If in the saga of OSS 117, with his dumb, macho spy persona, or when he portrays the inimitable Brice of Nice, the actor makes the spectators laugh out loud. Jean Dujardin has, like all of us no doubt, dark and secret sides. As far as he is concerned, this dark side sends him back to one of the darkest episodes in our history, the First World War, during which hundreds of thousands of young men left their lives, cannon fodder, buried in the mud of the trenches, riddled with bullets and shrapnel. Among the countless victims of this carnage is a man whom the star has, and for good reason, never known, but whose disastrous fate has upset him. This man was called Pierre-Henri Taillantou. Launched on the enemy lines, this “hairy” among many others, did not survive this attack as courageous as it was suicidal. He died in 1916, in Fleury, in front of Douaumont, anonymous among the anonymous, these brothers in arms who, too, never saw their family again. He was the actor’s maternal great-grandfather, and his body was never found among the bloody magma of dead bodies. “fallen on the field of honour”.
His story upset Jean, to the point that he decided to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, more than a century after the battle. To do this, he decided to call on Vincent Jacquot, boss of Mirabelle Tours, a company based in Vavincourt (55), specializing in his very special discovery tours around the Great War, around Verdun, in a region where fought the deadliest battles of this conflict. “He had wanted to come for ten years already.explains this tour operator like no other. We got in touch by email, but then it was he who chose the route.
A sort of pilgrimage, the most moving episode of which was his visit to Douaumont, with its ossuary erected in memory of the Battle of Verdun in 1916. It was there that Jean Dujardin had a stone cut in the name of his grandfather. , so that the name of this man forever without remains will not be forgotten. A deserved tribute for the one whose name will also remain engraved in Jean’s heart.
See also: “A page turns”: Nathalie Péchalat, Jean Dujardin’s wife makes an announcement on Instagram
FL