When an Islamist extremist charged into his school in Arras, northern France, with a knife, Christian Berroyer could have hidden away. Instead, the caretaker decided to confront the killer. ‘I grabbed a chair without thinking and I went outside,’ said Berroyer. Asked why he did what he did, Berroyer said he was ‘just doing his duty as a Frenchman’.
Berroyer returned to work last week, just a few days after that attack in which a teacher was stabbed to death. His bravery marks a stark contrast to the cowardice of France’s politicians.
The school handyman joins a list of other Frenchmen who have ‘done their duty’ in the last decade. There was Damian, a 28-year-old banker, the first man to confront the gunman on the Thalys train in 2015; there was Franck, who in July 2016 jumped onto the cab of the lorry careering down the promenade in Nice and grappled with the driver; there was Arnaud Beltrame, the gendarme, who was killed by an Islamist in a siege in 2018 after he volunteered to take the place of a civilian hostage; there was Henri, the young man who chased the knifeman stabbing babies in an Annecy playground this year.
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