Introduction – A Tempsford Passenger

On the night of 7 August 1944, a Hudson aircraft of RAF 161 Squadron approached the Saône valley under cover of darkness. Its task was twofold: To extract 14, including French Politicians, Resistance Operatives and four airmen, two of whom were from the Worry Bird crash of April of that year. The second objective was to deliver agents of the Bureau Central de Renseignements et d’Action for operations in liberated France. Among those delivered into the Ain was Captain André Dammann. His presence in this landscape links the story of the Worry Bird to the wider network of the French Resistance and the Free French effort coordinated from London.

CAPTAIN ANDRÉ DAMMANN

Born: 12 December 1901, Nancy (Meurthe-et-Moselle)
Died: 3 February 1951, Mount Cameroon (Cameroon)
Companion of the Liberation – Knight of the Legion of Honour

André Dammann was thirty-eight years old when France fell in June 1940. At the time, he was an entrepreneur in Cameroon, where he had introduced the cultivation of Arabica coffee to the Bamoun region. Refusing defeat, he left his post and joined the Légion du Cameroun, which took part in the campaign in Gabon before being attached to the 13th Demi-Brigade of the Foreign Legion (13e DBLE).

With the Legion, he served in Eritrea in the spring of 1941 and in Syria later that year. At Bir Hakeim in June 1942, he was wounded three times but refused evacuation, continuing to serve his gun until the position was abandoned. For this conduct, he was awarded the Croix de la Libération by General de Gaulle in person, at Sofar, Syria.

After a period of recovery in Cameroon, Dammann travelled to London and volunteered for clandestine operations in occupied France. Promoted to sous-lieutenant in April 1944, he joined the Bureau Central de Renseignements et d’Action(BCRA). In early August 1944, he was parachuted into Savoie to establish liaison with local Resistance groups. The aircraft, a Hudson of 161 Squadron, also recovered two Allied airmen previously downed near Saint-Cyr-de-Valorges.

After the liberation of the region, Dammann helped reform the 27th Battalion of Alpine Chasseurs and fought in the Alpine campaign until the armistice. Returning to Cameroon in 1946, he founded a forestry company and became President of the Union Française des Anciens Combattants.

He was killed in an air crash on 3 February 1951 on Mount Cameroon while travelling from Brazzaville to Paris. He is buried at Chelles, Seine-et-Marne.