Philippe Pétain

Philippe Pétain is a consequential but largely offstage figure in Romain Gary’s memoir: a revered military authority whose image helps direct Gary’s actions during France’s collapse, and whose perceived betrayal exposes the limits of Gary’s faith in national leadership. The account follows not Pétain’s private life but the changing meaning of his name to those who believe in, and then question, his authority.

Identity and Narrative Role

Pétain enters the narrative as Marshal Pétain, presented to Gary and other airmen as a leader determined to keep fighting. Gary’s account makes clear that this image had deep emotional force: he regarded Pétain as embodying military virtue, while his mother spoke of him with almost religious reverence. The memoir therefore establishes Pétain’s importance through the expectations attached to him, rather than through a personal encounter.

That reverence also shapes Gary’s interpretation of events. Faced with France’s worsening military position, he assumes that the country’s leaders must have a plan for reversing it. Pétain becomes part of the larger figure of a national leadership in which Gary continues to place confidence even as defeat gathers momentum.

The Bordeaux Patrols

On returning from a bombing mission on June 13, 1940, Gary landed at Tours to refuel and was wounded during an attack on the airfield. At Bordeaux-Mérignac, he was then assigned, with two other crews, to low-altitude patrols over working-class districts of Bordeaux. The briefing described the mission as protecting Pétain, who was supposedly determined to continue the struggle against Germany, from a Communist fifth column preparing to seize power and make terms with Hitler.

Gary accepted that explanation. He flew with loaded machine guns, ready to act against a suspected crowd if the base gave the signal, and believed he was defending a leader who meant to resist defeat. He recalls that other cadets had been given the same account and were placed on guard in the streets. In retrospect, the patrols become an episode of misdirection: men who thought they were serving continued resistance were prepared to use force against people described to them as an internal threat.

The Collapse of Gary’s Image of Pétain

The reversal is not simply that the promised counterstroke never comes. Gary recognizes that the description of Pétain as a determined defender of France has misled him, and that the real danger was not the openly identified fifth column of the briefing. He recasts the threat as a force working insidiously within the country, weakening the will and judgment of those who trusted its leadership.

Gary connects his own misreading to a broader, painful failure of judgment. He admits that his interpretation of the Dreyfus affair had not prepared him to question revered military authority: he had continued to excuse the conduct of military leaders when he believed a Jewish target was involved. His faith in Pétain thus belongs to a recurring pattern in which patriotic loyalty and inherited reverence obstruct his recognition of political betrayal. Even as defeats accumulate, he waits for a brilliant reversal and acknowledges how persistently he had mistaken hope for insight.

Pétain’s Afterlife in Exile

In Meknès, another Polish-speaking woman whom Gary hopes to persuade to join him in leaving for England rejects his appeal to patriotism. She says that she will marry a farmer, that the war is over, that Pétain has saved France and will restore order, and that the English have betrayed France. Her words show how the image of Pétain as a source of safety could remain persuasive beyond the moment of Gary’s disillusionment.

The episode also sets private survival against political conviction. Gary is disappointed but does not blame the woman for seeking something solid amid the upheaval. Pétain’s name, in this brief exchange, offers her a justification for giving up the effort to continue the war; for Gary, it recalls the false assurances under which he had flown over Bordeaux. Across these scenes, Pétain’s narrative significance lies in the gap between the resistance attributed to him and the defeat that Gary eventually understands as having overtaken the country.