The Sharpshooter

"Monsieur le Maire," protested the great hero modestly, "this is really too much honor . . ." But the mayor and all the citizens of Bernay who gathered in the town hall on that broiling day of August 1948 laughed aside the protest with proud, tolerant smiles. Too much honor? For Roger Touchard, the champion marksman of two continents, the local boy who had made good? Too much? "Ah, tell me, Touchard," said one of the local dignitaries, "what would you say to a red ribbon in your coat, the Cross of the Legion of Honor? What would you say to that, eh?" Roger merely gasped.

It was a great moment for 39-year-old Roger. As a boy, under the nickname Bebert ("Dopey"), he had always been something of a joke. When he tried pole vaulting, the bamboo splintered. When he tried to throw the hammer, it fell on his toe. Next he tried marathon running, only to twist an ankle. "Poor Bebert," laughed the villagers of Favril, his boyhood home. They did not know that secretly Roger was reading up on sports, determined to become a champion. "Father," he said one day in 1946, "I'm leaving for Versailles. There's a big rifle-shooting contest on there, and I'm entering."

Marksman Who Missed. Moved and touched, the elder Touchard gave his son money for the journey, and eight days later was rewarded with the news, borne by returning Roger himself, that he had won the contest. "I have smashed the world's record," said Roger. "Bebert!" cried his father, and hurried out to tell the neighbors.

After that, things went from better to better for Bebert. In the next three years he left town several times, only to return with news of even greater triumphs. At shooting matches in Amsterdam, Lisbon, London and Toronto, he said, he had won all sorts of prizes, spreading his talents to include not only rifles but pistols. The local girls flung themselves at his feet, and after a time, Roger married one of the richest of them and moved to the bigger town of Bernay. There the local shooting club welcomed him with open arms and were only slightly put out when Roger missed the target completely at his first shoot. "I suppose," said one member, "that he didn't want to embarrass us." Soon afterward Roger resigned, to assume the presidency of what he called the International Federation of Professional Marksmen.

Ticker-Tape Triumph. Two years ago Roger left Bernay once more--bound, he said, for some great shooting matches in Chicago and New York. He returned with a lyric description of the ticker-tape reception accorded him on New York's lower Broadway. "Never," he said, "shall I forget that delirious welcome," and the applause that greeted the words in Bernay was deafening. After that, it was a cinch. On Sept. 15, 1954, officials announced that "for 25 years' activity in the field of sport," Roger Touchard had been named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.

If only Roger had had the sense to stop talking then and there--but no, his stories went on, and in time the truth caught up with them. There was no International Federation of Professional Marksmen. Roger had won no championships, had shot no rifles and no pistols, had never even seen lower Broadway. His dreamy triumphs had all occurred while he lounged idly in a Left Bank bistro in Paris. Once again the laughter of fellow townsfolk rang in Roger's ears. But Roger did not stay to listen. By last week he had vanished, alone and inglorious, into the Norman countryside. His wife was suing him for divorce, and officials of the Legion of Honor were gruffly declining to discuss his case.

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