France Lucien Barroy dit «Ali Baba»

[PKeating]

A fairly normal-looking military paybook from the 1920s...

[PKeating]

Pages 2 and 3. Born in Paris on 27.2.1909, Lucien Barroy was an ajusteur mécanicien when he joined the 32e Régiment d'Aviation on 10.5.1925, aged just sixteen. Le soldat 2e classe Barroy was posted to Morocco in September 1925, to the 14e Éscadrille at Sidi-Djellil, near the town of Taza, which is about 100 km due east of Fés, where he spent a year.

The Berber chieftan Abd El-Karim had invaded French Morocco in April 1925 and Paris had dispatched an expeditionary force under the command of Marshal Philippe Pétain, which fought side-by-side with Spanish forces against the armed forces of Abd El Karim's Rif Republic. The squadrons of the 32nd Air Regiment flew many bombing and strafing sorties during the ten month war and civilians were considered valid targets by Franco-Spanish forces using a wide range of weapons, including mustard gas. Abd El-Karim surrendered to the French on 26.5.1926. Judging by the photograph in his paybook, Barroy seems to have been on flying duties. He was repatriated on 13.9.1926 and sent on leave.

[PKeating]

In the summer of 1937, Monsieur BARROY Lucien is called up for some reserve training. This was tucked into the paybook. The summons is redirected from his family home at 12 rue Frémicourt, Paris 15 to 1 rue Recollet, Château du Loir, about 40 km south of Le Mans, in the Sarthe region.

Edited October 10, 2009 by PKeating

[PKeating]

As Page 4 shows, under the entry for the 1937 summer training period, l'aspirant Barroy - aspirant being a rank equating to an officer cadet or potential officer - is called up in August 1939 and posted to Airbase 102 near Dijon. This airbase still exists and is considered the home of the French air force, where the first squadron was formed in 1914. In the 1930s, BA 102 was home to various fighter and reconnaissance squadrons. In July 1940, after the Armistice, Barroy is at BA 109 near Tours. He is demobilised at Châteauroux on 31.7.1940 and returns home to Château du Loir wherehe becomes active in the Resistance in March 1944. Barroy is listed as a Lieutenant of the FFI or Forces françaises de l'intérieur on 2.6.1944, operating as the commander of the Groupe armée 7 or the L'Organisation de résistance de l'armée for quite a large area bordered by Tours, Angers and Le Mans, hence the stamps bearing the legend ORA-TAM. The entries also bear a postwar stamp as verification and validation. Lieutenant Barroy's resistance pseudonym was "Ali Baba".

Edited October 10, 2009 by PKeating

[PKeating]

The pages showing his periods of service and his decorations and medals. As Paul L Murphy says in another thread about the medals listed, some of them are semi-official or unofficial medals rarely seen entered in an official livret militaire. Barroy received the Colonial Medal with MAROC clasp for his service there in 1925 and 1926 and also qualified for the Combattant's Cross, as well as the 1939-1945 Combattant's Cross for the War of 1939-1940. As a side note, this was one of the two decorations reissued by the Vichy government with the 1939-1940 dates, the other being the 1939 Croix de Guerre. Barroy did not receive the Croix de Guerre but he did receive the Combattant's Cross for Resistance Volunteers, instituted in 1954, which was quite a prestigious decoration.

[PKeating]

The house at 22 rue Frémicourt, in the south-west of Paris, in the 15th arrondisement, where Lucien Borroy grew up. I must take this opportunity to thank Chris Boonzaier for alerting me to this extraordinary military paybook belonging to a young aviator in the 1920s who went on to be quite an important Resistance commander. There is more research to be done. Having found references to a couple of previous eBay sales, I know that there are more documents relating to Lucien Borroy's military and resistance careers and that the group was split up by someone, which is regrettable. Some vendors do this through greed and others through ignorance but I think one has to be quite stupid to split up groups, unless they are so expensive as to render it impossible to sell in one go, which happens.

