Where was General de Gaulle in the summer of 1956 while France was sinking into crisis? At the beach, quite simply. Accompanied by his loving Yvonne, his faithful Lebornec and his dog Wehrmacht, the German shepherd. Shirtless and in military shorts, he sent out coded messages on the speaker at the first-aid station (‘The monkey is perfumed with mothballs, I repeat …’) and refined his strategy (‘We will operate a big movement to put our towels here ‘). It was time that the historical truth came out! Here is the General like historians have never seen him before (and like his wife Yvonne had probably never seen). Appearing in the collective album Vive la politique, this is de Gaulle like never seen before, recognizable by his flip flops. It takes some liberties with historical truth, but it’s for a good cause: that of humor. A somewhat offbeat humor that will delight readers of Jean-Yves Ferri, the writer of Retour à la terre.