THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 22, 1995 TAG: 9510220065
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
The French government has presented the country's highest civilian and military honor to Douglas Alden, a scholar of modern French literature who helped liberate France from the Nazis.
Alden, 83, received the medal Friday from French Sen. Andre Maman, a former Princeton University colleague and his co-author of a French grammar text published in 1967. Mamon pinned the medal on Alden's lapel and gave him the traditional kiss on each cheek.
``It's a culmination of a long career of devotion to France,'' Alden, a University of Virginia professor emeritus, said before the ceremony. ``I've sort of identified myself with France since 1931.''
That was the year the American spent a year in Paris as a college exchange student.
``I thought France was a marvelous country,'' Alden said.
Alden left his job as a French professor at Texas Tech in 1942 and enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps to aid in the war effort.
Later assigned to England as an intelligence officer, Alden asked whether he could do anything to help occupied France and was given a commission in the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency.
In the OSS, Alden participated in the Sussex Operation, in which he briefed 120 officers of the Free French Army before they parachuted into enemy territory in 1944 to gather intelligence for the D-Day invasion.
``It's been entirely ignored,'' Alden said of the operation, which is little talked about in this country, but highly revered by the French.
As a scholar, Alden is best known for ``French XX,'' an annual bibliography of references for the study of French literature that he has published every year since 1949.
Alden maintains an office at U.Va., where he continues to work daily on ``French XX.''
``It is with a combination of a brilliant, brilliant life that this is awarded,'' said Nichole Yancey, honorary French Consul in Norfolk, who represented the French embassy at the award ceremony in the Rotunda.
Yancey said the Legion of Honor - founded by Napoleon in 1802 - usually is reserved for French citizens but it is not rare for a foreigner to win it. Kirk Douglas and Elizabeth Taylor are among the Americans who have received the honor.
At the awards ceremony, Alden was reunited with Rene Joyeuse, a doctor and one of the French Sussex parachutists, whom Alden hasn't seen for 50 years. Also attending was Agnes Muller, who was 11 when Alden stayed with her family in 1931 as an exchange student and later became a nurse in the French resistance. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The French government presented the Legion of Honor medal on Friday
to retired University of Virginia professor Douglas W. Alden.
by CNB