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Francis Morand "...One may shrink from so harsh a judgment, but it does make one want to know how white defendants in similar circumstances were treated. George P. Whittington, the accused in the other case that Kaplan treats in detail, was a white captain who had fought heroically during the landing on Omaha Beach several weeks earlier. Later, while with his unit in Lesneven, near Brest, Whittington went AWOL, spending an evening drinking in a nearby town with other Americans and a French soldier, Francis Morand, a paratrooper who fought in Brittany with the Resistance. Born in Austria and having a strong German accent, Morand told Whittington and others he was from the French Alps and had fought with the Fascists in Spain. (A large part of Whittington’s defense was built around questions of Morand’s identity. Could Whittington legitimately have suspected Morand of being a German spy?) Whittington later that evening shot and killed Morand with his pistol in the courtyard outside the bar, claiming self-defense. Because Brest at this time was still under attack from the Germans, Whittington’s commanding officer, who filed the original charges against him and who told the Inspector General he thought Whittington was trigger-happy, was never able to appear in court. Statements from others who could have established Whittington’s apparent zest for killing were also never introduced as evidence. Represented in court by the prosecutor in Hendricks’s case, who turned out to be a skillful defense lawyer, too, Whittington was found innocent and returned to civilian life as a hero after the war. ..."
www.neh.gov 
Found in Translation
About soldiers-turned-defendants, a novelist-turned-interpreter, and French-turned-English
Humanities, July/August 2008
Volume 29, Number 4
BY STEVE MOYE Laurent Laloup le vendredi 18 juillet 2008 Contribution au livre ouvert de Franz Nedelko alias Francis Morand | |
