orig. Philippe-Marie, viscount de Hauteclocque
born Nov. 22, 1902, Belloy-Saint-Leonard, France
died Nov. 28, 1947, Colomb-Bechar, Alg.
French general in World War II. He was captured by the Germans in 1939, but escaped to England, where he took the pseudonym Leclerc to protect his family and joined the Free French forces of Charles de Gaulle .
He achieved a number of military victories in French Equatorial Africa and North Africa, and in 1944 he commanded a French division in the Normandy Invasion. On August 25 he received the surrender of the German commander in Paris. He died in an airplane accident and was posthumously named marshal of France.