The luck of Philippe de Gaulle is to have been the "son of..." His bad luck was also exactly that. A brave soldier during World War II, he had an accomplished career in the French Navy but the model to which he was compared inevitably diminished his accomplishments. A victim of his glorious ancestry, he took his revenge late in life with a best-seller, De Gaulle mon père ("My father, De Gaulle"), a very personal account of the great man, which captivated the general public but angered established historians.
Admiral Philippe de Gaulle died on the night of Tuesday, March 12, at the age of 102 in Paris. He was born in the French capital on December 28, 1921. He was the first child of Yvonne Vendroux and Captain Charles de Gaulle, who was wounded at Verdun in 1916 and was teaching at the Special Military School of Saint-Cyr at the time. Contrary to persistent legend, Philippe was not the godson of Philippe Pétain (a general who would go on to lead the collaborationist regime during the Second World War), but he did hold Charles de Gaulle in high esteem. As a token of their ties, which dated back to 1912, Pétain dedicated his photo to the newborn child with these words: "To the young Philippe who will walk, I hope, in the footsteps of his father."
From the cradle, history was watching Philippe. It finally played a part in his life on June 19, 1940, when, accompanied by his mother and two sisters, he landed on the English coast in the hope of finding his father, whose whereabouts they had lost. By reading the local newspaper, they learned that a French brigadier general named Charles de Gaulle had launched a call to the resistance against the occupier the day before, via the BBC. Philipe de Gaulle was 18 years old. He was a young, slender man with a clean-shaven face who failed to convince his father to let him enter the naval academy at Collège Stanislas in Paris, where he had just passed his high school diploma. Colonel de Gaulle would have preferred to see him pursue a diplomatic career given that "it's hardly an advantage for one family to have too many soldiers."
A student at the Free French Forces Naval Academy, class of 1940, Philippe fought in what is known as the good war. He took part in the air defense of Portsmouth and then in numerous operations in the Channel and the Atlantic. On August 1, 1944, he landed on Utah Beach in northwestern France with the men of the Leclerc division, where he had been enlisted as a marine. The 2nd Armored Division rushed to Paris where, on August 25, Ensign Philippe de Gaulle was ordered to negotiate the surrender of the German soldiers entrenched in the Palais-Bourbon, a mission he carried out with composure, without having fired a shot.
With the Alsace campaign behind him and peace restored, Philippe became a pilot on aircraft carriers. He took part in the Indochina and Algerian wars before holding several air and sea commands, including that of the Atlantic Squadron. He ended his military career in 1982 as admiral inspector general of the Navy.
He was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor but was not a companion of the Liberation. An "oversight" that his father justified: "Naturally, I could not make you, my son, a companion of the Liberation, not even posthumously or if you had returned seriously mutilated." Before adding in the same tone: "In any case, everyone knows that you were my first companion."
Philippe was annoyed to be considered a "son of an archbishop," as someone who owes his career to his father's position. For obscure reasons, he inherited the nickname Sosthène and suffered for a long time from the jealousy aroused by an extraordinary destiny that was not his own.
He considered himself bullied. A close friend of the General common shorthand for Charles de Gaulle), Jacques Foccart, recounted that Philippe had paid him a visit, the day after his father's death, to complain about only being a captain: " To convince me of this, he cited the examples of Stalin's son, who was promoted to general at the age of 27, and of Eisenhower's son, who was also a general." Foccart opened up about this visit to President Georges Pompidou, with whom he worked for through the French government, and was told, "I don't believe him to be particularly sharp and he is often clumsy, but he is the son of the General. Something must be done for him."
This is how Philippe became a rear admiral in September 1971. And as a reward for the same debt, President Jacques Chirac later made him a senator for Paris, a seat that Philippe held with the Rassemblement pour la République (center right) and then the Union Pour un Mouvement Populaire (also center right) parties from 1986 to 2004.
