He was born in 22 November 1901 in Belloy-Saint-Léonard- France, and He was dead in 28 November 1947 in Béchar, Algeria
Comte de Hauteclocque, also known as resistant Jacques-Philippe Leclerc
The dawn of an exceptional destiny
The son of Adrien, count de Hauteclocque (1864-1945) and Marie-Thérèse van der Cruisse de Waziers (1870-1956), he grew up in a family of the Picardy nobility. He spends most of his family holidays in the fishing village of Audresselles.
In 1922, he entered the Saint-Cyr Special Military Academy (promotion of Metz and Strasbourg, from which he left two years later as a cavalry major. He then entered the École d'application de la Cavalry of Saumur, of which he leaves in 1925, again, being major.
He married the same year with Marie-Thérèse de Gargan (married 10 August 1925), of whom he had six children (four boys and two girls).
Since 1918 (and until 1930), the Saar is under French occupation as a result of the Treaty of Versailles (1919) following the First World War. The young Philip de Hauteclocque has as his first assignment the 5th regiment of cuirassiers at Trier; After spending a year there, he gets an assignment to the 8th Algerian Spahis in Morocco. It participates in the pacification of the territory during the war of the Rif, during which it is distinguished. He had several horses killed under him during clashes with Berber tribes and was injured in particular (heel or ankle) by falling from his mount, which earned him to use a cane for the rest of his life. In 1929, the command of the 38th Goum was entrusted to him.
He became an instructor at the École de Saint-Cyr in 1931. During a second stay in Morocco, he was promoted to captain in 1934, obtained the Legion of Honor, and the rank of captain on an exceptional basis. In 1938, he passed the entrance examination to the School of War (now became the Joint Defense College), of which he left major in 1939.
1939-1940: the campaign of France
In May 1940, Philippe de Hautecloque was the captain of the 4th Infantry Division, stationed on the Belgian front. During the German attack, he was taken prisoner, but managed to escape and rejoin the allied lines, where he resumed fighting.
On 15 June, he participated in a counteroffensive in the Champagne plain during which he was wounded in the head. The German tanks opened fire on the house in which he was and part of the ceiling collapsed on him. The wound did not seem to affect him to such an extent that he continued the fight until he was again taken prisoner.
1940-1942: the struggle continues in Africa
On June 17, 1940, he managed to escape and decided to continue the struggle. He crossed France by bicycle, despite the German occupation, joined his wife and his 6 children on the roads of the exodus near Libourne in Gironde. After having informed them of his will to fight, he crossed the Pyrenees near Perpignan. He is briefly arrested in Spain, then arrives to Portugal from where he joins London by boat.
He presented himself to General de Gaulle on 25 July. In order to avoid reprisals being directed against his family, he took the pseudonym Leclerc, common name in his native region. General de Gaulle, recognizing him as an exceptional leader, promoted him from captain to squadron leader at their first meeting and gave him the mission of rallying French Equatorial Africa to Free France. His involvement in free France led him to abandon the Action Francaise.On August 6, 1940, he left England for Cameroon with René Pleven, André Parant and Claude Hettier de Boislambert. Twenty days later, he disembarks in dugout in Douala with 22 men. He met the commander Louis Dio, who arrived from Fort Lamy at the head of a detachment of the Senegalese rifle regiment of Chad. He succeeded in convincing the authorities loyal to Vichy to fade and joined Cameroon, Chad and Congo to the cause of Free France under the aegis of Felix Eboue and Larminat.
Leclerc is appointed Commissioner-General of Cameroon and on 28 August, all the AEF, except Gabon, rallied to General de Gaulle. The latter, during a visit to Douala on 8 October, agreed to Leclerc in an attempt to rally the country to his cause. With the help of the French Free Forces, retreated after the failure of the Dakar expedition (23-25 September), Leclerc landed near Libreville on November 8 and November 10, Gabon joins France Libre.
Leclerc was then officially confirmed to the rank of colonel by General de Gaulle, a rank which he had self-attributed "as if by enchantment" according to the expression of De Gaulle arriving in Cameroon not to be in hierarchical inferiority compared to To the lieutenant colonel in Douala, and is appointed military commander of Chad.
