SON OF MY FATHER
Philippe was born in Paris and was the only son of Charles de Gaulle, a French army officer and decorated war hero who was injured at the Battle of Verdun in 1916, and Yvonne Vendroux. He had two sisters, Elisabeth and Anne, the latter of whom had from Down’s syndrome.
He remembered his childhood as being austere and without affection. His mother only kissed him and his sisters on their birthday and on the 31st December.
He was named after General Philippe Petain, whom his father greatly admired. At his birth, Petain sent a photograph of himself in full military uniform. On the back was written, ‘To the young Philippe who will walk, I hope, in the footsteps of his father.”
Philippe’s father wanted him to become a diplomat, but the boy was obsessed by military matters. “At the age of twelve, I knew most of the Napoleonic battles.”
In spite of his father’s reluctance (“It’s hardly an advantage for one family to have too many soldiers”), Philippe was educated at the same military school (College Stanislas) that Charles had attended. After graduating, he joined the French Navy.
Philippe was still at the Ecole Navale (Naval College) when the Nazis invaded France in 1940.
He escaped to London with his family. They caught a boat in Brittany and sailed to Falmouth, although Charles was not with them. They were told Charles was in North Africa and the family expected to join him there.
However, Charles de Gaulle was in London. As soon as he knew his family was safe, he launched an appeal for French men and women to fight the Nazis – and he formed the ‘Free French’. In his radio broadcast, he famously said, “The flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished.”
Philippe immediately signed up with them. He joined the naval section and was sent to the hastily created Free French Naval School based in Portsmouth. There, Philippe completed his military education.
During the war, he fought in the Channel and was in charge of a Torpedo Boat. Once, his vessel was attacked by four German minesweepers. Three of his four engines were ablaze – but then the mist came down and Philippe’s ship escaped.
The Germans were convinced they had sunk the boat – and made great propaganda of the fact that they had killed the son of the man leading the French opposition.
Except they hadn’t. Philippe went on to fight in the Battle of the Atlantic. He was promoted to sub-lieutenant.
Later he fought in the Battle for France, heading the ‘Regiment Blinde de Fusiliers – Marins, a group of marines.
Philippe was in Paris for the liberation on the 25th August 1944. He was sent to receive the surrender from a group of German soldiers holed up in the Palais Bourbon (where the National Assembly met).
He bravely chose to go into the Palais alone and unarmed, to receive the surrender, putting his life at risk. He later noted, “No one among the German officers asked my name.”
Philippe spent the remainder of the war fighting in the Voges region.
At the end of hostilities, he had been wounded six times. Philippe received, “No favour, no benefit, no advantage”, from his father. However, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre.
After the war, he stayed in the French navy and in 1948 was given command of the ‘Naville Flotille’.
The following year, Philippe married Henriette de Montalembert, who came from a distinguished aristocratic family who had made a fortune from shipbuilding. They went on to have four sons.
Philippe bore a startling resemblance to his father – tall and upright with a sense of being aloof. They also shared many political opinions. However, it was a rocky relationship between father and son, with Philippe claiming all the General’s affection was given to his sister Anne (who died in 1948) and not to him or his sister Elisabeth. “After having hugged me, which he did rarely, he sent me away after fifteen minutes.”
He claimed the family lineage was, “Both an honour and a burden.” Philippe also claimed his father had bullied him throughout his life.
In France, there is a derogatory phrase for a successful son of a famous person – ‘Son of an Archbishop’. It implies success has only been achieved on the coat tails of the parent. Philippe absolutely hated this label.
Nevertheless, there was also an element of fondness between father and son. Charles referred to Philippe as, “My dear old boy.”
Philippe continued to get promotion within the navy. At various times, he served in Indochina, Morocco and Algeria.
He learned to fly and in 1961, Philippe became a Naval Aviation pilot, working on aircraft carriers.
By 1964, he was given command of the Paris naval aviation area, followed by a spell in charge of the frigate ‘Suffren’, one of the most prestigious ships in the French navy.
