Soldier's Son

Bernard de Lattre de Tassigny was the fighting son of a fighting father. He was 12 when the Nazis conquered France. At 16, he made his way out across the Pyrenees and through Spain to North Africa, where his father, General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, was already organizing what later became the French First Army. Young Bernard enlisted in the Free French army in 1944, landed with the Allies in the south of France, went on with the French army into Germany, won a Medaille Militaire and a Croix de Guerre with palm. Last week, in Indo-China, Lieut. Bernard de Lattre, 23, won his second Croix de Guerre.

At the height of the Day River battle (see above), Bernard de Lattre, leading a platoon of Vietnamese troops, volunteered to hold an isolated position in order to give French forces who had been cut off a chance to fight their way clear. Read the citation: "Completely isolated, he resisted victoriously during the whole night . . . all the assaults of a fanatical enemy mass." During the night, a mortar shell hit the young platoon leader. Concluded the citation: "He fell heroically, giving an example of the finest military virtues."

Two days after the battle, General Jean de Lattre flew home to France. In his big Douglas Skymaster in three coffins were the bodies of French soldiers, killed in Indo-China, sent home for burial in France. One of them was the body of his only son.

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