Bernard Lugan is a natural born fighter.
The man is nothing if not combative.
A long-time supporter of dueling as a means of redressing calumny, libel, and public posturing and baseless defamation, Lugan is the French academic aristocrat one conjures in one’s mind when they think about French honor.
In a recent interview on André Bercoff’s Sud Radio, Lugan had this to say to one of the listeners calling in during the show:
Tout combat qui n’est pas mené est perdu d’avance!
Meaning “If you refuse to fight your battles, you forfeit the war!”
For some reason, it must be my genes, fighting comes naturally to me.
In 1941, my grandfather went to war with the Royal Romanian Army Corps of Chasseurs Alpins. At the bloody siege of Sevastopol, he was wounded and evacuated to Constanta.
Here he met a beautiful nurse who nurtured him back to life: my grandmother and his future 2nd wife.
A long time after the war, I asked my grandpa about his wartime experience on the Soviet front. I wanted to know how many people he shot and how he led the troop.
I knew from his friends and family that he had received a medal for valor but until very recently, I didn’t know which medal it was.
All this to say that even 37 years ago, I knew he had served his country in wartime with honor and courage.
But strangely enough, when pressed all he would say was “I only led the boys from the front and I never fired my sidearm, nor did I hurt a human being directly.”
At the time I couldn’t understand why not. I mean, the Soviets were Romania’s mortal enemies during the war. And after the war, the Communist regime they installed would imprison, torture, and scald his legs using black tar.
I was dumbfounded, flabbergasted, and a little ashamed of his lack of manliness, as I stupidly and childishly believed that killing a man made you manly.
But now I know. Now I realize and for some time I’ve known this to be true.
It takes a real man to go to war, be exposed to all sorts of mortal danger, be shot at, bombarded, shell shocked, attacked, assaulted, and experience the whole gamut of modern lethality, and refuse to add to the sum total of mayhem, madness, and murder of War.
Make no mistake, people. A true warrior, and my grandfather was one, is that who marches into war and back, does his duty to the best of his abilities, without directly contributing to the butcher’s bill.
My grandfather, my mother’s father, was a Saint Cyrien, meaning he studied war at the prestigious French War Academy at Saint Cyr.
And there he was imbued with the French academic ethos. The man lived and swore by two mottos:
1. General Cambronne’s epic “La garde meurt mais ne se rend pas !” The Guard dies but it doesn’t surrender! Garda moare dar nu se preda!
And
2. Nihil sine Deo – Nothing without God
He told me to always believe in myself and never let another man convince me otherwise.
And always honor God.
My grandpa saw action on the Eastern Front for 12 months. He served the rest of the war in Romania.
When the Communists came to power, they reached out to him, to convince him to join the Reds. They enticed him. Of course, they did. They even gave him a blasted medal. BTW, the imbeciles didn’t even get their facts straight.
The medal reads: “Romanian Popular Republic – Medal For Liberating (Romania) from under the Fascist Yoke”. Last time I checked, by August 1944, Mussolini had his own problems to deal with to be bothered to occupy Transylvania. No, folks, this should have read “from under the Nazi Yoke”. Italy had been run by Fascists and Germany by the Nazi.
He refused. Got singled out. Was arrested on false pretenses, sent to a labor camp, then to prison, where they tortured him. The Communist motherlovers poured hot tar on his legs and he still wouldn’t give in. He was scarred for life, but nobody ever managed to break him.
Not once did he complain to grandma about what they did to him. Still, he never acknowledged any wrongdoing. Nor would he ask for mercy or beg for better conditions.
He raised a girl (my mom) and a boy (my uncle), to the best of his abilities.
Later, in the 1970s, he got one shot at visiting his first wife and her family in West Germany. He went, spent a month with them, put on some weight, was happy, as the pictures he brought back attested.
But in the end, he returned to Communist Romania because his other daughter, my mom, was carrying me in her belly.
He came back knowing full well that he’d be returning to a life full of unpredictability, privations, and danger as he was merely tolerated by a regime he’d never acknowledged.
He chose to forfeit any chance at a relaxed old age, safe at the bosom of his first family, in the (then) Free World.
As I commit these recollections to this medium, I belatedly realize a lesson must have been hiding in his actions all this time.
The man was teaching me a lesson. He was telling me one never abandons one’s immediate family.
And since his first family had found refuge in West Germany, and his second family were in Romania, he had no choice but to return to support, help, and defend those of us who needed it most.
But when he did, he signed his death sentence with his own hand.
Nine years later, a cold November day, a great man would be brought down by Parkinson’s and malnourishment. In truth, Communism killed my grandfather. The man was a natural born fighter. He never gave up the good fight and he fought until the bitter end. He never abandoned his principles. And he taught my mother and I the value of keeping up the fight.
Now, my mother is gone. But I, grandpa, am keeping the fight alive. And I am teaching my daughter to never give up, never give in, never surrender. Your Legacy is safe in our hands.
Garda moare dar nu se predă!
Götterdämmerung 