Revelations about Alain Delon’s military past in Indochina

HAS 17 years old, Alain Delon joined the army, as much to live his dreams of adventure as to escape the family delicatessen – with a recruitment bonus of 100,000 francs in his pocket. But the strong head is quickly noticed for indiscipline. In December 1953, after stealing radio equipment, he was sentenced to 45 days in prison. He is then given a deal: either he goes to Indochina or he is fired. He landed in Saigon in August 1954, three months after the defeat of Diên Bien Phu. Until then, we knew that his passage in Indochina had not been very glorious. But journalist Bernard Violet has just accidentally got his hands on an unpublished military file, where we discover the extent of young Delon’s escapades…

The Point: You have found an unpublished document relating to the youth of Alain Delon. What is it about?

Bernard Violet : I recently obtained the “confidential” stamped copy of his military career. In military jargon, we call this “a state of signaling and services”. This document, never revealed, was given in December 1968 by the Naval Military Security to Judge Patard, the big boss of the investigation into the assassination of Stevan Markovic, the Yugoslav friend and handyman of the Delon couple. whose body had been found three months earlier in a landfill in Yvelines. In the end, four pages, very informative, listing his successive places of assignment, as well as the dates and reasons for a package of sanctions.

Until then, we only had a military record book, but it had been largely redacted…

Alain Delon received a military booklet, a copy of which is archived at the Bernadotte Barracks in Pau. But this piece only has one negative statement: “seven days for bad conduct,” period. In other words, nothing to do with the 14 punishments which appear in the information sheet that I discovered. However, in the unpublished interview with his mother that I published in my biography, she boasts of her intervention with a ship captain in order to erase Alain’s punishments. According to her, the senior officer accepted so as not to harm the professional future of the young soldier.

Was Edith Delon that much of a mother hen?

And how! In many situations, the pugnacious and possessive “Mounette” did not hesitate to intervene with her well-placed relations – journalists and police officers – in order to alleviate the stupidities of her favorite son…

We also discover that Alain Delon spent almost a year in prison in Indochina!

It’s huge. We never said it. If we add up his 14 punishments, we arrive at 334 days in prison and police station! That is almost a year out of his three years in the army, since the Navy sent him home before the end of his commitment.

What do we blame him for?

A real Prévert-style inventory. There are sanctions for rather banal facts: “distorted effects”, “delays of 2.5 hours returning from land”, “absence of up to 6 hours”, “delay of more than 24 hours (3^e recidivism)”, also the fact of “not saluting the patrol”… Still others: “not taking into account the observations of a superior”, “light drunkenness and poor behavior in town”, “escaping from the barracks not being on duty and the troops being confined”, etc. Trifles but which, in the context of the army and the times, could only displease.

A real hothead in short…

There are also more serious criticisms. Such as using “a vehicle without authorization and without holding a driving license – thereby causing a serious accident”, being “the holder of a prohibited weapon”, being “the author of a scandal and disorder on the ground”, and also “seizing a motor vehicle belonging to an individual without having the intention of appropriating it”. In short, it didn’t fit at all.

ALSO READ Alain Delon tells how he almost became a pimp in PigalleDelon said he shed a tear when he celebrated his 20th birthday in a cell…

He repeated it, even when he was thirstier… But it’s not true. On November 8, 1955, his birthday, he was not punished. However, it was in September and December. Nothing in between. But the legend is beautiful, isn’t it?

During this period, however, he sometimes went out on operations, like this trip down a river where everyone was scared…

He probably must have felt fear. But no testimony has come to confirm this episode. For her part, the actress Brigitte Auber, with whom the mataf will live for a year after his return from Indochina, did not believe it. According to her, “everything he said about that time was inventions. Dead friends at his side are lies. He read all this in books…”

Many rumors also circulated about his dissolute morals there. True or false?

Several witnesses reported rumors to me. But I don’t mention them, because they are never substantiated. In its report, Military Security, on the other hand, is more precise, when it writes: “From a morals point of view, the Alain Delon file does not contain any information. » In short: RAS…

But the Navy has very bad memories of the Delon case…

“A bad element in every way,” she wrote. A judgment without appeal which joins those that I have collected. Thus a senior officer kindly describes him as a “restless sailor”. A military expert also told me that he was “a real idiot!” “. The late Admiral Antoine Sanguinetti told me: “I regret that he visited us. » The notes in his file speak for themselves: “Work: 8/20; driving: 6/20”…

When he returns to France, Alain Delon is quickly arrested for gun theft…

When he arrived in Marseille in June 1955, the Maritime Gendarmerie discovered in his luggage a 6/35 automatic pistol, with magazine. Not very proud, the sailor explains that he bought it for 900 piastres in Saigon from one of his friends whose name he mentions, Marc Charrière, who has now disappeared. We are far from the code of honor of thugs which the future star will champion… His passion for weapons, born in Indochina, will never leave him. In February 1957, he shot into the window of a “color merchant” in Saint-Germain-des-Prés with a 9 mm automatic weapon. He received 2 months in prison. A conviction amnestied in 1959, after De Gaulle came to power, but he would nevertheless have to pay a fine of 10,000 francs…

For him, the end of the army is a return to square one?

He was RDSF – sent home – much earlier than expected. Without rank and with the withdrawal of his radio license. As for the rest, he must not have had much money left after being kicked out of the Navy, since he had to first repay half of his enlistment bonus.

So what is he doing in Paris?

He reunites with two of his former army comrades, Lucien L. and Jacques Burnet. According to unpublished documents from judicial sources, Lucien would have offered to Alain, “destitute of money”, to stay with him at the Régina, a cheap hotel on Boulevard Rochechouart. Until he landed a job as a waiter at the Colisée, on the Champs-Élysées, then at Les Halles and finally at l’Étoile owned by Potel & Chabot. Through Burnet, he also met Carlotto, four years his senior, a painter and “notorious homosexual”, according to the unbearable terminology of the time. It is with him that Alain discovers the hot spots of Pigalle and the trendy places of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. According to an unpublished note from the RG, both frequent nightclubs “assiduously”…

It is suggested that he would have benefited from certain acquaintances, attracted by his beauty…

Yes, I think he had “patrons”, older men and women, fascinated by his charisma and his plasticity. According to the RG note mentioned, he would have, in addition to those that I mention in my book, made the acquaintance of the historian Philippe Erlanger, from whom he would have taken “400,000 francs which he used to buy an Alfa Romeo red in color.

He dates the actress Brigitte Auber, who is ten years older than him. Is she the one who opens his address book?

To Discover

Kangaroo of the day

Answer

She actually pushed him to become a reporter or photographer, “a man’s job”, because, for her, acting remained “a whore’s job”. In 1957, for the Cannes Film Festival, she took it to the Côte d’Azur, where she had a house. Delon managed to attract attention in the halls of the palaces of the Croisette, including the Carlton. It was during the Cannes festivals that he was spotted by Henry Willson, the sulphurous American agent of Rock Hudson and other young gay actors, who invited him to do tests in Rome. The same year, he caught the eye of Yves Allégret’s wife who offered him his first role in When the woman gets involved. This is the beginning of her career… Her beauty has always attracted people, no doubt about that.