Dimitri Amilakhvari
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Prince Dimitri Zedguinidze-Amilakhvari, more commonly known as Dimitri Amilakhvari (Georgian: დიმიტრი ამილახვარი, French: Dimitri Amilakvari) (October 31, 1906 - October 24, 1942) was a French military officer of Georgian extraction who, as a Lieutenant Colonel of the French Foreign Legion, became a hero of the Free French Forces during World War II. He was nicknamed Bazorka after the place he was born.
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[edit] Early life and career
Amilakhvari was born in Bazorkino (now Chermen, North Ossetia-Alania, Russian Federation), where his family had moved from their ancestral estate at Gori, Georgia during the Russian Revolution of 1905. The house of Zedguinidze-Amilakhvari had formerly served as hereditary Master of the Horse to the Georgian Crown (Amilakhvari) and retained their princely dingity during the Imperial Russian rule of Georgia. Dimitri's grandfather, Ivane Amilakhvari (1829-1905), was an eminent general in the Russian army. His father, Colonel Giorgi Zedguinidze-Amilakhvari, also served in the Russian military and transferred his loyalty to the short-lived Democratic Republic of Georgia in 1918-21. After the Russian SFSR occupied Georgia early in 1921, the family fled to Istanbul, Turkey, where Dimitri attended a local British School, and later, in 1922, emigrated to France.
In 1924, Dimitri Amilakhvari entered the École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr and was commissioned as a second lieutenant after his graduation in 1926. At the same time, he was posted to the French Foreign Legion and promoted to lieutenant in 1926. He later served in French North Africa and took part in all important operations in the south of Morocco from 1932 to 1933. From 1934 to 1939, he was Head of the French military school in Agadir, being promoted to captain in 1937. Following his naturalisation as a French citizen, he married another member of the exiled Georgian nobility, Princess Irina, née Dadiani (1904-1944) in August 1927.
[edit] World War II
During the 'Phoney War' before the German occupation of France, Amilakhvari was serving in Algiers in North Africa, but in the spring of 1940 he joined the French expeditionary force earmarked for the Norwegian campaign. He fought at Narvik and was then evacuated to the United Kingdom, where he joined the Free French Forces. He then took part in the unhappy campaigns against the Vichy French forces in West Africa, at Dakar (in Senegal), and Equatorial Africa, in Cameroun. In a remarkable record of service, his war service in 1940 had thus taken him from Africa to the Arctic Circle and back again, as far as the Equator, all in the space of a few months.
Amilakhvari's next move took him half way round the continent to Eritrea, in East Africa, to join the East African Campaign against Italy) in early 1941, but by the summer he was on the move again, to take part in another campaign against Vichy France (with units of the French Foreign Legion serving on both sides of the conflict), in Syria. This would be the closest he would come to the land of his birth.
In 1942, Amilakhvari was back in North Africa, facing the German and Italian forces in Libya as part of the North African Campaign. During the hard fighting at the Bir-Hakeim (January) he wrote: "We, foreigners, have only one way to prove to France our gratitude: to be killed ...". Nevertheless he survived, and in June he was made a Companion of the Liberation, a decoration second only to the Legion d'Honneur. In 1942 he was also awarded the Norwegian War Cross with Sword (Krigskorset med sverd) for his earlier service in Norway. He was one of only 66 Frenchmen awarded this decoration during the Second World War.
In October 1942,the Allies began the final offensive in North Africa with the Second Battle of El Alamein. This battle took the Allied forces right across Libya and into French North Africa, where Amilakhvari had begun his operational service. However, Amilakhvari never did not live to complete his great African odyssey, as he was killed in action on the second day of the battle.
In 1955 Amilakhvari was posthumously awarded France's highest decoration, the Legion of Honour (Legion d'Honneur). General Charles De Gaulle named him and his legionaries the "honour of France" for their heroic defence of the Allies' positions.
[edit] External links
- (French) Entry on ordredelaliberation.fr
[edit] Literature
- Rayer G., L'Homme qui a étonné la Légion- Paris Match, 1956 18 fevr., N 358, p. 77-82 (in French)
- I. Tabagua and E. Menabde. He fought for the liberation.- Molodyoj Gruzii, Tbilisi, March 10, 1970 (in Russian)
- G. Zhordania. Amilakhvari Dimitri.- The Encyclopedia Sakartvelo, vol. I, Tbilisi, 1997, p. 129 (in Georgian)
- L. Urushadze. Europe and the Georgian Political Emigration, Publishing House Ena da Kultura, Tbilisi, 2005, (in Georgian, English summary)
