Here's an interesting group to quite a highly decorated French Army NCO who spent WW2 in the Far East with the Free French Forces (FFL). Not many FFL soldiers were active there. Most were interned by the Japanese. Note the Free French-issue Colonial Medal which is smaller than the the normal medal, with the Extreme-Orient clasp. He was in the Far East from the 1930s, when he won the Combattants' Cross, throughout WW2 to the early 1950s, when French ambitions there ended with the defeat at Dien Bin Phu. He had the right to the 'Indo-Chine' clasp to his WW2 Victory Medal as the undress ribbon bar shows. Indo-Chine would enter the American consciousness as Viet Nam a decade later with the battle of Ia Drang. He probably fought in Algeria too because his Valour Cross wasn't instituted until 1956. Sadly, the file of papers and photographs that was with the medals was thrown in the trash by the grandson because he didn't think anyone would be interested in old papers. Note the little personal touchs, such as the taking of the stars from his ribbon bar for his full-size medals...which he wore as a proud veteran every July 14th and to veterans' reunions. He was with an engineer unit for most of his career which, in the French Army, means that he and his comrades built many of the roads and railways that later generations of GIs would come to know in the 1960s and 1970s. When he wasn't fighting rebels.
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