As a young officer, Le Bigot chose the French Marines, for the prestige – it is the elite corps of the French Navy – and for combat on the front line, according to confidences to relatives. This was the time of the first trips and missions aboard French ships, in Morocco or in Newfoundland. He met Louise Avenel, whom he married in 1907. Two years later, he became head of a family with the birth of his first son, Guillaume, in 1909.

The First World War gave him the opportunity to stand out. In 1915, on the Yser Front in Belgium, he took the bold step of moving his company to cause a breach in the enemy ranks. He was commended for his bravery to the order of the Naval Army in June 1915: “Officer of energy and tireless dedication for the past seven months since he joined the brigade; he showed qualities of initiative in going, without orders, on May 9, to a point where the line following the events of the day, presented a dangerous solution of continuity.” This action and his courage in battle earned him a knighthood for the Legion of Honor and the Croix de Guerre. At this time, he was slightly wounded by schrapnel on the forehead that was removed without any consequences.

He was sent on a mission to Glasgow to supervise the preparation of whalers. At the end of 1915, the Marine Brigade to which he belonged was reduced to one battalion. Le Bigot was reassigned and received the command of a gunboat, La Railleuse, which patroled in the Mediterranean. On July 15, 1917, a British steamer, L’Incemore, was torpedoed by an Austrian submarine on its way from Marseille to Salonika. The Incemore was located 300 km south-east of Malta and suffered severe material damage, but no human loss. The Railleuse was called as reinforcement and helped the damaged ship to reach the port city of Kotor (located in present-day Montenegro, a hundred kilometers southeast of Dubrovnik) four days later. Le Bigot received a special commendation for this rescue operation. Ironically, L’Incemore was torpedoed again one month later by a German submarine. Le Bigot was then assigned to contribute to the work of the General Staff in the area on a ship, L’Atma, stationed in Malta. He did not like it and stated later that he would have preferred to resume fighting.

1918 presented him with a hard test in his personal life. On the night of June 23, a tragedy occured in the family home of Saint Brieuc, while Le Bigot was on a mission in the Mediterranean. His young wife had set up for the night in the parental bedroom with the youngest daughter, Jacqueline, aged 8, who was sick with flu. The wood stove in the room let out toxic fumes. Guillaume, the eldest son, 9 years old, discovered in the early morning the dead bodies of his mother, lying on the floor, in front of the window, probably in a last attempt to open it, and that of his younger sister, in the bed. Jules Le Bigot now had to take care of his son, with the help of his parents-in-law who lost their only daughter and granddaughter in this accident. Le Bigot remarried two years later with Andrée Motet, with whom he had three sons.

Le Bigot’s career led him to perform various duties as he climbed the ranks of the military hierarchy. He was first aide de camp of the maritime prefect in Brest in 1919, where he witnessed the repression of the violent strike movements of the workers of Arsenal. He joined the General Staff of the Navy in 1921 where, according to his son, he was bored stiff. By temperament he was more inclined to action and to travel the seas. He took command of the Marine School in 1923, then in 1925 that of the destroyer Le Leopard, which he caustically nicknamed “Léorest” because of the machine problems that regularly grounded the boat in harbor. In 1928, Jules Le Bigot became deputy chief of the Cabinet of the Minister of the Navy in 1928 before taking the command of the cruiser Colbert, the following year. In 1931 he was named deputy chief of the military Cabinet of the President of the Republic. He was an outstanding officer who had acquired both a long experience in the active service of the Navy, commanding several ships, but also a good knowledge of political circles in Paris.

It was at this time that Le Bigot was witness to a tragic page of the history of France. On May 6, 1932, President Paul Doumer inaugurated an exhibition dedicated to the writers of the Great War at the Rothschild Hotel, rue Berryer. Le Bigot was at his side. A young Russian anarchist emigrant, Paul Gorgulov, suddenly pulled out an automatic pistol and shot the President three times. It reated a scene of disorder. The crowd rushed out of the scene. Le Bigot ordered the wounded president to be taken to the Beaujon hospital located a few steps away, rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré. A photo made the front page of magazines around the world. It shows Le Bigot trying to block the journalists away with one hand, while on the other, he supported the President’s body. The future Admiral later said that the service intern did not dare to intervene and waited for his boss, losing precious minutes. Paul Doumer died the following night from a haemorrhage.

Jules Le Bigot remained in this position until 1936, before resuming navigation. In March 1937, he received his fourth star, Vice-Admiral d’Escadre. On May 18, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Naval Forces of the Far East. With his usual humor, he called them “Naval Farces” in private. It was at the head of this flotilla, aboard the Lamotte Picquet, his flagship, that he made his first mission to the Far East. He probably did not expect to arrive on the eve of the longest and most violent conflict between China and Japan and actually found himself on the front line in Shanghai, where a long and bloody three-month battle was about to break out. He played a leading role which earned him not only the recognition, once again, of the French State for his courage and his conduct of the operations of protection of the civil populations in Shanghai, but more particularly that of the Jesuits of Xujiahui for the decisive action he carried out in 1937. Their recognition materialized through the gift of the the collection of figurines presented in this exhibition.

Upon his return from China, Le Bigot was appointed on August 28, 1939 prefect of the first maritime region in Cherbourg. His mission was to organize the defense of the area, including flooding the marshes of Carentan to protect the Cotentin. Yet nothing worked. The Germans reached the suburbs of the city on June 17, 1940. For two days, the harbor became the “Dunkirk of Normandy”, where the English soldiers re-embarked ships in an emergency evacuation. On June 19, Le Bigot surrendered of the city to Erwin Rommel, the day after Marshal Petain’s declaration announcing the beginning of the ceasefire talks. In the courtyard of the Préfecture Maritime of Cherbourg, the German general addressed him in a private conversation. “Today, Admiral, you are defeated, but who can say how this war will end?” After the honors were given to him and to the garrison, Le Bigot was taken prisoner and detained at the fortress of Königstein in Saxony, with generals June and Giraud. He was released a year later and retired from active duty in December 1942.

He agreed to take over the presidency of the Fisheries Corporation, a difficult position at a time when it was necessary to manage the shortage of resources and low production. On August 23, 1943, he accompanied a delegation of twenty-one fishermen to the Vichy Park Hotel where they were received by Marshal Pétain. Le Bigot did not come under investigation at the end of the war because his role was not political, it was “purely humanitarian and national,” he explained to his son. Jules Le Bigot then devoted himself to helping former sailors. He chaired the Association of Ship Officers in Civil Careers. At the same time, he becomes President of the Association of Social Works of the Navy. His joviality, his charisma and his generosity led him to support many initiatives, even outside the Navy: he even became president of the Association of Florists of Paris. He was made Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor in 1950. He died on March 13, 1965 in Paris.