The grave robbers wanted to return Pétain to the site of his finest hour where, as general, he led France to victory against Germany in the longest battle of the 1914-1918 war.
They hoped to restore the honour of the tainted general, who was convicted of treason for leading France’s collaborationist Vichy government during World War II but avoided the death penalty due to his advanced age.
He had been dead 22 years when the far-right cell resurrected him in the dead of night on February 18th, 1973, in Port-Joinville cemetery on the windswept Ile d’Yeu.
After a three-day nationwide police search, which revived the debate over the legacy of the World War I hero-turned World War II villain, Pétain’s body was traced to a garage in a Paris suburb.
For years, admirers of Pétain had been horrified by the decision to bury their hero on the Ile d’Yeu off France’s Atlantic coast.
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Pétain died there in 1951, six years into his life sentence for collaborating with the Nazis.
Pétain had asked to be buried in Verdun, alongside his fallen men, but his wishes had been overruled by World War II Resistance hero and later president Charles de Gaulle.
His final resting place was in the corner of Port-Joinville cemetery, in a tomb covered with a white stone slab marked “Philippe Pétain, French Marshal” and topped with a white cross.
The mastermind behind the raid was far-right lawyer and failed presidential candidate, Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour.
But it was Hubert Massol, an advertising man, who led the operation to remove the coffin from the vault, load it into a van and take it by ferry to the mainland.
Six men made light work of the tombstone.
But they were sloppy.
They chipped the corner of the slab and then roughly sealed it back in place, details that immediately caught the attention of the cemetery guard on his rounds the next morning.
By lunchtime, the news was out: “Unknown perpetrators have unsealed the tombstone of Marshall Petain,” AFP announced in a high-priority bulletin.
A nationwide hunt got underway for a Renault van that had arrived on the island two days before Petain’s body was stolen and left the morning after. Speculation raged about who might be behind the robbery.
Opinions in the pro-Pétain camp over the stunt were divided with some, like Pétain’s lawyer Jacques Isorni, condemning the men’s guerrilla-style tactics.
On the road with their precious cargo, the body snatchers suffered a setback – a former pro-Pétain lawmaker who had offered the use of his chateau for a change of vehicle, had disappeared when they arrived at his home.
Realising that the authorities were already in pursuit, they ditched the Verdun plan and headed for Paris where they stashed the coffin in a lock-up garage in the suburb of Saint-Ouen.
The first person arrested was Solange Boche, a market trader who drove the van to the island, with others quickly following.
As the net tightened, Massol called a press conference saying he would reveal the whereabouts of Pétain’s remains if then president Georges Pompidou gave permission for him to be buried at Verdun’s Douaumont war memorial.
Massol was promptly arrested and caved in under questioning, agreeing to lead the police to the garage.
A furious Pompidou ordered the coffin be immediately taken back to the Ile d’Yeu where it remains to this day.
No charges were ever brought against the grave robbers, as the government feared a trial would stoke sympathy for Pétain.
The ghost of the fallen general did not disappear. To this day in France Pétain remains an inflammatory subject, with sharp divisions even within families over those believing he should be remembered not for Vichy but his Verdun victory.