PARIS – The eldest child of French World War II Resistance leader and first post-war president Charles de Gaulle, has died aged 102, his family said on March 13.

Mr Philippe de Gaulle, who was a significant military figure in his own right, heeded his father’s call to join the Free French forces in the fight against Nazism in World War II.

He later had a successful naval career, rising to the rank of admiral, and also became a senator.

Despite a striking physical resemblance, he was a more low-key figure than his father but devoted himself to preserving the memory of Charles de Gaulle, notably through numerous books, including the successful work De Gaulle, My Father.

His son, Mr Yves de Gaulle, told AFP that he died overnight from March 12 to 13 in the Invalides in central Paris, the French military institution where he had lived for two years.

“Philippe de Gaulle anticipated his father’s call to join the Resistance,” President Emmanuel Macron wrote in a tribute on X.

“Sailor, admiral, senator, he never came up short when courage and honour were required. A century of French bravery.”

Mr Macron opened a Cabinet meeting on March 13 with a tribute to Mr Philippe de Gaulle and will hold a national memorial ceremony at the Invalides next week in his memory, government spokeswoman Prisca Thevenot said.

Mr Eric Ciotti, head of the right-wing Republicans party that sees itself as the inheritor of Charles de Gaulle’s political mantle, described Mr Philippe de Gaulle as a “pillar” of France.

“His life dedicated to the service of France, in the navy and in the Senate, was a living example for the Republic,” Mr Ciotti wrote on X.

Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu said: “France was in his heart until the end.”

‘Not easy’

Mr Philippe de Gaulle joined the Free French Naval Forces in 1940 and fought in the North Atlantic until 1944, then in France itself when the Resistance joined the Allies in pushing the Nazis out of France, taking part in the Normandy Landings of D-Day.

After the war, he saw action during post-colonial conflicts in Indochina (modern-day Cambodia, Laos and parts of Vietnam and China), Morocco and Algeria.

Charles de Gaulle was wary of the slightest hint of nepotism and never helped his son win a post, nor did he decorate him with the Order of Liberation after the war.

The upbringing of Charles de Gaulle’s three children was austere, with their mother Yvonne said to have kissed Philippe and his two sisters only on their birthdays and on Dec 31.

The eldest of the sisters, Elisabeth, died in 2013. The youngest of the children, Anne, who had Down syndrome, died in 1948, aged just 20.

“I know everything, my boy. Your position has never been easy. It’s not nothing to be the son of General de Gaulle,” he was told on one occasion by his father.

“But your attitude has always been the one I expected of you,” said Charles de Gaulle.

Mr Nicolas Lacroix, president of the Charles de Gaulle memorial in the eastern town of Colombey-les-deux-Eglises, where de Gaulle lived before World War II and died in 1970, said Mr Philippe de Gaulle would be buried opposite his father in the local cemetery and alongside his wife Henriette, his mother Yvonne and sister Anne.

“Our country has lost one of its great defenders. Gaullism has lost one of its greatest ambassadors,” he said, adding that the French flag would be at half-mast at the memorial until the burial takes place. AFP