Pierre Nouailhetas
Open-knowledge reference entry
Pierre-Marie-Élie-Louis Nouailhetas (17 December 1894 – 1985) was a French naval officer who served as the governor of French Somaliland from 7 August 1940 until 21 October 1942 during World War II.
Life
Before Somaliland
Nouailhetas was born at Cercoux on 17 December 1894, the second son and child of Louis Nouailhetas, an engineer officer in the navy, and Marie-Anne-Françoise Bertet. He entered the École Navale in 1913. He received two citations during World War I (1914–18). In 1925, he left the navy to join the colonial service. His first posting was as an adjutant (adjoint) at Lạng Sơn. In 1927, he was promoted the rank of administrator (administrateur) in charge of Tuyên Quang Province. He later served as chief of staff (chef de cabinet) to the governor of Cochinchina and then administrator of Bến Tre Province and Cần Thơ Province (1933–36). Between 1936 and 1939 he was the secretary-general (secrétaire général) to the Governor General of Indochina.
Governor of Somaliland
In August 1940, following the fall of France, he was named by the Vichy government to replace Gaëtan Germain as governor of French Somaliland. He flew into the colony, already threatened with a British interdict, on 2 September.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pierre Nouailhetas” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.