Guillaume Apollinaire
Two years after being wounded in World War I, Apollinaire died in the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918; he was 38.
Gaston Palewski
Palewski remained director of de Gaulle's cabinet (that is, his private office) until de Gaulle's resignation as head of the Provisional Government in January 1946. He then became a leading proponent of Gaullism and one of the founders of the first Gaullist party, the Rassemblement du Peuple Français (Rally of the French People, or RPF) in 1947. In 1951 he was elected to the National Assembly as an RPF deputy for the Department of the Seine (Paris). From 1953 to 1955 he was vice-president of the National Assembly. Following the failure of the RPF, however, he withdrew from politics. In 1957, at de Gaulle's request, he was appointed Ambassador to Italy, a post he held until 1962. In 1962 Palewski was appointed by Prime Minister Georges Pompidou as Minister of State in charge of Scientific Research, Atomic Energy and Space Questions, the first French minister with specific responsibility for such matters. On 1 May 1962 Palewski witnessed the French underground nuclear test codenamed "Beryl" in Algeria. The test shaft failed to contain the blast and he was exposed to radiation as result of a leak of radioactive lava and dust into the atmosphere. He believed that the leukemia which he contracted later in life was caused by this accident. From 1965 to 1974 he was President of the Constitutional Council of France. Palewski died of leukemia in 1984, aged 83.