Philippe de Gaulle, admiral and son of Charles de Gaulle, dies at the age of 102

Admiral Philippe de Gaulle, the eldest child of French war leader and former President Charles de Gaulle, died in Paris on Wednesday. He was 102.

His death was confirmed by the Élysée Palace, the seat of the French presidency. His son Yves told Le Figaro newspaper that he died “in the night of Tuesday to Wednesday” at the Institution Nationale des Invalides, the historic French veterans hospital in central Paris. The French Navy’s official Twitter account said Admiral de Gaulle died on Wednesday.

Admiral de Gaulle spent his life in the shadow of his father, France’s wartime savior and founder of the Fifth Republic, despite his own illustrious record in the French Resistance and his distinguished military career thereafter.

As a young naval officer in World War II, he fought in the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean; personally received the surrender of German troops in Paris occupying the Palais Bourbon, now the French Senate, in August 1944; “took part in all the battles of the Liberation,” said the Elysée; and was wounded six times.

He later became a naval pilot and fought in the French wars in Indochina and Algeria. He ended his military service in 1982 as Inspector General of the French Navy.

None of that career had been enough to merit any particular warmth from the stern General de Gaulle. Philippe was nevertheless the careful keeper of his father’s memory, in charge of the general’s papers and of the family home in northeastern France, at Colombey-les-Deux Églises. He unexpectedly revealed his father’s human side in a series of interviews that formed the book ‘De Gaulle, Mon Père’, which became a bestseller in France in 2003.

In those interviews, Philippe de Gaulle demonstrated the family’s characteristic stoicism, which in his case persisted throughout his life as the son of a man after whom a thousand streets in France are named.

“From time to time I have had to endure various annoyances,” he said coolly to the interviewer, Michel Tauriac.

He once recalled of the father who called him “dear old boy” and whose hooked nose and straight figure he inherited: “After hugging me, which he rarely did, he sent me away after fifteen minutes.”

On his father’s death in 1970 at the age of 79, Philippe said: “He often gave me the impression that he would have sacrificed his son as willingly as himself, to serve his historical destiny.”

Philippe de Gaulle was born in Paris on December 28, 1921. His father, then a young army captain, had already earned a reputation for courage during the First World War. His mother was Yvonne (Vendroux) de Gaulle, whose northern French family was prominent in shipbuilding and biscuit making.

Philippe insisted on a military career, against his father’s wishes to become a diplomat – a rare example of him thwarting the older man.

In June 1940, after the German invasion of France, he reached England with his mother and two sisters on the 19th, the day after his father’s historic call for resistance, broadcast on the BBC. After the war, his father decided not to award him the highest decoration of the resistance, the Compagnon de la Libération. He explained, “Everyone knows you were my first companion.”

After his military career was over, Admiral de Gaulle was elected Senator of Paris in 1986 on the strength of a right-wing party led by Maurice Couve de Murville, who had been his father’s prime minister after leading the collaborationist Vichy during the war. government had served.

In addition to his son Yves, Admiral de Gaulle is survived by three other sons: Jean, Charles and Pierre. His wife, Henriette (de Montalembert) de Gaulle, died in 2014. His sister Anne died in 1948 and his sister Elisabeth died in 2013.

Interviewed by Le Figaro after he reached 100, Mr. de Gaulle said: “I would have preferred to give part of my long life to my father.”

Aurelien Breeden reporting contributed.