User:Myfriendzd/sandbox

Lucien Dumais was born in 1904 and joined the Les Fusiliers Mont-Royalin 1934. He entered the Military School of Saint John in 1937 and was promoted to Corporal. At the beginning of World War II he was promoted to Sargent in 1939. His regiment embarked for Iceland on June 1940 to help defend the island from possible attack from the Germans. On August 19, 1942 the Unit took part in the Dieppe Raid in which 28 officers and 516 men from the regiment were killed, injured or taken prisoner. Lucien Dumais was one of those that were taken prisoners at the age of 38. During the train ride to the prison camp he and two others escaped. He became separated from the others, he than proceeded to make his way to England via Gibraltar with the help of local resistance. After serving 4 months with the First British Army in North Africa as an observer, he was posted back to his battalion. (p101) A meeting took place in St. James Park with Major Langley and Lucien Dumais where he volunteered to be an agent for the Special Operations Executive (SOE). He was than partnered up with Raymond Labrosse and 18 years old who had also escaped from France. Together they trained for their next mission to help evacuate the Allied pilots that were shot down. After several attempts to fly over the Channel to France they finally on November, 1943 a Westland Lysander transported them to a landing area located approximately 80 km north of Paris. This was the beginning of their mission known as “Bonaparte” the code name for Cochat to Plouha, in which they would collect weapons and ammunitions that were delivered by the MGB that were based in Cornwall. The cover for Lucien Dumais was "Lucien Desbiens", a mortician from Amiens, France and Ray LaBrosse was "Marcel Desjardins", a salesman of electrical medical equipment. The network “Shelburne” managed to help 138 pilots and crew members to return to England without a single loss of life from January to August 1944.

Lucien Dumais passed away in Montreal, Quebec on June 10, 1993 at the age of 88.