L'Organisation de résistance de l'armée was established in January 1943 after the German invasion of Vichy France in November 1942. However, a number of Pétain's generals and other high-ranking officers of the Armée d'armistice had been planning it since July 1940. The ORA consisted of French veterans who described themselves in the main as apolitical but who were anti-Gaullist. Many of the members tended to be sympathetic towards General Giraud, who had not yet thrown his lot in with de Gaulle. The prime mover in the founding of the ORA was General Frère, who had presided over the tribunal that condemned Colonel de Gaulle to death in August 1940 for desertion. In the former «Zone libre», the ORA was given supplies and arms by the Pétainist armée d'armistice who had managed to retain a lot of weapons despite German requests to hand them over. While the ORA responded to the call from London to ally itself with the Armée secrète and the FTP in February 1944, the organisation retained its sense of autonomy. The ORA was also active in the former Occupied Zone, which is where Borroy and his unit operated. By the end of hostilities, the ORA had lost more than 1,600 men, including 327 officers and NCOs in action or through summary execution by their captors. More than 850 were sent to concentration camps, of whom 360 did not return.

PK

[Chris Boonzaier]

Noce catch, did he live above tghe estate agent or the jeans shop? :-)

[TacHel]

Great find! Great piece of history! Thanks so much for sharing and I hope you'll keep us up to date on any upcoming discoveries about Ali-baba!

:cheers:

[Veteran]

Hello PK

Very unusual "livret militaire". I am fascinated by the list of "strange" awards appearing on that last page. The "décoration" he is intitled to is the Médaille coloniale with "agrafe en vermeil".

Everything listed below the line after his adress has been added later in the wrong place. On the other hand, most of it looks "period". I just cannot help wondering...

Veteran

Edited October 10, 2009 by Veteran

[Chris Boonzaier]

I would imagine the last official entry was in 1940 and that Ali or the vet association added the reat at a later date.

My Livret was signed off on when I left the army, since then i have had some awards that were given out retroactively. If I wanted to enter them then we would have the same situation. I would enter them and it would arouse questions when it is a collectors hands 40 years from now.

Dont forget, the Croix de combattant is a long after the fact medal, some awarded 10 or 20 years after someone leaves the army.

Although the association medals are not official, many old soldiers dont realise that, and I as Ali was a civvie all those years later, there was probably noone to stop him entering the "croix de combattant European". I have seen a number of soldiers, starting with WW2 German vets and ending with Afghanistan Vets who have this and think it is legitimate.

Once someone is out of uniform whats "official" and not come become blurred, and in some cases uninteresting to the wearer.

Best

Chris

[love4history]

Very nice project, and you're definitely not nearly finished with the research! There's still more to be found out there I think. :cool:

[PKeating]

Hello PK

Very unusual "livret militaire". I am fascinated by the list of "strange" awards appearing on that last page. The "décoration" he is intitled to is the Médaille coloniale with "agrafe en vermeil".

Everything listed below the line after his adress has been added later in the wrong place. On the other hand, most of it looks "period". I just cannot help wondering...

Veteran

I think you and Chris are right in that he added some of these "décorations" himself. However, I have been able to establish that he was indeed the commander or "chef" of the Tours-Angers-Le Mans sector of the Organisation Résistance de l'Armée whose resistance pseudonym was "Ali Baba". Apart from the wartime and postwar veterans' association stamps certifying this, he is listed in a number of official files. As he was an officer, I think there must be a personnel file on him somewhere. Whether I would be permitted to research that file is another matter.

The ORA was one of those groups that found itself subject to a certain amount of Gaullist "airbrushing" after the war, like the FTPC and other groups that were in no hurry to swear allegiance to General de Gaulle. The ORA was, after all, set up by Vichy officers whose leader was the man presiding over the tribunal that sentenced Charles de Gaulle to death in 1940 and many of the members would have described themselves as sympathetic to General Giraud, before Giraud threw in his lot with the Gaullists once it started becoming clear, as the Axis war effort started to falter and Vichy's future looked less and less sure, that the choice facing France was stark: Gaullist conservatives or Moscow-friendly Bolsheviks. Charles de Gaulle was the right man for the job of restoring order in France. Had anyone else been in charge, an already violent post-Liberation situation might have degenerated into open civil war. Most ORA men saw the sense in this, which is why the ORA allowed itself to come under FFI command, although it jealously guarded its operational autonomy, like the FTPC.

I would have expected to see medals like the 1939-1945 Commemorative with, perhaps, a LIBÉRATION bar and the French Resistance Medal. Maybe the "Croix commémorative de la Libération" was his way of referring to the War Medal with the Liberation bar, given that incorporates the Cross of Lorraine in the obverse design. He must have added those entries in the 1950s or 1960s. Maybe even later than that. However, these are details. I bought the paybook because Lucien Barroy dit Ali Baba was certainly the commander of an important resistance group in a part of France I know very well and as Roel says, there is more research to be done.

