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GENERAL |
| name, to the Rhone Poulenc
plant in the nearby Rhone Valley as "reformed" from the STO and allowed
to work in France. From there he moved to the organized Résistance
of the Drôme in early 1944 and became "Lieutenant Pierre Séguy"
with all of five armed men and a truck under his command.
An attempt, one evening, to surprise a German patrol, failed, when one of the Germans remarked to the other, "When we are looking for the Maquis, we can not find them. They come only when we are not looking for them. They are right below us. Be careful and make as if you were just playing with your guns. Then, at my command, shoot them." Pierre understood what was being said and gave the order to retreat. The German patrol fired at them, but much too late, and there were no casualties. When, a week later, five "Croix de Guerre" for valor before the enemy were being distributed to the troops, my brother was decorated by his Colonel for bravery. He saw much heavier action, however, during the retreat of the German troops through the Rhone Valley, in which the German units were halted at the bridges damaged by the Maquis and destroyed by the Allied aviation. Pierre Séguy (my twin) then became war correspondent for the military newspaper in Valence: Reporting from the front lines, he passed quickly through General de Lattre de Tassigny's headquarters, and was ushered, unshaven and in a dirty uniform, into the presence of the General, and introduced as a correspondent who did his job on the front lines. General de Lattre appointed Pierre on the spot as his personal journalist. I have a photo of de Lattre on the balcony of the city hall in Colmar, with Pierre Séguy behind him. Nobody believes that it is not I. Promoted again at the time of the Armistice, Pierre Séguy (not I, but he) became the director of broadcasting in the French Zone of Austria, and later, in the Saar, where he still lives, a successful journalist and stamp expert. His name was officially changed to Pierre Séguy by a decision of the French Supreme Court. We are thus, as far as I know, the only male twins in the world not separated at birth who do not bear the same name. On the other hand, I myself have kept, as a nom de plume, the name Pierre Séguy, under which I write for the Paris newspapers. There is, however, little chance that one would confuse the two Pierre Séguys, as one reports from Washington, and the other from the Franco-German frontier in Lorraine and the Saar. Maurice Séguy had a scare, one afternoon, when two gendarmes arrived at the seminary. (The appearance of one was often a joke, but two were a strong indication that an arrest was imminent.) They did not go to the office of Madame Crespy, whom I had warned and who would have known how to deal with them. These two representatives of the German Order in France met only one of my fellow students, who had not been told of my recent change of identity. Asked to call Pierre Séguy, he kindly obliged and yelled upstairs through the entrance hall, "Séguy! there are people here to see you!" As I was responding to
the call and rounded the first corner of the stairs, I realized immediately
who the people "coming to see me" were. There was no time to retreat,
as they had already spotted me from below: |
