This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site you agree to accept cookies.
If you enjoy this siteplease consider making a donation.
Site Home
WW2 Home
Add Stories
WW2 Search
Library
Help & FAQs
WW2 Features
Airfields
Allied Army
Allied Air Forces
Allied Navy
Axis Forces
Home Front
Battles
Prisoners of War
Allied Ships
Women at War
Those Who Served
Day-by-Day
Library
The Great War
Submissions
Add Stories
Time Capsule
TWMP on Facebook
Childrens Bookshop
FAQ's
Help & FAQs
Glossary
Volunteering
Contact us
News
Bookshop
About
241210Brigadier-Chef. Marcel LeGuen MMe, CdG.
French Army 11th Cuirassiers
from:Plouegat-Moysan, Finistere, Brittany, Fance
On 12th of June 1940, while serving with the Cavalry Division of the French 11th Cuirassiers (Armoured Division) and attached to the 51st Highland Division, Marcel Le Guen, aged 23, was captured at St Valery en Caux near Dieppe. He was imprisoned at the Citadelle de Cambria.Six months later he escaped by hiding in a coal truck and stayed with cousins in Paris before returning to his home in Brittany. While working in the family farm, he joined a local Resistance movement. Tired of in-fighting within the local units, eighteen months later he decided to make his way to the British Embassy in Barcelona, Spain and from there join the Free French in England. On 6th December 1942, after crossing the Pyrenees on foot, he was arrested near Gerona as an escaped prisoner of war and incarcerated in the prison camp of Miranda del Ebro.
He persuaded British embassy officials, who were reporting on conditions in the camp, that he was a French-speaking Canadian named Marcel le Goen of Quebec and in June 1943 he was released and made his way to Gibraltar where a representative of General de Gaulle arranged for his transport to England on the troopship Highland Princess. Marcel Le Guen joined the Forces Francaises Libres in London on 2nd July 1943 as a Soldier Second Class, Number 35948, attached to the FAFC l'Infanterie de l'Air, 2nd Company, lst Battalion. He was trained somewhere in England, possibly Dean Camp, Camberley, as a parachutist and took part in several campaigns in Holland and Belgium in 1944. In 1945 he was parachuted into Normandy with 21st Army Group during the invasion, fought at Arnhem and served behind enemy lines in Holland and Germany. After his demob on 1st June 1946 he joined the French Diplomatic Service. He died in Berne, Switzerland on 12th October 1958 from TB he had contracted in 1940, probably at Cambrai.
Related Content:
Can you help us to add to our records?
The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them
Did you or your relatives live through the Second World War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial? Were you or your relative evacuated? Did an air raid affect your area?
If so please let us know.
Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice.
Celebrate your own Family History
Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Secomd World War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc.
Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.
The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items.
The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions.
If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running.
Hosted by:
Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV
- All Rights Reserved
We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.