Emmanuel Macron chaired, on Wednesday March 20, a national tribute to Admiral Philippe de Gaulle, who died at the age of 102, saluting “the sailor, the resistance fighter, the elected representative of the Republic” who “will have traced his own furrow” to “the shadow of a great man”, the General, his father.
In the courtyard of the Invalides, “a place which had become his own” as a resident for two years of the national institution which welcomes veterans in particular, it was above all the memory of the sailor which was celebrated .
His coffin entered preceded by the sound of a boatman’s whistle (or boatswain’s whistle), used to honor authority boarding a boat. A naval aircraft flew over the courtyard at the end of the ceremony.
“Know all the seas in the world and choose the Seine as your last shore,” declared the Head of State, retracing the journey of Philippe de Gaulle, born December 28, 1921 and died a week ago, who was a rifleman -sailor, fighter on land then pilot in naval aviation.
“A great fighter of the Second World War”
In “the walks with his father”, General Charles de Gaulle, who “sometimes changed during military tactics lessons”, “engraved in Philippe de Gaulle a certainty: he too would serve the nation at sea, like his father had done on earth,” Mr. Macron said. “On June 18, 1940, he did not hear General de Gaulle’s call. And for good reason (…), he was already on board the cargo ship which was taking him to England, to his father and to the Resistance. » “How hard it is, however, to be de Gaulle after de Gaulle, to have the look, the voice, the gestures and not to be him,” continued the president, referring to his work as a “memorialist » of Gaullism.
This work falls today to his children and grandchildren, noted Yves de Gaulle, one of the admiral’s sons. His death “is not something sad,” he told journalists. “It is an invitation to continue, to continue fighting so that (…) France lives,” he added. He noted that it would probably be “the last national tribute” paid to “a great fighter of the Second World War”.
In this year when Mr. Macron is preparing to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Landing and the Liberation, “there is obviously a resonance,” notes an advisor to the Head of State.
