Appeal

HELP US FIND PORTRAITS OF COMPANIONS OF THE LIBERATION FOR WHOM WE HAVE NO IMAGES.

Some may have been born near where you live or studied at the same institutions as you... You can help the Order of Liberation find a photograph or any document that could improve our heroes’ biographies.

For these 17 Companions, the Order of Liberation holds a file containing a few biographical elements that might give you a lead...

Pass on what you find out to musee@ordredelaliberation.fr

COMPANIONS OF THE LIBERATION FOR WHOM THE ORDER OF LIBERATION DOES NOT HAVE ANY PHOTOGRAPHS:

Roland ALIBERT (aka “de Facconet”)

Born on 28 February 1917 in Paris into a family originally from the Médoc region. His father, Louis Alibert, was a man of letters. A Baccalauréat holder, he was a merchant navy cadet in 1936 before performing his military service in the Navy the following year. He remained in service as a result of war breaking out in 1939...

Mohamed BEL HADJ

Presumed to have been born in Saida (Algeria) in 1904. An army volunteer in Saida in August 1923, he joined the 10th Algerian Tirailleurs Regiment (RTA) as a tirailleur, second class, followed by the 6th RTA. He then served in Morocco for four years…

Emile BELLET

Born on 20 June 1911 in Boulogne-sur-Seine to a mechanic father and laundress mother. He enlisted in the naval infantry in Nevers. He was serving in the 24th Colonial Infantry Regiment (24e RIC) in Tripoli (Lebanon) at the time of the 1940 armistice...

Sidiki BOUBAKARI

Born in Bobo-Dioulasso in Upper Volta (present-day Burkina Faso) around 1912. A French national, he left Côte d'Ivoire (as Bobo-Dioulasso was part of Upper Volta, which was dissolved in 1932 and attached to Côte d'Ivoire) in 1935 with his mother for the city of Accra (Gold Coast). After the death of his mother in 1938, he remained on the Gold Coast and worked as a labourer in the gold mines...

Robert CRÉMEL

Born on 25 April 1919 in Blainville-sur-l'Eau (Meurthe-et-Moselle). His father was an accountant. After attending the Lycée Poincaré in Nancy with outstanding results, he enlisted for the duration of the war on 2 September 1939 in Epinal. After training at the artillery school in Fontainebleau, he went over to the Navy in January 1940 to serve with the naval sea cadet school (“école des mousses”) aboard the Armorique in Brest. On the arrival of the Germans on 18 June 1940, he was evacuated to England aboard the battleship Paris with the rest of the cadets...

Idrisse DOURSAN

Born around 1914 in Makayan, district of Bongor (Chad). A volunteer in the Senegalese Tirailleurs Regiment of Chad (RTST) in Korotoro, he was assigned to the 7th Company. He was on campaign from 18 December 1935 to 4 January 1939…

Adolphe GAËTAN

Born on 27 October 1913 in Conakry in Guinea. His father was an interpreter. A clerk in a law firm, Adolphe Gaëtan joined the Resistance in May 1941 by accepting to supply his contact in Sierra Leone with information about the state of mind of Europeans and Indigenous people in Guinea, as well as military intelligence...

GARGUÉ

Gargué or N'Gargué (service No. 2366) was a lance corporal in the 3rd section of the 9th Company of March Battalion No. 3 of the AEF (BM 3). The 9th Company of the BM 3 was formerly the 10th Company of the Senegalese Tirailleurs Regiment of Chad (RTST); it came together in Chad in December 1940 and January 1941, in Murzuq then in Abéché...

André KAILAO

Born around 1918 in Bodo, district of Doba in Chad, André Kailao, of Sara ethnicity, resided in Doyaha, in the constituency of Fort-Archambault when he joined the Senegalese Tirailleurs Regiment of Chad (RTST) on 13 September 1939. Posted to metropolitan France in March 1940 with the Detachment of Reinforcements No. 2, which became stuck in Brazzaville with the armistice of June 1940...

NÉMIR

Born around 1904 in Fort-Lamy (Chad), Némir was originally from the region of Mango. After voluntarily enlisting for four years in the Senegalese Tirailleurs Regiment of Chad (RTST) on 25 September 1924, he was assigned to the 11th Company the following month and was then admitted to the platoon of cadet lance corporals in Abeché, from April to September 1925 before joining the 11th Company once he had completed the course...

Aloysius ODEWOLE

Born around 1906 in Ife, Nigeria. A British subject, married and father of three children, he was a border guard police officer in Idofain, Nigeria. In October 1940, the British authorities sent him to Benin to investigate the landing of German aircraft and the Cotonou radio station. On his arrival, he was assisted by two merchants from Porto-Novo and Cotonou, Agoussi Wabi who housed him and Albert Idohou, who supplied him with information on aviation...

Louis OUBRE

Born on 19 January 1885 in Rochefort-sur-Mer in Charente-Maritime. Son of a serviceman. On 1 January 1903, he enlisted in the colonial infantry, serving in Upper Senegal and Niger (1907-1908) then in Chad until 1913. The declaration of war in 1914 took him to the front in metropolitan France. Then in February 1915, he continued the war in Chad then Senegal. From April 1916, he was again posted to the metropolitan front until the armistice of November 1918...

Jean PICHAT

Born on 16 June 1913 in Zaghouan in Tunisia, where his father, a farmer, had established an estate. Jean Pichat studied in Paris then became a civil engineer through the Mines de Saint-Etienne. He was called up for service in Tunis in 1938 in the 34th Engineer Battalion. He was selected to take the reserve officer cadet course, on completion of which he was assigned to the 4th Engineer Regiment in September 1939 as Second Lieutenant...

POIS

A Legionnaire first class, he belonged to the 13th Demi-Brigade of the Foreign Legion (13e DBLE) and participated in the Eritrea campaign with the French Orient Brigade. In a ruling dated 4 July 2008, the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris declared Companion of the Liberation Mr Ange Pois missing; he had not been seen nor heard from since June 1941, and his date and place of birth remain unknown. • Companion of the Liberation – Decree of 23 June 1941.

Roger SEFERIAN (aka “de Rauvelin”)

Born on 16 December 1915 in Clisson (Loire-Atlantique), to a Breton mother and Armenian father. A philosophy student preparing for a competitive examination for a high-level teaching diploma, he was called up in 1939 to join the 32nd Horse Field Artillery Regiment in Longwy. He was nominated as an officer candidate on 20 April 1940...

Lucien VANNER

A  former legionnaire, Lucien Vanner belonged to the 1st Company of the 1st Naval Infantry Battalion (1er BIM) on completion of his training in summer 1940, which was the first Free France unit to fight against the Axis forces, led by Captain Folliot...

Agoussi WABI

Born around 1898 in Porto-Novo, Benin. A merchant in Porto Novo, he was a French subject, married and the father of three children. From 1940, he participated in the Resistance in French West Africa. In October 1940, together with a comrade, Albert Idohou, a retail employee in Cotonou, he facilitated a mission assigned to Aloysius Odewole, British border guard in Nigeria and agent of one of the intelligence networks...