I finally Legion of Honor ... Finally, in my bookshelf. And it's not mine, is that of my maternal grandfather. It was part of a box of decorations that I recovered from my aunt who was moving.
course, I knew my grandfather (who died here twenty years ago) had this prestigious award but I assimilate other war decorations. I thought that merit was linked to acts of war without being very sure.
So I conducted my investigation on the internet ... impossible you say? it is true that it seems incredible like that, but I managed to find a review of 1959 speaks of this event. So much later in the war.
This site (http://patrimoine.jalougallery.com) has scanned 200,000 pages of magazines patterns from the 20s and scanned. Scanned when I say, it's not just make a picture, but also spend a software like OCR (automatic recognition of text) to be able to search the scanned text. That's when I saw a snippet on the event (no doubt possible) and understand that this award was related to his position as Secretary General of the Syndicat de la Haute Couture.
Let us go back to him: brilliant student, but has not done HEC fiber business. Spend his life in a very prestigious job, but poorly paid (the Chambre Syndicale de Haute Couture meets famous actors of the sector but wants to spend as little money as possible and the salary of the Secretary General is voted by members). This has always saddened
my mother that he had not managed to build some wealth. Also for rent (in a huge apartment on the Boulevard Malesherbes in front of the Madeleine, then in an apartment in Boulogne), his only luxury was his 13th month he invariably spent to rent a house in the seaside for holidays summer. They eventually died without fortune: a few tables, some furniture and 3 trinkets.
Often, I see him, he and his wife, my maternal grandparents, to explain what we have all become.
Meanwhile, the Legion of Honor, it's really a beautiful object. I'll leave it in his beautiful blue box and place in a small corner of my library. And occasionally, I murmur of little "cuckoo" to my grandpa.