During the encirclement of Allied troops at Dunkirk in 1940, the ensign Amyot d'Inville commands one of the escort ships that shuttles between the continent and England to ensure the evacuation of Allied soldiers. This young aristocrat of old Norman nobility is not a career officer of the "Royal".
He is a reservist who does not hesitate to challenge the hierarchy. At the time of the armistice, unlike the majority of sailors, he chose to join Free France.
He then joined, on July 22, 1940, the marine rifle battalion, which had to fight at earth. He commanded a company there, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Détroyat. After the unfortunate confrontation in Dakar against their compatriots who had remained loyal to the Vichy government, a transport of British troops landed the Gaullist volunteers in Suez in April 1941.
The marine riflemen were then integrated into the 1st Free French Division (DFL).
And it will be the fratricidal campaign in Syria against the French troops of General Dentz. Commander Détroyat was killed there and Amyot d'Inville was wounded on June 17, 1941 by French bullets. Barely recovered, he took command of the battalion which left for Palestine and Egypt before heading to the desert.
On February 15, 1943, the Red Pompons settled in the entrenched camp of Bir Hakeim, where they served 40 Bofor anti-aircraft guns. The sailors of Lieutenant Commander Amyot d'Inville face the Messerschmitts and the Junkers. After their heroic resistance, the defenders of Bir Hakeim go to rest in Egypt, then they return to Libya to take part in the battle of El-Alamein.
Three thousand kilometers of desert and fighting lead them to Tunis. The unit was then transformed into a reconnaissance battalion with nearly two hundred armored vehicles.
The Italian campaign will be carried out like a ride by the "marine riders" of Commander Amyot d'Inville.
On June 3, 1943, the Jeep of the man all his sailors call, as on board of a warship, "the Pasha", or even sometimes, by derision, "the Admiral", jumps on a mine. Hubert Amyot d'Inville was killed instantly. Tall and thin, this nephlegmatic husband officer, with the look of a fox, is remembered as one of the most popular leaders of men in Free France.