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Gaston de Gironde, on horseback against planes

Lieutenant Gaston de Gironde was born in Ferrensac, in the north of our department in 1879, into a family of ancient nobility. Trained at the Saint-Cyr military school, when mobilization arrived in 1914, he commanded the 2nd squadron of the 16th Dragons of the 5th cavalry division. On September 9, his squadron, made up of 80 cavalrymen, reconnoitred the German lines on the road from Villers-Cotteret to Soissons.

After several days of maneuvering in this hostile country, cut off from French lines, without logistical support, the men and horses were exhausted. On the Mortefontaine plateau, at nightfall we take refuge in Vaubéron’s farm. In the middle of the night, a peasant appears and informs the dragons that nearby, next to the path that leads to Vivières, the Germans have set up an aviation park. Eight planes, guarded by sentries.

The plane was still rare at this time, and de Gironde thought the opportunity was too good. Destroying these reconnaissance devices could have major repercussions on the war. So we take back the exhausted horses, the men get up painfully from their straw mattresses, exhausted, and we go on the attack. The plan is simple: two platoons will dismount and open fire on the enemy, while another will charge the planes.

The dragons crawl closer, but a sentry spots them and opens fire.

From Gironde with Gaudin de Villaine’s peloton, charge on horseback, low lance. The Germans respond with a machine gun, the French are cut down, chopped by the gusts. Further on, the clinch are terrible. The machine gun is finally put out of harm’s way.

Some dragons reach the planes, with axes they destroy them all. Only 27 men survive the battle. Gaston de Gironde died a few hours later in the field hospital that the Germans had established near the Château de Vivières. He was 35 years old.

He fought with the weapons of his time, charging on horseback against the modern weapon of aviation. Like others loaded the windmills. This fight and the destruction of these planes may not have changed the course of the war, but it is a symbol. That of a man who fights as he knows how to do, with the means he has at his disposal, even if it seems sheer madness. Isn’t that basically what every man should try to do?

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