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André Louis Arthur Zirnheld (March 7, 1913 – June 27, 1942) was born in Paris on to a family of Alsatian Jews. He was a French paratrooper, a member of the Free French Air Force, and a member of the French Squadron, Special Air Service during World War II. He is famous for being the first French paratrooper officer killed in action, and was the author of the poem "Prayer of The Paraquedista". A licensed and certified graduate of philosophy, he was a college philosophy professor before the war. In 1937 he was appointed professor of philosophy at the ''Lycee Carnot de Tunis'' in Tunis, Tunisia. In October 1938 he served as professor at the French Secular Mission in Tartus, Tunisia. At the outbreak of the war in 1939, Zirnheld was assigned to an Défense Contre Avions (DCA) unit in Lebanon. He tried to transfer to serve in the Metropolitan Army in France, but the Armistice was signed before he could do so. He then defected to British-held Palestine to join the Free French forces. He was assigned to the 1st Colonial Infantry Battalion as a private and served at the Battle of Sidi Barani. Because of his education, he was reassigned as the Deputy Director of the Department of Information and Propaganda in Cairo. Although in a safe billet, he requested a frontline posting. He was then sent to the Officer Candidates' School in Brazzaville, French Congo, where he graduated the 5th in his class as an Aspirant (Brevet-Lieuteant). He was airborne trained and was assigned to the Middle East in February 1942 to the ''1er Compagnie de Chasseurs Parachutistes'' ("1st Parachute Chasseur Company"), assigned to the ''Forces Aériennes Françaises Libres'' (FAFL) ("Free French Air Force"). This was later folded into the 3rd French Special Air Service of His Majesty's British Army or French 3rd Parachute Chasseur Regiment. Although an officer in the Free French forces, Zirnheld was rated as a Corporal in the SAS. This was because no officer slots were open at the time, he had just joined the unit, and had no seniority. The SAS, originally conceived as an airborne formation, had at this point been converted to a raiding force equipped with machine-gun-armed jeeps. On his first mission, Zirnheld commanded a team of four men who raided Luftwaffe airfield Berka 3, Libya on June 12, 1942, destroying six enemy aircraft on the ground. He then received, as all SAS after their first mission, his SAS operational wings or "Egyptian wings". His later missions included the sabotage of a railway track, attacks on Axis convoys, and taking Luftwaffe prisoners. For his actions, he was proposed for the French Médaille militaire and British Military Cross and received the ''Croix de guerre'' ("Cross of War") with 2 ''palmes en vermeil'' (gilded silver Palm Branch pins worn on the medal's ribbon, signifying two Theater-level Mentions-in-Dispatches). ==The Sidi-Haneish Raid== Zirnheld's fourth and last mission was a raid on Sidi-Haneish airfield on the night of June 26 and the early morning of June 27, 1942. An 18-jeep force attacked the field by driving up the runway in an inverted "vee" formation and strafing the parked planes. 37 bombers and transports were destroyed for the loss of two SAS troopers. Zirnheld's jeep had a flat, but he was picked up by Aspirant François Martin. He and Martin drove off, but Martin's jeep broke down, so they began traveling on foot, Three hours later, with the sun now up, a flight of four Stuka dive-bombers spotted them and strafed them. Zirnheld was hit in the shoulder and abdomen on their second pass. Zirnheld died of his wounds thirteen hours later. His last words to Martin were, ''Je vais vous quitter. Tout est en ordre en moi.'' ("I'll leave you. Everything is in order within me.") 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「André Zirnheld」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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