Cross checking a Battle of France Testimony [Guy de Chezal]

[Narwhal]

Hello,

Recently, my father, always browsing through old books, found a 1941 edition of a book called "En Automitrailleuse à Travers les Batailles de Mai" [In Armored Car through the Battles of May]. The book is based on the testimony of Guy the Chézal, collected and edited in june 1940 by someone called Marcel Berger, obviously a friend, who may or may not be a later member of Resistance who died during the war [I found such a guy of the same name]. Both names could be pseudonyms, given when it was published.

After some research, I found out that Guy the Chézal has another testimony book at his name it seems : "Parachuté en Indochine" [Paradropped in Indochina], which occurs in 1944 - 1945 from the summaries I could get. Both books seems to have been published several times in French until 1966 at least.

Anyway, the testimony "feels" true to an extent. Guy de Chézal is the "car commander" of a Panhard 178, deployed in Northern France. His testimony [starting 10/05] is a few days in Belgium / Netherlands, before being "transfered" in France during the French rout.

My question is about any of you guys, collectively among the best in WW2 history , have heard about the book ? If not, I would like to do some cross-check on how "honest" the testimony is by giving the accounts of the events he describes. There is I think enough information in the book to find eventual inconsistancies.

Thank you

 

[Henry IX]

Sounds very interesting. Never heard of the book, but I can't read French so that isn't supprising. A problem you may have is that during confused events such as the French rout in 1940 the position of units and the actions they were involved in becomes very difficult to determine. Commanders often didn't know exactly where they, or their units were and sometimes not even where their superiors were. This means that standard sources such as regimental diaries and official histories are often unhelpful. Particularly when unit cohesion is broken and scratch companies are formed it can become nearly impossible to work out clear sequences of events. However, the general picture you have drawn seems to be a reasonably probable scenario.