REMEMBERING FRENCH RESISTANCE HERO.
Received his country's highest honour
Aged 19 and about to join the French army, Daniel Cordier heard on the radio in June 1940 that France's military head of state, Marshal Philippe Pétain, had capitulated to the Nazis.
“I went up to my room and sobbed,” he said. Then, mustering a choice epithet about Pétain, he regrouped.
Cordier became a key member of the French resistance, helping unify the disparate guerrilla groups out to distract the Nazis in the run-up to Normandy.
Cordier died age 100 at his home near Cannes, of unspecified causes, according to a statement by French President Emmanuel Macron. In 2018, Macron awarded Cordier the Grand Croix of the Légion d'honneur.
With 100- year- old Hubert Germain, Cordier was the last surviving resistance fighter of the 1,038 — including six women — honoured by resistance leader Gen. Charles de Gaulle with the title Compagnon de la Libération.
Cordier was best known as the right- hand man to legendary resistance leader Jean Moulin, who had served as first president of the National Council of the Resistance.
Daniel Bouyjou was born in Bordeaux on Aug. 10, 1920. He adopted the surname Cordier from his stepfather.
Influenced by him, young Daniel took to absorbing the works of French writer and political theorist Charles Maurras, an extreme rightwing nationalist and anti- Semite who became an early political hero to him, though Cordier's opinions changed with experience.
After attending boarding schools, he wrote of his attraction to boys but waited until age 89 to come out, around the time he wrote his memoir, Alias Caracalla.
After guerrilla training in Britain, he parachuted into France on July 25, 1942, to link up with a resistance leader de Gaulle had named only as Rex.
Cordier, whose code name was Bip W, became Rex's right- hand man until the latter was captured in June 1943 and tortured to death. More than a year later, Cordier learned Rex's real name was Jean Moulin.
He continued the resistance from London as an intelligence agent liaising by radio with guerrillas in France.