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Undaunted, Gabin joined General Charles de Gaulle 's Free French Forces and earned the Médaille militaire and a Croix de Guerre for his wartime valor fighting with the Allies in North Africa. Following D-Day, Gabin served with the 2nd armored division that liberated Paris.
Dec 23, 2018 · Gabin offered his services to the Free French. Its representatives wanted him to do propaganda films, but Gabin insisted on active duty in the armed forces.
Of course, when the Free French high command heard of this, they were eager to co-opt him for propaganda, but Gabin held out, and went on to serve twenty-seven unglamorous months with the Free French army as an instructor and tank commander in North Africa, France, and Germany.
Jean Gabin was one of the most popular film actors in France from the 1930s to the ’60s. Gabin was the son of a music-hall comedian (stage name Jean Gabin). In 1923 he began a theatrical career in the Folies-Bergère but left the stage after his film debut in Chacun sa chance (1931).
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
On it lay the beribboned military and civil decorations of the defunct. Nearby stood the furled flags of the Fusiliers Armored Regiment and the Second Armored Division of the Free French Forces, where he had served as a tank commander during the liberation of France in 1945.
Undaunted, Jean Gabin joined General Charles de Gaulle's Free French Forces and earned the Médaille militaire and a Croix de guerre for his wartime valor fighting with the Allies in North Africa. Following D-Day, Gabin was part of the military contingent that entered a liberated Paris.