TRIBUNE – Various attempts in the recent past have provoked debates in Parliament on the collective recognition of those executed for example during the First World War, notably by proposing the construction of a national monument listing the names of those executed. The Senate will be seized on February 2 of an identical proposal which I will vote for.
His name was Bersot, his first name, Lucien Jean-Baptiste. On February 13, 1915, he was shot on the orders of François Maurice Auroux, lieutenant-colonel of the French army.
His charge: refusal to obey.
His crime: refusing to put on the pants covered in the blood of one of his companions.
In 1922, soldier Bersot will be rehabilitated and declared innocent of the crimes for which he was accused.
But while he died unjustly, Lieutenant-Colonel Auroux was sent into retirement after being elevated to the rank of Commander of the Legion of Honor.
We remember this story because it was the subject of a press campaign, but also of fiction films. But this story is not isolated and dozens of Lucien Bersot cases today sully the memory of our Republic and the dignity of our army: that of those shot for example.
We should not be ashamed, today, to look with lucidity and objectivity at the past which is that of our Republic in exceptional and deadly circumstances. We must not leave our army tainted by these injustices and still in twenty, thirty or forty years, weigh the weight of suspicion on our soldiers, nor on citizens, some of whom are innocent. It is time, more than 100 years after the end of the First World War, to come to terms with this tragic history which led men to murder their brothers “for example”.
Some retort that, in these shots for example, some were rightly shot for real crimes and that it is necessary, because of those, not to spare them. Did they commit crimes? Betrayals? We’ll never know. Included in the long list of those shot for example, were they tried for their crime? No. They were shot for example. That is to say, to maintain on the French soldiers a pressure, a fear, a necessary and vital authority in time of war.
But this term “shot for example” reflects a single reality: whatever their wrongdoings, that is not what they were punished for, but to serve as an example.
We can no longer accept and condone the fact that one day, in the name of France, men were arbitrarily executed in the name of reasons of state. We cannot accept that our Republic cannot make peace with this painful past.
By accepting that innocent people still see their names tainted by that of potential culprits, we reiterate this injustice of condemning innocent men in the name of doubt. We therefore renounce the essential values of our Republic, which are the presumption of innocence and the right to justice. We flout the doubt that benefits the accused.
We cannot accept that the Republic can forgive its executioners and not its victims and we must, for the peace of our history, the greatness of France and our army, express our regrets, accept our errors and recognize that in exceptional circumstances, France has shown injustice and now knows how to repair the pain of these families.