It was both a blessing and a curse to be the son of such a man, an intimidating and inflexible father, even in the privacy of his own family. He was attentive to his children's upbringing but was distant and not very present, entirely focused on his own destiny and that of France. From a very young age, Philippe understood that he would never be close to the great man. "After kissing me, which he rarely did, he sent me away after 15 minutes." How many times did he have to be satisfied with this measured affection, even though his father made a point of calling him "dear old boy"?
He was the eldest but not the favorite. The tenderness of Charles de Gaulle was directed first to his daughter Anne, who had Down's syndrome and died at the age of 20, in 1948. And in the close family circle, Philippe had to reckon with Alain de Boissieu, his sister Elisabeth's husband. He was a companion of the Liberation, chief of staff of the Army and grand chancellor of the Legion of Honor.
When his father died in 1970, Philippe inherited the family estate, La Boisserie in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, in northeastern France. He was heir to the moral rights attached to the General's work, his memory, his image, his writings and his archives. He took advantage of his newfound freedom to make a curious letter that his father sent him in 1964 public, in which he expressed his hope that when the time came, he would take on "the responsibility of leading France."
In homage to the deceased, thousands of streets and schools were named "Charles de Gaulle" after his death. In 1990, Philippe was invited almost daily to honor the inauguration of a school, a ceremony or a symposium with his presence. He was all the more solicited since his resemblance to the General became striking as the years went by: the same gothic stature, the same "Cyranoesque" nose – his father's expression – and same hint of mustache and drooping eyelids.
He had long been opposed to any figurative representation of the General, but made an exception for the statue that was erected at the bottom of the Champs-Elysées, not far from those of Winston Churchill and Georges Clemenceau. He published many works. First, the 13 volumes of his father's Lettres, notes et carnets ("Letters, Notes and Notebooks," all published by Plon like Philippe de Gaulle's other books). Then an album of photos from the family archives, De Gaulle (1989). Finally it was time for his own memoir, under a title in the form of a statement: Mémoires accessoires ("Ancillary Memories," two volumes in 1997 and 2000).
These memoirs went almost unnoticed. They are, however, full of information and unpublished anecdotes, which were used as a framework for De Gaulle mon père ("De Gaulle My Father," two volumes in 2003 and 2004). But the style is stiff and their details about Philippe's career are rather monotonous. Alone at his writing desk, he lacked literary talent.
His interviews with journalist Michel Tauriac for De Gaulle mon père were a huge success. According to his publishers, a total of 800,000 copies were sold, plus 80,000 in paperback. In the wake of this triumph, he published a new photo album, Mon père en images ("My Father in Photos") in collaboration with Tauriac in 2006.
With De Gaulle mon père, Philippe became a satisfied celebrity. At more than 80 years old, he did the rounds of the radio and television shows, chatting with the actress Arielle Dombasle, being teased by TV host Thierry Ardisson and sucked up to France's most famous presenter Michel Drucker. He made so many appearences and looked so much like his father that some of the General's faithful cried betrayal.
De Gaulle mon père lifts the veil on a hidden part of the life of the founder of the Fifth Republic – the husband, the father and the grandfather. The private man was shown in detail – next to nothing was known about him. Philippe depicted the General throwing Le Monde into his wastepaper basket one day in contempt. He revealed that his father "loved generously-topped sauerkraut." And that he made his grandchildren, whom he cherished, laugh with this riddle: "De quelle couleur sont les petits pois ? Les petits poissons rouges" (a wordplay joke that literally translates to: "What color are the peas? The little fish are red.")
The readers of De Gaulle mon père appreciated it. Historians did not. The book is full of factual errors, misinterpretations and pettiness. To refute the accusation of anti-Semitism sometimes lodged against his father, Philippe explained that "many of [his] doctors were Jewish" and named them one by one. He attacked the memory of Léon Blum and Pierre Mendès France and even those of François Mauriac and André Malraux. As the historian Pierre Nora cruelly said, "the Admiral has marshalized the General" with this bestseller.
Then the quarrel subsided. In his final days, Philippe was more sparing with his appearances, even if he honored the tributes that the Republic paid to the great man, to this father who was so different with his presence.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.