Word: weygand
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...Weygand Testifies. To the crowded courtroom in the Palais de Justice, the Marshal's lawyers had summoned their star witness: ailing, emaciated General Maxime Weygand, 78, commander in chief of the French Army when it surrendered in 1940 and now under charge of high treason...
Scorning a chair, but leaning on a cane, Weygand hammered at the prosecution's case. "I will accept from no one," he cried, "lessons in patriotism and honor. What is honor? To be steadfast and to speak the truth. . . . Nothing will induce me to call Pétain a traitor...
Freed from the German police a fortnight ago, two former Vichy officials were arrested by the French police last week. When ex-Sports Director Jean Borotra and unsuccessful General Maxime ("They have given me a disaster") Weygand got to Paris, their first stop was the Ministry of the Interior. There a police commissar and three inspectors arrested them as "dangerous to national security...
Borotra, the Bounding Basque of tennis, slapped his chest, cried derisively: "Me dangerous? Come, come." Said lean, sickly General Weygand: "Je m'en fou" ("I don't give a damn"). He added: "This animal isn't vicious, but when attacked it defends itself...
Then guards drove Weygand to a private room at the Val-de-Gråce military hospital, Borotra to an elegant residence at 35 Avenue Foch, to await the charges against them...