In 1968, Philippe was in Paris when the riots took place. He was appalled when his father decided to send the military in to suppress the protests. He told Charles that he was out of touch, behind the times – and that he needed to step down as President.
His father refused – but he did resign the following year. General Charles de Gaulle died in 1970.
At the funeral, Philippe gave a bittersweet eulogy. “Here is the end of one of the greatest men in France – and of a father who often gave me the impression that he would have sacrificed his son as well as himself, to historic destiny.”
Philippe took over the family estate, La Boisserie’ at Colombey, before donating it to the nation in 1979, to be run by the Charles de Gaulle Institute.
Phillipe was promoted to Rear Admiral in 1971 and given command of ALPATMAR, the aviation maritime patrol.
Next, he was promoted to Vice Admiral. He was put in charge of the whole French Atlantic Fleet.
Finally, in 1980, Philippe was made a full admiral and became the Inspector General of the Navy, a position he held for two years until his retirement from military service.
His next step was to become a politician. One observer called him, “The only legitimate heir of Gaullism.” However, Philippe had a fairly undistinguished career in politics, serving as a senator for the Paris region between 1985 and 2004.
He was a big supporter of Jacques Chirac, but absolutely hated Francois Mitterand and his socialist principles.
De Gaulle refused to attend any remembrance service if Mitterand was present.
Philippe also had a particular hostility to the European Union.
At one point, Philippe joined the right-wing National Party and stood for them in European elections. This provoked outrage from other family members. Fifty of them wrote him a letter, claiming he had betrayed his father’s values. “You cannot use the family name to defend…the ideas and the men who for more than half a century have been enemies of what General de Gaulle stood for.”
In 2003, Philippe wrote a biography of his father entitled, ‘De Gaulle-My Father’. He called Charles, “The moral sense of the nation. The constant of French values of all time.”
His own memoirs, called ‘Ancilliary Memories’, published four years earlier, had been a total commercial failure.
In the biography of his father, he revealed a letter Charles sent to him in 1964, expressing the hope that Philippe would replace him as the President of France.
He admitted he always felt intimidated by his father’s success. This feeling was intensified by his sister Elisabeth’s husband, Alain de Boisseau, who was the Chief of Staff in the French army – and had been awarded the highest level of the Legion d’Honneur.
In the new century, there was a revival in interest about General de Gaulle in France. Streets, squares and schools were named after him. Philippe found himself invited to opening ceremonies, almost on a daily basis. Interviews were non-stop. In his eighties, he found himself a celebrity (although he commented it was always about his father, never about him).
Philippe had always refused permission for there to be a statue of his father in Paris, but finally he relented. There was one put up of General de Gaulle at the bottom of the Champs Elysses, very close to statues of Winston Churchill and Georges Clemenceau.
Sister Elisabeth died in 2013, closely followed by his wife, Henriette, in 2014.
Of their four sons, three reached prominent positions. Charles became a lawyer and MEP, Yves a technocrat and Jean a deputy in the French Parliament. Only the youngest, Pierre, kept a relatively low profile.
Philippe went to live in a nursing home in Neuilly-sur-Seine, before transferring to a military retirement home in Les Invalides in Paris. It was there that he died aged 102.
Despite his military career, his father Charles refused to grant him the Medal of Resistance and also denied him the Companion of Liberation – “Everyone knows you were my first companion.”
Charles was fearful of being accused of nepotism. However, many historians feel that because of his distinguished wartime service, Philippe was fully deserving of these honours.
In 2019, there was a National Assembly tribute to Philippe, finally recognising the contribution he had made in the war. He was awarded the Legion d’Honneur. Phillipe was very proud.
He was outraged when a recent poll asked the public to vote for the greatest ever French person and his father came sixteenth (Napoleon won). He proclaimed General de Gaulle should have been first.
Philippe had a quiet family funeral, which was followed by President Emmanuel Macron making a national tribute. It was said, “France was in his heart to the end.”
Philippe was buried next to his wife in the communal cemetery at Colombey, directly opposite his father, mother and sister Anne.
RIP – Resisting Invasion, Phillipe
