Breakthrough - True Summit - page 57

War, indeed, has been central to Herzog's conception of himself, and long passages
in L'Autre Annapurna detail his deeds in the Résistance and later as a captain of a high
mountain troop. Unlike Terray, with his epiphany after the battle of Pointe de Clairy,
Herzog felt no ambivalence about the war against the Germans. He had only contempt
for the collaborators of the Vichy regime.
Herzog's account of the actions in battle of his alpine comrades-at-arms is un-
abashedly heroic. Terray puts a slightly different spin on his friend's role in the war:
As a newcomer he was not treated with any great respect by the leaders of the A.S. [the
Armée Secrète, or underground army]. He was so annoyed by this that, although he had no
affiliations with the Communist Party, he turned, on the rebound, to the F.T.P. [the left-
wing Francs Tireurs et Partisans, or French Partisans and Riflemen]. They were short of
men, and Herzog was received with open arms and made a captain.
According to Terray, though beseeched by Herzog to join the F.T.P., Rébuffat
wanted no part of a communist outfit. Terray himself also declined, since he then “was
not very impressed by all the muddles and internecine quarrels of the new army.” For
the time being, Terray tolled on as a farmer in Les Houches.
In recent years, amidst the blizzard of revisionism around Annapurna 1950, several
French journalists have tried independently to verify the particulars of Herzog's war
record. Some have concluded that there is little evidence that the captain performed
many of the campaigns he claimed in L'Autre Annapurna. By their very nature,
however, the underground army and other fugitive battalions of the Maquis left little
to document their activities. Perhaps on this question—as on the vexed issue of wheth-
er certain famous ascents were in fact hoaxes—one must start from the principle of
taking a man at his word. There is no denying the fact that Herzog received two cita-
tions of the Croix de Guerre after the war. Nor is there any reason to doubt that his
opposition to the Nazis was as fierce and steadfast as that of his general and mentor,
Charles de Gaulle.
Oddly enough, while purporting to be an intimate memoir, L'Autre Annapurna
tells us relatively little about Herzog's personal life. There is not a word in the topic
about either of his marriages, nor about his four children. From Who's Who in France
and assorted clippings, we learn that in 1964 Herzog married a countess with the im-
posing name of Marie-Pierre de Cossé-Brissac, with whom he had a son (now de-
ceased) and a daughter; and that in 1976 he married an Austrian woman named El-
isabeth Gamper, who bore him two more sons. In a recent interview in the magazine
Sport et Vie, asked about his family life, Herzog avowed, “I've always taken my role
as a father seriously. In fact, I try to be an ordinary human being. I don't want my