Appeal of 18 June: one month before, de Gaulle was already speaking on the radio, from the Marne – France Bleu

A month before launch, from London, his “call of June 18,” General de Gaulle had sent another message to the French fighting spirit. It was May 1940, in Marne, in the “old castle” of Savigny-sur-Ardres.

There are 76, June 18, 1940, General de Gaulle uttered his famous “call June 18 “. From London, on the airwaves of the BBC, a call to resistance sent to the French, prompting them to refuse to surrender, to resist and to fight. A month earlier, in May 1940, Charles de Gaulle had already delivered a speech on the radio and he had done since the marnaise town of Savigny-sur-Ardres.

Three days and two nights

Charles de Gaulle was still colonel when, in May 1940 at the head of a division of battleships, it conducts an operation in the Aisne. His troops destroy thirty enemy tanks near the town of Montcornet. He decided to retire and it’s almost by chance he arrives with his men in the town of Savigny-sur-Ardres. “It could very well choose the town next door” , confesses the village mayor, Philippe Causse, “but here there was the “old castle”, a sufficiently large building to house the Colonel and his band “ .

This” old castle “is now inhabited by Martha Pulling Bury, a young nurse who chose to live alone in Savigny, from leaving her husband and children to shelter. “They arrived, invested the scene and were assigned a room in the house. She was not allowed to go out. They even served him his meals” says Hervé, the grand-son of Martha. De Gaulle will spend there three days and two nights in the “blue room”, upstairs in the house at the end of a long corridor.

A plaque testifies to the passage Gaulle © Radio France – Aurélie Jacquand

the call before the call

At the same time, French radio broadcasts a program in which the soldiers demonstrate their daily war. The high command got wind of the stunt of Colonel de Gaulle in Aisne, he decided to gather his testimony. A team of the show “the fifteen minutes of the soldier” is sent to Savigny-sur-Ardres. On 17 May 1940, Charles de Gaulle wrote and thus records a speech 230 words, forerunner of his famous “Appeal of June 18″ .

In this day there is nothing left, neither picture nor sound track or written document. As for Martha, her hostess, she never really talked about this story to his family or revised General de Gaulle, but it kept a nickname: General

De Gaulle spent 2 nights in this house © Radio France – Aurélie Jacquand