Jacques Trolley De Prévaux

Jacques Marie Charles Trolley de Prévaux (2 April 1888 — 19 August 1944) was a French Navy officer and member of the Resistance. After a brilliant career in the Navy as a pioneer of the Aéronavale and having risen to the rank of captain, he fell out of favour with the Vichy Regime for his sympathies with the Resistance. He became a leader of an intelligence network focused on the Mediterranean, and was eventually betrayed and assassinated by the Nazis, along with his wife, Lotka Leitner. Both were posthumously and jointly made Compagnons in the Ordre de la Libération.

Biography

Youth and studies

Jacques Trolley de Prévaux was born to an old family of nobility of the Robe, and with a modest fortune. The family was from Normandy and had been knighted by Henri III in 1586.. Apart from a remote connection to Jean d'Arc, the elder brother of Joan of Arc, there was no military tradition in the family. Jacques' father, Alfred Trolley de Prévaux, was a professor of commercial law at the Institut catholique de Lille. Jacques' mother died in 1899, when he was 11.

Trolley de Prévaux studied at École Saint-Joseph de Lille, where he proved to be a keen reader. Choosing a naval career, he entered the École Navale in 1906, ranking third out of 48 in the competitive entrance examination. He graduated 5th out of 48 in the class of 1908. He then performed the customary practical training year with a circumnavigation aboard from 1908 to 1909.

Trolley de Prévaux was first appointed as an Ensign to the battleship ''Charlemagne'' in Toulon in 1910. There, he acquired a taste for opium, which was a common pastime in the Navy at the time, Toulon harbouring several establishments specialised in that trade. From 1912 to 1913, he served on the cruiser ''Descartes,''« Jacques Trolley de Prévaux »
, sur le site de l'Ordre de la Libération, ordredelaliberation.fr, consulté le 4 février 2010."Le rôle des officiers de Marine dans la Résistance métropolitaine (1940–1944) à travers quelques itinéraires"
on cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr, accessed 3 February 2010. sailing the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean. In April 1914, he was appointed to the flotilla Division of the 1st naval Army as second officer on the heavy torpedo boat ''Fanfare''.

First World War

Trolley de Prévaux took part in World War I, mostly in the Mediterranean. In August 1914, he served as gunnery and maneuver officer on the torpedo boat ''Chasseur''; in May 1916, he transferred on ''Paris'' as aid to the chief of the naval fusiliers. In June 1916, he was appointed second officer on gunboat ''Diligente.''

In Juin 1917, Trolley de Prévaux was granted a transfer to the French Naval Aviation, which he had been pursuing since 1915. He trained on airships at Saint-Cyr before graduating and being promoted to Lieutenant. He then took his first command as head of the airbase of Marquise-Rinxent in Pas-de-Calais, near Boulogne-sur-Mer, from October 1917 to November 1919. He was responsible for around 100 men. As airships emerged as a powerful weapon against shipping, and as the French naval aviation was growing (reaching 700 places, 460 pilots, and around 20 airships in late 1917) Prévaux clocked many flight hours, earning the Legion of Honour, the Croix de guerre, and a brigade-level mention in dispatches. After the Armistice, he flew over the front lines from Nieuport to Verdun with a cameraman, filming the war-torn landscape; the film was subsequently lost, and found again in the late 1990s.

Interwar period

From November 1919, Trolley de Prévaux was given command of the Airship base at Montebourg in Manche

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases