The chivalry of France’s murdered policeman

There’s one word you may not hear in connection with the death of Lt-Col Beltrame who died last night, the fourth victim of the 25-year-old Islamist gunman, Redouane Lakdim. And that word is chivalry.

The reason why the police officer died from wounds he sustained in the shootout, in which Lakdim was killed, was that he volunteered to take the place of a woman hostage. When the gunman took over the Super-U supermarket in Carcassonne, he held one woman back to use as a human shield. And remarkably, Lt-Col Beltrame offered to take the woman’s place. Surprisingly, the gunman allowed him to do so. He left his mobile phone with an open line on a table where other officers could monitor what was happening – and that led to them ending the siege by force.

Le lieutenant-colonel Arnaud Beltrame nous a quittés.
Mort pour la patrie.
Jamais la France n’oubliera son héroïsme, sa bravoure, son sacrifice.
Le coeur lourd, j’adresse le soutien du pays tout entier à sa famille, ses proches et ses compagnons de la @Gendarmerie de l’Aude. pic.twitter.com/I1h8eO7f9a

— Gérard Collomb (@gerardcollomb) March 24, 2018

Now, it may be that the police officer would have offered to take the place of a male hostage. But somehow, I fancy that what led him to take the course he did was that he felt a chivalrous sense of outrage that a woman was being used by the gunman as a human shield. The very fact of her gender helped him decide to act in the selfless way he did. It was the old ‘women and children first’ impulse which motivated him, the sense of chivalry in defence of those who are weaker than a man, and this in an age when some of his colleagues outside the building may well have been women. At times like this, feminism goes by the board. Personally, I am very glad that it does and that there are men like Beltrame still out there. P.S. Interesting, isn’t it, that when Lakdim took over the ‘Super-U’ supermarket, he is said to have shouted ‘I am a soldier of Daesh’. We are constantly told that this is the term which causes members of IS offence, and it usefully omits the term ‘Islamic’, which is why the Foreign Secretary insists on using it, even though the term is pretty well unintelligible to a non-Arab speaker. Me, I find any politician who uses the term weaselly and evasive. Can we give it a break?