Hi Guys, the title says nearly everything: I'm french and my wife is dutch.
Her great grand uncle died last year in Nice.
He was dutch, was supposed to have been working for BMW during last war and didn't go back to Holand after the end of the war.
It could be normal but after he died, we had been able to have a look at his military papers: he joined the French Foreign Legion late 1947 and was already fighting in Indochine early 1948 (pretty quickly for an ex civil.....), he stayed in the Legion till 1963 (we stopped our colonial wars in 1962, no more interest for army?).
When arrived in indochine, his platoons has been engaged by vietcongs and he went alone again them with a machine gun and run away after them in the jungle, for this his name was quoted in the army records got an instant promotion to 1st class soldier (uncommun so quickly in the Legion) and a medal, he end his service as an NCO.
He was a really gentle old man, but never wanted to speak about WW2.
One day that he was looking at a WW2 movie, I've seen him smiling a really strange way.
The whole family think the story is pretty strange for a civil. His widow, my wife an me would like to know, just for memory, if he was a foreign volunteer during last war, I don't know where/how to research.
Is somebody can help me it would be great, I won't give his name on the forum for reasons you can understand but will PM it if somebody try to help me.
If we find something, I'll share his history on the forum with his initials, maybe we'll have here some more history?
Thanks for your patience
__________________
Fred
Her great grand uncle died last year in Nice.
He was dutch, was supposed to have been working for BMW during last war and didn't go back to Holand after the end of the war.
It could be normal but after he died, we had been able to have a look at his military papers: he joined the French Foreign Legion late 1947 and was already fighting in Indochine early 1948 (pretty quickly for an ex civil.....), he stayed in the Legion till 1963 (we stopped our colonial wars in 1962, no more interest for army?).
When arrived in indochine, his platoons has been engaged by vietcongs and he went alone again them with a machine gun and run away after them in the jungle, for this his name was quoted in the army records got an instant promotion to 1st class soldier (uncommun so quickly in the Legion) and a medal, he end his service as an NCO.
He was a really gentle old man, but never wanted to speak about WW2.
One day that he was looking at a WW2 movie, I've seen him smiling a really strange way.
The whole family think the story is pretty strange for a civil. His widow, my wife an me would like to know, just for memory, if he was a foreign volunteer during last war, I don't know where/how to research.
Is somebody can help me it would be great, I won't give his name on the forum for reasons you can understand but will PM it if somebody try to help me.
If we find something, I'll share his history on the forum with his initials, maybe we'll have here some more history?
Thanks for your patience
__________________
Fred
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