Gendarme gets hero’s farewell in Paris

PARIS — Officers of the French Republican Guard, riding motorcycles and wearing blue uniforms and white helmets, formed the honor guard escorting the simple dark car carrying the body of Col. Arnaud Beltrame to the Invalides in Paris for a hero’s memorial Wednesday.

President Emmanuel Macron gave a eulogy for Beltrame, and the gendarme was honored with a full military ceremony for his act of courage in voluntarily exchanging himself for a female hostage during a terrorist attack last week in Trebes, in southwestern France, an act that saved the woman and possibly others but cost the gendarme his life.

‘‘To accept to die so the innocent can live, that is the essence of what it means to be a soldier,’’ Macron said. ‘‘Others, even many who are brave, would have hesitated.’’

Macron awarded Beltrame the title of Commander of the Legion of Honor, one of the highest accolades that France bestows.

Macron and Édouard Philippe, the prime minister, stood bareheaded out of respect for Beltrame, despite a chilly, steady rain, as did crowds of Parisians who lined the route the hearse took through the capital. Although most of the onlookers had not known the 44-year-old gendarme in life, they knew everything about his death.

Laying aside his weapon Friday, Beltrame entered a Super U market in Trebes not long after Radouane Lakdim, 25, had entered, wielding a handgun and Soldiers carry the coffin of Lt. Col. Arnaud Beltrame on Wednesday in the courtyard of the Hotel des Invalides after a national ceremony in Paris.

a knife. Lakdim shot a customer and the supermarket’s butcher, then took a female cashier as a hostage. Beltrame told him to let the woman go and to

take him instead.

French news reports suggested Wednesday that Beltrame had at some point tried to disarm Lakdim, precipitating the shooting

and lethal knifing of the gendarme.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, saying Lakdim had been inspired by the militant group.