For the first time, France Libre has a significant territorial and strategic base.
From these bases, his column, which included Captain Massu, carried out raids of several thousand kilometers towards the Italian posts. Having taken the oasis of Koufra (28 February 1941) with only 1 cannon and 300 men, he swore his soldiers not to lay down their weapons until they had seen the French flag float on the cathedral of Strasbourg.
He continued the fighting in Libya and took part in the capture of Tunis by the Allies with Force L (L for Leclerc) at the beginning of 1943.
1943-1945: The Victory on the Move
Leclerc's army, which has been appointed general, is equipped with American equipment and enjoys a few months of respite to incorporate former Vichy soldiers.
Sent to Normandy, his 2nd Armored Division (better known as the 2nd DB) landed on 1 August 1944. As part of the 3rd Army of General Patton, the division of Leclerc, or "Croix de Lorraine" division, sometimes became the iron Of American attacks. His division freed Alencon on August 12, is illustrated in the forest of Ecouves, but hinders on August 13 on Argentan that it can not invest, embarrassing in fact the American movements. Leclerc then asked permission to leave the theater of operations in Normandy, "Do not lose a single man here and liberate the capital of France".
With the agreement he withdrew from his superiors, the 2nd DB rushed to Paris, so that on August 25, 1944, General Leclerc received the surrender of General von Choltitz, German military governor of Paris, at the Gare Montparnasse . The capital was liberated in two days, almost without combat, in a mixture of jubilation and shots. Generals de Gaulle and Leclerc descend side by side to the Avenue des Champs Élysées, while sporadic clashes still erupt.
Before the end of 1944, on 23 November, his troops liberated Strasbourg, taking a weapon to recall that the oath of Koufra was held. Ultimate feats of arms, it is the French soldiers of Leclerc who seize the Kehlsteinhaus, Hitler's eagle's nest in Berchtesgaden in Bavaria, just days before the armistice of 8 May 1945.
On 21 June he bade farewell with solemnity to his division, which he left to rejoin the French Expeditionary Force in the Far East in French Indochina occupied by Japan since 1940.
On September 2, 1945, Leclerc signed the act of capitulation of Japan aboard the battleship USS Missouri, in the roads of Tokyo, on behalf of France.
The Terrible Years
He also took part in the liberation of Indochina invaded successively by Japan and Thailand in 1940 and 1941. On January 29, 1946, he restored French sovereignty throughout Cochinchina and South Annam, while being lucid on the necessity Of a political solution. In Tonkin Ho Chi Minh welcomes Leclerc on 26 March 1946 in Hanoi, shaking hands with him. Indeed, it was favorable to a political resolution of the crisis that shook the French colony.
In 1946, Leclerc was appointed Inspector General in North Africa.
A tragic death and a nation's tribute
On November 28, 1947, during an inspection tour in North Africa, his plane, a B-25 Mitchell is caught in a sandstorm. It is assumed that the pilot descended at low altitude to find geographical cues, but the aircraft struck the railway not far from Colomb-Béchar. The 12 occupants of the aircraft are killed instantly.
The news of this death is a shock for a France who hardly recovered from a terrible war and who saw in this man the liberator of Paris and Strasbourg, the one who had cleared the affront of the defeat of 1940. After a tribute At Notre Dame, the 2nd DB escorted his chief to the Arc de Triomphe, where a crowd of Frenchmen bowed before the coffin of the Army General. He is buried in the crypt of Les Invalides.
He was raised to the dignity of Marshal of France, posthumously, by decree of August 23, 1952.
Controversy over the circumstances of death
Konrad Killian, probably murdered on August 30, 1950, under mysterious circumstances, was the first to launch the idea that Britain would have caused Leclerc to be assassinated because of the secret oil war in Fezzan in the western part of Libya . However, there is no evidence to support this view.
On the contrary, Jean-Christophe Notin demonstrates that the aircraft, modified to accommodate passengers and unbalanced by the addition of a bunk at the rear, would simply have stalled while flying at low altitude, as he had As a result of these changes.
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