A photograph released by the office of the French Chief of Naval Staff on Saturday, December 7, 2024, commemorated the re-opening of the refurbished Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, which was gutted by a fire in 2019.
The overhead shot of the aircraft carrier FS Charles de Gaulle, the flagship of the French Navy, depicts the revered Cathedral using 922 members of its crew to reconstruct its façade.
Notre Dame Cathedral was of course the site of an assassination attempt on
General Charles de Gaulle in August 26th, 1944. De Gaulle was in
Paris to attend a thanksgiving service to celebrate the Liberation of the city.
As "Le General" strode into the Cathedral at the head of a procession of French soldiers and members of the resistance who had marched from the Arc de Triomphe, shots rang out from the dark corners of the Cathedral’s roof.
But as people threw themselves downwards to take cover, an unperturbed de Gaulle continued walking at his full height towards the altar and remained untouched by the hail of gunfire.
The echo of bullets exchanged between the snipers and the French security team of gendarmes and soldiers soon died down and was replaced by the sound of the congregation singing the Latin Christian hymn “Te Deum”.
© Adeyinka Makinde (2024).
Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.
