Anne de Gaulle

Anne de Gaulle (January 1, 1928 - February 6, 1948) was the youngest of the three children of General Charles de Gaulle and Yvonne. He was born on January 1, 1928 in Trier, Germany, where his father was the commander of a 19th French battalion of hunters on foot, stationed there.

He was born with Down Syndrome, but this genetic disorder was no obstacle to the Gaulle family, who always remained close. According to De Gaulle's relatives, he was usually not very demonstrative with his relatives, including his eldest sons Philippe and Élisabeth, whom he saw as a rigorous father and was only very open, affectionate and outgoing with his little daughter, Anne. / p>

Anne de Gaulle died on February 6, 1948 of bronchopneumonia at age 20 in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises. After his death and subsequent burial in the Cemetery of that town, his very emotional father said to his disconsolate wife: "Now, she is like the others." ("Maintenant, elle est comme les autres".)

In October 1948, her mother Yvonne acquired the Château de Vert-Cœur in Milon-la-Chapelle (Yvelines), where she set up a private hospital for disadvantaged young girls: the "Anne de Gaulle Foundation" to his deceased daughter in that same year.

On August 22, 1962, Charles de Gaulle was about to be killed, when the deadly bullet stopped in the frame of a photograph of his beloved daughter, Anne, that the General always took and was placed in the back shelf of his car on that fateful day, according to the General's own version.

Charles de Gaulle died in November 1970, was buried in the Colombey Cemetery next to his beloved daughter. They would join their mother Yvonne, who died in Paris in 1979, nine years after the death of De Gaulle and thirty-one years after the death of her daughter Anne.

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