In September 1962, Admiral Philippe de Gaulle, son of President Charles de Gaulle, is seen boating on the Rhine River with his father. /Yonhap News
According to Le Monde, Admiral Philippe de Gaulle, son of General Charles de Gaulle, a leader of the French Resistance during World War II and the first president of the Fifth French Republic, passed away on the 13th at the age of 102 years old(local time).
The son of Admiral Philippe de Gaulle announced to the press that his father had passed away overnight at Les Invalides National Hospital in Paris, where he had been staying for two years.
Bidding father’s command, Philippe de Gaulle joined the war in 1940 while studying at the Free French Forces Naval Academy.
Admiral Philippe participated in numerous operations in the English Channel and the Atlantic. In August 1944, he accepted the surrender of the German Army stationed in Paris as a member of the 2nd Armored Division. He continued to advance eastward to drive out the German Army.
He once said, “Among all the sons of heads of state, including the Soviet Union, I fought the hardest.”
General de Gaulle, who became the president of the interim government with the liberation of France in 1944, refused to award his son the Liberation Medal. For this reason, even though Philippe de Gaulle was awarded the Military Medal and the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor for his contributions, he did not receive the Liberation Medal.
General de Gaulle consoled his son, saying, “I could not make you, my son, a comrade of liberation. Everyone knows that you were my first compagnon(comrade in French) of liberation anyway.”
Philippe de Gaulle subsequently participated in the Indochina War and the Algerian War and ended his military career as an admiral inspector general of the navy in 1982.
He then entered politics and served as a senator from 1986 to 2004.
Philippe de Gaulle took the lead in publishing his father’s letters and notes as books and recorded anecdotes about his father during his lifetime in the book “My Father de Gaulle.”
On this day, Le Monde evaluated Philippe de Gaulle as “having built an outstanding career in the French Navy but living his entire life in the shadow of his father.”
President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute on X (formerly Twitter), saying, “As a navy, admiral, and senator, he never lost absolute courage and honor,” and expressed “the nation’s condolences to his family.”
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