Dominique Ponchardier

Dominique Ponchardier (March 3, 1917, Saint-Étienne – April 17, 1986, Nice) was a French author and screenwriter who had been a member of the French Resistance during World War II, and later held positions as an intelligence officer, diplomat, colonial administrator and company president. He was a long-standing follower of Charles de Gaulle, at different times working for him in underground, intelligence, political, civil and diplomatic capacities.

Born into a family of industrialists, Dominique Ponchardier received his secondary education in Saint-Étienne, Nice and Brest.

Ponchardier was doing his military service when World War II broke out. Wounded in the initial part of the war, he avoided being taken prisoner after the Fall of France, for which he later got the Escapees' Medal. He joined the French Resistance in October 1940 - a few months after the beginning of the Nazi occupation. In 1942, he participated in establishing the "Sosie" resistance network, together with his brother Pierre Ponchardier. He ended the war with the rank of Chef de Mission 1st class at the Directorate General of Studies and Research (DGER), the intelligence agency of the Free French Forces.

In 1948 he was a member of the board of directors of the RPF, a political movement founded by Charles de Gaulle.

In 1950, Ponchardier published the memoires of his wartime experiences, Les Pavés de l'enfer (The Cobblestones of Hell). This was followed, between 1954 and 1962, by a successful literary career under the pseudonyms A.L. Dominica and Antoine Dominique. He wrote an extensive series of Spy thrillers/Detective novels featuring a French intelligence operative and detective nicknamed "Le Gorille" ("The Gorilla"). He adapted some of his novels for the cinema.

After 1962 Ponchardier was too busy with various jobs and assignments to continue writing. His literary career resumed much later, in 1978 - his last book being published in 1983.

In the aftermath of the Algerian war, in 1963, Ponchardier was recalled to active service and placed in charge of activities against the OAS. Already earlier, a militia which fought against the OAS with unofficial support from the French government got named "Barbouzes" ("False Beards") - a name invented by Ponchardier and originally appearing in his fiction.

He was also a technical advisor to Michel Maurice-Bokanowski, Minister Of Industry.

From 1964 to 1968, Ponchardier was the French Ambassador to Bolivia. As such, it was he who negotiated in 1967 the release and expulsion to France of Régis Debray, captured by the Bolivian soldiers while he was leaving the headquarters of revolutionary Che Guevara (who was killed shortly afterwards).

From 1969 to 1971, Ponchardier was Governor of the French Territory of the Afars and the Issas (today Djibuti). At the time, this was France's last remaining toehold on the African continent, all other African colonies having been granted independence already. At the direction of President De Gaulle and despite international pressure, France was trying to hold on to this last colony, manipulating ethnic divisions between Somali and Afar inhabitants. In his tenure, Ponchardier was confronted with increasingly militant activities by the FLCS ("Front de Libération de la Côte des Somalis", Somali Coast Liberation Front) which in January 1970 claimed an attack on the popular Palm in Zinc, a bar in Djibouti City. Ponchardier's successors would give up attempting to stem the tide of independence, and France would leave Djibuti in 1977.

Ponchardier's last active years were spent in the private sector. From 1971 to 1981, he was President of the Comptoirs français du développement du textile (French company for the development of textile fibers, now Dagris).

Ponchardier died on April 17, 1986, at Nice.

He is buried in Villefranche-sur-Mer (Alpes-Maritimes).