The Unquiet Grave

Montataire, 33 miles north of Paris, is a steel town run by Communists. Last month Corporal Gaston Depestel, 25, a Montataire boy who had been a Communist for a brief period after World War II, was brought home in a large black government truck. He had been killed fighting the Communist Viet Nam guerrillas in Indo-China. Montataire's Communist Mayor Marcel Coene allowed Gaston's father to take the body home for the wake, and provided four municipal employees to carry the coffin. Their ordinary duty: garbage collection.

At the funeral, Mayor Coene, wearing his tricolor sash of office, stepped forward to read an oration. Said he: "I salute the mortal remains of Gaston Depestel . . . who has died without ideals in the unjust war of the Viet Nam, for the armament makers and the plantation owners . . ." At that point, an Indo-China war veteran put his hand over the mayor's manuscript and said quietly: "Rien de c,a Monsieur le Maire" (Cut it out, Mister Mayor).

The veterans arranged a new memorial service to repair Mayor Coene's insult. The Communists organized a counterdemonstration, but 200 Republican Guards and 300 soldiers, sent to Montataire by the government, saw to it that the Reds did not interfere with the ceremony. In the cemetery, the Depestel family and French veterans laid bouquets of violets on Gaston's grave.

A few days later, Mayor Coene was sacked by government decree. Defiantly, the Communists nominated him for town councillor, hope to get him elected in special municipal elections later this month. Said Coene: "The dead do not change my political views."

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