This is the end of one of the greatest men of France and of a father who often gave me the impression that he would have sacrificed his son as well as himself to his historical destiny.
General de Gaulle called him “
my dear old boy
”.
The irreverent had baptized it “Sosthène”, we don’t really know why.
Admiral Philippe de Gaulle, who had inherited his father's tall stature, distant countenance and certain attitudes, had made a career in his shadow (but not thanks to him).
Before establishing himself, upon his death, as the guardian of his memory and his work, then entering politics through the Senate.
Philippe de Gaulle died on the night of Tuesday March 12 to Wednesday March 13, 2024 at the age of 102.
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Philippe de Gaulle was born in 1921 into a family where the sense of traditional values and the nation was highly cultivated.
Work, effort, respect for oneself and for others and especially for parents: these were the key words.
“
We always had to go for the best, do better than the others
,” he confided.
His father wanted to direct him towards diplomacy.
Young Philippe dreamed of a military career: “
At twelve years old, I knew the essentials of Napoleonic battles.
»
Inspector General of the Navy
The war will decide everything.
While his father, a temporary brigadier general and Under-Secretary of State for War, decided in June 1940 to cross the Rubicon and go to London, Philippe found himself with his family in Carantec, in Brittany.
In turn, they left by boat for England (they initially thought they were going to find the General in North Africa) and disembarked on June 18 in Falmouth.
They learned the next day from the British press that General de Gaulle had launched, on the BBC, an appeal destined to become forever memorable.
Philippe, who was only nineteen years old, naturally joined the Free French Forces and began by collecting shell casings on the Courbet, an old French cruiser transformed by the English into a DCA platform.
Then he found himself at the Naval School that Free France hastily set up in Portsmouth.
It is therefore in the navy that he will fight.
He fights in the Atlantic, he fights in the Channel.
One day, his torpedo launcher was attacked by four German minesweepers.
With three of his four engines burning, Philippe de Gaulle managed to take refuge in the mist along the French coast.
The Germans, on the radio, will rejoice too quickly at having sunk the son of the French general who is taunting them from London.
Father and son in 1962. - / AFP
On the eve of the Allied landings in Normandy, the young officer joined the marines of General Leclerc's 2nd Armored Division.
As such, during the liberation of Paris, he himself received the surrender of the German troops occupying the Palais Bourbon.
He was then 23 years old. “
No one among the German officers asked me my name,
” he confided.
It will not be until November 2019 that the National Assembly will pay tribute to him for this action of high symbolic value.
Philippe de Gaulle continued towards the east with the 2nd DB, until the capitulation of the enemy.
He would later say, without boasting: “
Among the sons of heads of state – including the Soviets – I am the one who fought the hardest.
» He will emerge from this conflict with the Croix de Guerre, three citations and the rank of 1st class ensign.
But without being admitted into the order of the Companions of the Liberation, the General refused to decorate his own son.
Take the field and threaten to leave
What followed was a classic career.
Philippe de Gaulle served in Indochina, Morocco and Algeria, climbing the ranks of the hierarchy one by one to reach the rank of admiral and the position of Inspector General of the Navy in 1980, two years before retirement.
There can obviously be no question of politics, due to a duty of reserve, at least officially, because it is not possible for everyone to be the son of General de Gaulle and to meet him regularly in his private life.
By chance, Philippe de Gaulle found himself on leave in Paris at the height of the 1968 crisis. On Sunday, May 26, having come to lunch at the Élysée, he advised his father, as he recounted in his Memoirs of Incidents ( 1), to take the field and threaten to leave.
The next evening, father and son resume the conversation.
Once again, Philippe de Gaulle, who does not fear, according to his words, to affirm to the General that in the long term, his reign is over, advises him to move away and suggests that he go and settle in Brest on a cruiser or an aircraft carrier, which will offer it all the possibilities of communication and movement.
The General rejects this prospect, but confirms that he does indeed intend to get out of the “boiler”.
He will leave to meet General Massu in Baden-Baden, where Philippe joins him with his family.
And where he remains temporarily, on the orders of his father, when the latter, reinvigorated by his meeting with the leader of the French forces in Germany, leaves to take things in hand in Paris.
This is the end of one of the greatest men of France and of a father who often gave me the impression that he would have sacrificed his son as well as himself to his historical destiny.
Philippe de Gaulle
Not for very long: less than a year later, after the failure of his final referendum, the General resigned.
And in November 1970, he died.
This death brings a bittersweet reflection from Philippe de Gaulle: “
This is the end of one of the greatest men of France and of a father who often gave me the impression that he would have just as easily sacrificed his son. that he himself has his historical destiny.
»
In any case, this disappearance makes Philippe de Gaulle the head of the family of the founder of the Fifth Republic and, in a certain way, his spiritual heir.
A mission that he will take very seriously, jealously watching over his father's material heritage (the Haut-Marne property of Colombey, the management of which will be entrusted in 1979 to the Charles-de-Gaulle Institute) and more on his literary work, of which he also shares the copyright with his sister, Elisabeth de Boissieu.
Among the tasks he assigned himself as keeper of the flame: the publication by Plon, under the title
Letters, notes and notebooks
, of all his father's unpublished documents.
A pharaonic enterprise!
Fortunately, from this point of view, retirement in December 1982 freed him.
It also releases him from an obligation of reserve from which he only left to support the candidacy for the Elysée of Jacques Chaban-Delmas in 1974 and of Jacques Chirac in 1981. Which will allow him to now say in public everything the bad things he said in private about François Mitterrand, hated by the General and who nevertheless became President of the Republic, as well as about the socialism he embodies.
From June 18, 1981, moreover, he refused to participate, like his brother-in-law General de Boissieu, in the traditional remembrance ceremony at Mont-Valérien in the company of the new head of state.
“The moral sense of the nation”
Finally, in 1986, Philippe de Gaulle officially entered politics by being elected senator of Paris on a list led by a former prime minister of his father, Maurice Couve de Murville.
At the Luxembourg Palace, where he chose to deal with defense issues, he voluntarily adopted a low profile.
Which did not prevent him, in 1988, from once again supporting the candidacy of Jacques Chirac for the presidency of the Republic, nor from opposing the French military intervention against Iraq in 1991, nor from declaring in 1992 his hostility to the Maastricht Treaty.
Philippe de Gaulle in front of the poster for the show “He who said No”.
GEORGES GOBET / AFP
In addition to memoirs, in 2003 he published a book on his father that was both personal and committed to paying tribute to the memory of the General as he had known him, and as he perceived him (2).
Of Gaullism, Philippe de Gaulle gave this definition: “
The moral sense of the Nation.
The constant of French values of all time.
»
(1) The Memoirs Accessories were published by Plon in 1997 (volume I) and 2000 (volume II).
(2) De Gaulle My father (with Michel Tauriac), Plon 2003 and 2004.