Skip to main content

🇫🇷WWII uncovered: A Salute to Commando Kieffer: Honouring the Service of Count Guy de Montlaur.

 ðŸ‡«ðŸ‡·WWII uncovered: A Salute to Commando Kieffer: Honouring the Service of Count Guy de Montlaur.



"As the gray dawn spread over the coast of Normandy on June 6, 1944, revealing the legions of Allied ships staged to begin the D-Day invasion, a 25-year-old French aristocrat-turned-commando named Count Guy de Montlaur was told his squad would be one of the very first to splash onto the beach. Their mission was to take a seaside casino that held a German stronghold.'


'The young count, his green beret pulled low over one eye, replied to his commander that attacking the casino “would be a pleasure. I have lost several fortunes in that place.”


'By the end of the battle, only 40 of the 177 French Kieffer Commandos who landed on the beach were still standing. Commando Kieffer was the common name given to the 1st Battalion Marine Commando Fusiliers.


Montlaur survived and eventually became a hero of the French liberation" - Excerpt from NY Times article, June, 2019


'In November 1944, he took part in the Allied landings of Flushing on the Isle of Walcheren in Holland where he was wounded when his barge was hit by a German shell. 


The operation was led against an enemy ten times greater in numbers than the Allies, and was a total success. It opened the Scheldt River to the Allied troops and allowed them access to the port of Antwerp and northern Germany, opening the road to Berlin and leading to the end of the war. 


By the age of 25 he had received seven citations for valour in battle ("Croix de Guerre") and the French Légion d’Honneur.'


"After the war Guy and his wife immigrated to the United States where he studied art. After a 2-year period he returned to Fontainebleau, a district of Paris. 


During the next phase of his career he revealed his military memories on canvas, being a well-respected artist in the Abstract Expressionists Era. 


His artistic works express the tremendous loss of the Allied victory. Many of his works centered around his own experience with Battlefield trauma." 


Guy de Montlaur passed away on August 10, 1977 at the age of 58. He lies in rest at Ranville War Cemetery in Ranville, France. 


He wished to be buried next to his comrades fallen 33 years earlier, in Ranville, near Caen, the first village to be liberated in France. 


don't forget to leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A great story about a little bit of 'humanity' during a terrible war.

A great story about a little bit of 'humanity' during a terrible war.                                                                                      In April 1945, 2nd Lt. Peter During was a South African fighter pilot (N.7 Squadron) running missions over Italy when his Spitfire was shot down by German AA fire. He managed to crash land his plane behind enemy lines where he was immediately captured.   Whilst been escorted to a German Lufwaffe Prisoner of War (POW) camp (he was a pilot and thus his interrogation and imprisonment was the responsibility of the German airforce), he opened a conversation with his captors. He was quickly able to establish that they could already see the writing on the wall, that the war was at an end and Germany would lose it. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

French woman accused of sleeping with Germans during the occupation has her head shaved by vindictive neighbors in village near Marseilles.

French woman accused of sleeping with Germans during the occupation has her head shaved by vindictive neighbors in village near Marseilles.  Antony Beevor wrote: "... In Paris, there were cases of prostitutes kicked to death for having accepted German soldiers as clients. (...) A large number of the victims were prostitutes who had simply plied their trade with Germans as well as Frenchmen, although in some areas it was accepted that their conduct was professional rather than political, others were silly teenagers who had associated with German soldiers out of bravado or boredom.  In a number of cases, female schoolteachers who, living alone, had German soldiers billeted on them, were falsely denounced for having been a "mattress for the boches. (...) Women accused of having had an abortion were also assumed to have consorted with Germans.  Many victims were young mothers, whose husbands were in German prisoner-of-war camps. During the war, they often had no means of supp...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Last Public Execution In The History Of United States Of America Was Held In Owensboro,Kentucky On August 14, 1936.

The Last Public Execution In The History Of United States Of America Was Held In Owensboro,Kentucky On August 14, 1936. Rainey Bethea had been convicted of raping and then killing seventy-year-old Lischa Edwards, but the event had become nationally famous as rumors spread that the executioner might have been a woman, one Florence Thompson, who became sheriff of Davies County after the death of the father who held the position. Arthur Hash, an ex-Louisville cop, offered to operate the trapdoor lever for her, and Florence accepted. On the day of the execution, however, in front of a crowd of 20,000 people including journalists from all over America who had come to immortalize the moment, the man showed up drunk and at the decisive moment stood still before the eyes of the world.  A deputy pulled the lever in his place and Bethea fell to the ground from 3 meters high, breaking his neck; the embarrassing outcome of this event, added to the outcry received in the following months, contr...
Post a Comment
Read more