Portrait photographique avec dédicace autographe à un compagnon de la Libération

Original albumen portrait of Charles de Gaulle. Minor rubbing to the edges of the cardboard mount, not affecting either the photograph nor the inscription.

Exceptional inscribed portrait dated 16 February 1943 and signed by Charles de Gaulle on the mount: "Au Capitaine [Jean] Pompei, / mon bon compagnon! / 16/2/43 C. de Gaulle".

De Gaulle inscribed his portrait in London to a war hero and close supporter, “one of the very few fighters of Free France who had the rare opportunity of attending his own funeral” (Pierre Billotte). Before joining de Gaulle in London, Jean Pompei had been reported missing and presumed dead after an air battle in May 1941 over Tobruk, Libya. Wounded and rescued in the desert by Bedouins, he crossed three hundred kilometres through enemy territory before “reappearing safe and sound during the service held in his memory” (Philippe de Gaulle).

The fighter pilot subsequently joined the General as chief of staff to the National Commissioner for Air, and on 14 November 1941 he was awarded by De Gaulle the Croix de la Libération. Promoted to captain in the Free French Air Forces, he was sent by de Gaulle on a mission to North Africa two months before receiving this inscribed portrait. Pompei was caught up in the infamous Darlan assassination affair - which de Gaulle has been repeatedly accused of orchestrating - and questioned during the investigation: a few days after admiral Darlan was murdered, Pompei had landed in Algiers carrying 50,000 dollars intended to finance a new journal in support of the General (Albert-Jean Voituriez, L'affaire Darlan. L'instruction judiciaire, 1980).

Back in London, he took up his duties as secretary to the Landing Commission as the Wehrmacht was being defeated at Stalingrad. A few days later, on 16 February 1943, Pompei received this precious portrait from the General, who had just returned from the Allied Conference in Casablanca. As Companion of the Liberation, he would later join de Gaulle at the Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF), where he served as a member of the executive council and later as director of the Political Bureau: “As he possessed great political acumen, de Gaulle sat next to him at the Council table,” according to Pierre Billotte.

Pompei famously said “Mort aux cons!” [Death to morons!], to which the General is said to have replied, “A difficult task!” (François Coulet, Des Hommes libres. 1940-1945, La France libre par ceux qui l'ont faite).

One of the very few de Gaulle inscriptions written during WW2, and moreover addressed here to “his good companion” Jean Pompei, a Free French pilot and loyal supporter from the earliest days of the Resistance who remained by his side during the arduous political reconstruction of post-war France.