The Body Snatchers

Shortly after 8 a.m. last Monday, Gravedigger Jean Taraud inspected a whitewashed concrete tomb in the graveyard on He d'Yeu, a small, windswept island eleven miles off the west coast of France. "I noticed that the sand around it had been neatly swept--too neatly, considering how many visitors there always are on Sunday," said Taraud. "Then I noticed chisel marks on the tombstone. I said to my colleague: The tombstone has been lifted.' "

Indeed it had been. A group of grave robbers--who apparently crossed the Bay of Biscay to the He d'Yeu by auto ferry--had spirited away the coffin containing the body of Marshal Philippe Petain, who was revered by Frenchmen for stopping the Germans at Verdun during World War I and later reviled for heading the collaborationist Vichy government during World War II.

Since the bizarre theft occurred only two weeks before France's parliamentary elections, the caper had distinct political overtones. If Petain's body were to be found before the elections, there would be considerable public clamor to bury it in the national military cemetery at Douaumont near Verdun; in 1971 a public-opinion poll, taken for the Bordeaux newspaper Sud-Ouest, showed that 72% of the French people favored such a move. The "nou-velle affaire Petain," as the French were calling the caper, revived old political quarrels over the sensitive issue of national loyalties during the Nazi occupation. Resistance organizations, Gaullists and the left-wing parties said that they were determined to prevent the "traitor" from being buried at Verdun.

The government reacted by launching what must have been the most intensive corpse hunt in history. Nearly half of France's 94,000-man police force was combing the country minutes after the disappearance of Petain's body was discovered. Roadblocks were set up on every highway leading from the Atlantic coast toward Verdun, where the culprits--who were presumed to be ultra-rightists--might be planning to bury the corpse. All trucks capable of hauling the 450-lb., zinc-lined oak coffin were stopped and systematically searched. Police also circled the sprawling cemetery at Douaumont, where workers dug up graves in which they thought the corpse might have been concealed.

After two days the mystery was resolved. Hubert Massol, 35, a right-wing candidate for the National Assembly and a veteran of the Algerian war, held a press conference in Paris at which he boasted that he alone knew where the body was. "I will keep my secret," he said, "until the President of the Republic rehabilitates Petain, and his remains are transferred to Douaumont."

Police promptly arrested Massol, who decided to share his secret with them after cooling his heels for a few hours at police headquarters on the Quai des Orfevres. He led the cops to a garage in the working-class suburb of Saint-Ouen, where the casket was found in the back of a small truck. Police subsequently arrested three of Massol's alleged accomplices: they included Franc,ois Boux de Casson, a former right-wing Deputy in the Assembly and once a propaganda officer in the Vichy government, and Michel Dumas, owner of a marble tomb company.

Unimpressed by suggestions that it might be time for Petain's rehabilitation, President Georges Pompidou ordered the remains reinterred at He d'Yeu. There a round-the-clock guard was assigned to the cemetery in case of protest demonstrations--or a second body-snatching attempt.

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