Hélie Denoix de Saint Marc was a French Foreign Legion officer, mainly serving with airborne units. Best known for his active participation in the 1961 Generals’ Putsch, he died ten years ago, on August 26, 2013. The following article was written in his memory.

Hélie Denoix de Saint Marc (officially Élie Denoix de Saint Marc, also known as Hélie de Saint Marc) was born in southwestern France’s Bordeaux on February 11, 1922. He was the last of seven children to Joseph, a lawyer and First World War veteran, and his wife, Madeleine. Upon finishing his studies at the Tivoli Jesuit college, young Hélie entered the illegal Resistance movement in February 1941, during the military occupation of France by Nazi Germany. He was 19 years old. In July 1943, he determined to flee to Spain to join the Free French forces. Nevertheless, Hélie was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Germany’s Buchenwald concentration camp where he would almost die. Sent to the Langenstein labor camp in late 1944, he was liberated by Americans shortly before the end of WWII in Europe, in April 1945.

In 1946, Hélie de Saint Marc joined the “Indochina” class at the Joint Military School (École Militaire Interarmes, EMIA), a military academy for future officers, and left it as a second lieutenant in late 1947. He immediately decided to serve with the famous Foreign Legion in the First Indochina War in Southeast Asia, against Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh.

In mid-1948, after a short passage in the 4e REI in French North Africa’s Morocco, now Lieutenant de Saint Marc arrived in Indochina and was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 3e REI in what was then Tonkin (Northern Vietnam).

Posted in the northernmost part of Tonkin, on the border with China, the young officer was tasked with formation of a guerilla-like unit, consisting entirely of local anti-communist partisans. Assigned to the same battalion, the unit became the 7th Light Partisan Company (7e CLP). He commanded them until 1950. During this period, Hélie de Saint Marc experienced an ordered retreat from the region, when his partisans and local villagers had to be abandoned and left at the mercy of the Viet Minh enemy who would massacre them; this left a deep wound in him. In late 1950, he returned to North Africa and joined the Foreign Legion’s 3e BEP in Algeria.

In mid-1951, Lieutenant de Saint Marc was back in Tonkin. Assigned to the 2e BEP under famous Major Raffalli, he took over the battalion’s 2nd Indochinese Parachute Company (2e CIPLE), again comprising only local auxiliaries. Promoted to captain in October 1951, he commanded the company until mid-May 1953 when he left the battalion for France. There, he would serve as a counter-espionage service officer within an airborne unit based in Perpignan, a town located close to the Spanish border. As a matter of interest, he was arrested by the Gestapo nearby the same town in 1943.

 

Hélie de Saint Marc returned to Indochina for the third time in mid-1954 and temporarily took command of the prestigious 1er BEP, recently annihilated in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and undergoing reorganization at the time. He then took over the battalion’s 3rd Company where he had under his command certain Second Lieutenant Jean-Marie Le Pen, a future well-known French politician.

The 1er BEP, now under Major Jeanpierre, left Indochina in February 1955 and was shipped to French Algeria. The unit quickly joined military operations against FLN rebels in this country, which would soon become a regular conflict, the Algerian War. Later that year, the battalion was transformed into a regiment, the 1er REP, with Captain de Saint Marc still commanding the 3rd Company. The unit mainly operated on the border with Tunisia.

In November 1956, he participated with his regiment in the Suez Crisis, a British-French invasion of Egypt.

In January 1957, the counter-terrorist Battle of Algiers started in the capital of Algeria. The 1er REP took an important part. Hélie de Saint Marc, however, left the company and the regiment in early February. He was accepted to serve as a military secretary and a press officer to General Massu, the then head of the 10th Parachute Division who also successfully led the military operations in the capital.

In 1957, Hélie de Saint Marc married Manette de Châteaubodeau.

In 1958, he became member of the HQ staff of the 10th Parachute Division to which the 1er REP had still been assigned.

In January 1961, now Major de Saint Marc rejoined the 1er REP and became its second-in-command. Meanwhile, the political situation in Algeria had deteriorated significantly. The rebels had been successfully suppressed for some time, yet the French leadership began to talk of a truce and possible independence for the country. Many in the armed forced saw this as a clear betrayal.

Thus, in April of the same year, the Putsch of Generals in Algiers was organized against French President Charles de Gaulle, to force him to abandon such negotiations with the enemy. While the colonel was on leave, Major de Saint Marc took the 1er REP and joined the putsch. Nevertheless, four days later, the putsch failed. As a result, the 1er REP was disbanded and Hélie de Saint Marc arrested. In his opening statement before the military tribunal, he explained that his motivation for joining the putsch was a desire not to abandon the pro-French Harkis, Algerian auxiliaries recruited by the French to fight the rebels, and thus not repeat the sad experience of Indochina.

Hélie de Saint Marc was sentenced to ten years. He spent five years in prison before being eventually pardoned by de Gaulle, and released on December 25, 1966.

 

Following his release, Hélie de Saint Marc worked as a personnel director in a metalworking company in Lyon, southeastern France. His military honors, awards, and the right to vote were recovered in 1978.

In the late 1980s, he began to collaborate with the journalist Laurent Beccaria, who wrote and published his biography which achieved public success. Hélie de Saint Marc then began to speak at conferences around the world, including the United States.

Feeling his full public rehabilitation, he became a writer and wrote several books about his life and experiences, including Les Soldats Oubliés (1993), Memoires (1995), Les Sentinelles du Soir (1999), and Notre Histoire (2002), discussing different experiences of the Second World War with a German Wehrmacht officer of a similar age.

In 1991, Hélie de Saint Marc returned to Indochina and traveled throughout Vietnam, accompanied by a son of the 1er BEP’s first battalion commander, Etienne Segretain.

Four years later, he was invited to visit the 2e REP in Corsica.

In late 2011, then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy personally awarded de Saint Marc (aged 89 at the time) the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, the highest class of the most prestigious French order of merit.

Hélie de Saint Marc, who spent his retirement in the Drôme department in southeastern France, died on August 26, 2013, aged 91. He had four daughters.

His funeral was celebrated on August 30, in the Lyon Cathedral, and was attended, among many others, by General Ract-Madoux, then-French Army Chief of Staff who represented Defense Minister, as well as a honor platoon of the Foreign Legion. Later that day, Hélie de Saint Marc was buried in the Garde-Adhémar cemetery, Drôme department.

In his honor, three streets were named after him in France: in Orange (December 2013), in Béziers (March 2015), and in Bollène (2019).

 
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