Thank you all for your remarks and comments, which have been very helpful indeed.

PK

Edited October 27, 2009 by PKeating

[Chris Boonzaier]

I think you and Chris are right in that he added some of these "décorations" himself.

Hi,

I dont think there is anything negative about that. I would imagine anyone who left the service before the awards were made would have done the entries themselves, no other way for then to be entered.

Only other possibility would be to send all your stuff in and get it entered... and quite honestly, who can be bothered to go to the trouble.

I should send my book in to have 4 awrds entered that came up after I left... have been meaning to...... and meaning to..................... and meaning to...................................

When i am 80 I will probably do it myself just so the grandkids knew I had them.....

Only one it will bother will be collectors in the far future.... unless the grandkids bin the stuff.. ,-)

[Chris Boonzaier]

P.S.

as to the unofficial veterans stuff..... same way we see old vets with unofficial Dunkirk, D-Day, Atlantic convoy medals etc... I am sure many an old codger wears what he damned well thinks he deserved.

"Médaille coloniale with "agrafe en vermeil".

must be the Morocco 1925 bar?

[Chris Boonzaier]

P.S.

as to the unofficial veterans stuff..... same way we see old vets with unofficial Dunkirk, D-Day, Atlantic convoy medals etc... I am sure many an old codger wears what he damned well thinks he deserved.

"Médaille coloniale with "agrafe en vermeil".

must be the Morocco 1925 bar?

[PKeating]

"Médaille coloniale with "agrafe en vermeil".

must be the Morocco 1925 bar?

Yes, indeed. You can just about see the word "Maroc" off to the left. Looking at the postwar entries 'in the flesh', you can see that the ORA-TAM veterans' branch association stamp has been applied over them. The first entry for the Croix du Combattant probably refers to his entitlement for his time in Morocco on operations against the Berber Republic in 1925. As you say, you didn't get your CdC for years.

Lucien Barroy left the military reserve in May 1953 at the age of 44. The CdC was not instituted until 1930 and he may not have bothered applying for it until the 1950s or later, some thirty years after qualifying for it. It certainly seems to have been entered in his paybook after the end of his reserve service, hence the validating stamp from the ORA-TAM veterans' association. He may have stamped his own entries, of course, having been the group commander!

Now, Paul Murphy very kindly posted a Croix du Combattant de l'Europe document. I have now tracked down the "Franco-Britannique Croix de Commandeur pour services rendus à la cause des alliés". This was unofficial and the correct designation was "Croix d'Honneur Franco-Brittanique". It came in three classes: Chevalier, Officier et Commandeur, this last being the neck award. Made of gilt-bronze with red enamel, it was instituted in 1944.

The Croix Commémorative de la Libération, as I surmised previously, is either a mistake and refers to the Médaille Commémorative de la Guerre de 1939-1945 avec agrafe «Libération» or to some other elusive bit of unofficial veterans' bling. The Croix du Combattant 1939-1945 is an official award, created in 1953 - although is should read Croix du Combattant Volontaire 1939-1945 - as is the Croix du Combattant Volontaire de la Résistance, created in 1954.

I would venture to say that Lieutenant BARROY Lucien dit «Ali Baba» was certainly entitled to the following medals:

Croix du Combattant

Croix du Combattant de 1939-1945*

Croix du Combattant Volontaire de la Résistance

Médaille Coloniale avec agrafe «Maroc»

He should have been entitled to the following medals:

Médaille de la Résistance

Médaille Commémorative de la Guerre de 1939-1945 avec agrafe «Libération»

*Given his position as a commissioned member of the ORA, which was pro-Pétain but anti-German, he may well have worn the Vichy version of this award between the end of "La Guerre de 1939-1940" and his promotion from Aspirant to Lieutenant when the ORA became part of the Gaullist-controlled Forces françaises de l'intérieur or FFI along with the Armée Sécrete and the FTPC early in 1944.

PK

[stefFBMDM]

Bonsoir,

Je viens de découvrir ce topic via une recherche sur Google , étant un descendant de Lucien Barroy je voudrais savoir où ces documents ont été trouvés et où sont-ils maintenant?

J'espère que PKeating pourra me répondre.

Merci.