LECLERC, JACQUES-PHILIPPE

born Nov. 22, 1902, Belloy-Saint-Leonard, France died Nov. 28, 1947, Colomb-Bechar, Algeria byname of Philippe-Marie, vicomte de Hauteclocque, also called (from 1945) Jacques-Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque French general and war hero who achieved fame as the liberator of Paris. Born into a patrician family, he graduated from the prestigious military schools Saint-Cyr (1924) and Saumur. In 1939, as a captain of infantry, he was wounded and captured by the Germans, but he managed to escape to England. Upon hearing that General Charles de Gaulle was rallying Free French forces from London, he took the pseudonym Leclerc (so as to spare his family in France any reprisals) and joined de Gaulle. Promoted to colonel by de Gaulle, he achieved a number of military victories in French Equatorial Africa. After being promoted to general, he staged a spectacular 1,000-mile march from Chad to Tripoli in Libya to join the forces of the British Eighth Army, capturing Italian garrisons along the way. He took part in the Normandy invasion of 1944 as commander of a French armoured division. On August 25, the commander of the German garrison in Paris surrendered to Leclerc, and on Aug. 26, 1944, Leclerc and de Gaulle entered Paris in triumph. Leclerc liberated Strasbourg (Nov. 23, 1944) and then led his men on into Germany, capturing Berchtesgaden. In July 1945, Leclerc was named commander of the French Expeditionary Force to the Far East. That same year, he legally changed his name from Philippe-Marie, vicomte de Hauteclocque, to Jacques-Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, using his wartime pseudonym. In March 1946, Leclerc was sent to French-occupied Indochina. Perceiving that the nature of the problems there was more political than military and arousing controversy with that message in France, he resigned his post and took over in July 1946 as inspector-general of the French forces stationed in North Africa. He was killed in an airplane accident. The nation posthumously named him marshal of France.