coffin then closes the tomb with cement and pieces of newspaper found in the courier.
Back at the hotel, the innkeeper serves champagne.
The cops on the trail
Then things take a turn for the worse for these new breed of grave robbers.
François Boux de Casson, former Vendée deputy and departmental delegate for Information of the Vichy government who was to welcome them to his castle in Challans, fails them.
The news of the theft of the coffin is broadcast on the radio, gendarmerie roadblocks search the vans around Douaumont.
Massol decides to branch off to Paris where he finds Tixier-Vignancour.
The courier is abandoned, the remains transferred to another vehicle.
If it is no longer possible to bring the coffin back to Verdun with their own hands, there is still time for a media stunt.
Hubert Massol summons journalists to a café on the avenue de la Grande-Armée on February 21.
The commando leader denounced himself without involving Tixier-Vignancour.
He says he is ready to return the body if he is buried at the Invalides.
Massol was arrested fifteen minutes later and taken to 36, quai des Orfèvres, where he quickly gave an address on avenue Gabriel Péri in Saint-Ouen, in the Paris suburbs.
In the courtyard of the building, garages lined up: “
It is there, in this setting that is both sinister and surreal because of the circumstances, that an enigma that lasted seventy hours is solved
,” relates
Le Figaro
.
Shortly after midnight, the door to
And the fifteen police officers present see the white van in which the coffin of Marshal Pétain is concealed
.
Download document
Definitive return to the island of Yeu
After being watched over for a few hours at the Val de Grâce military hospital in Paris, the coffin was then transported by air to the island of Yeu where it was buried again despite the protests of the marshal's daughter-in-law.
"
No solemn character to this ceremony, but an almost military and poignant simplicity
", relates Le
Figaro,
which concludes: "
The final point was thus put to any inclination of one or the other to use this affair, to draw from it political or simply electoral profit.
And indeed, the arrested members of the commando were quickly released, President Pompidou preferring to bury the affair rather than publicize it.
The whole operation will benefit from the presidential amnesty of 1974.
On the Ile d'Yeu, however, the hoteliers regret the departure of the journalists.
The case "
is rather good for us
", recognizes the secretary of the Syndicat d'initiative interviewed by
Le Figaro
: "
This new Pétain episode will revive the island
".
