Dimitri Amilakhvari Prince Dimitri Zedguinidze - Amilakhvari , more commonly known as Dimitri Amilakhvari ( , ) ( October 31 , 1906 - October 24 , 1942 ) was a French military officer and Lieutenant Colonel of the French Foreign Legion , of Georgian origin who played an influential role in the French Resistance against Nazi occupation in World War II , and became an iconic figure of the Free French Forces . 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 dignity during the Imperial Russia n 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 Constantinople , Ottoman Empire , 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 . Note that during his French service , the spelling of his surname was modified , dropping the ' h ' . 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 Légion d ' honneur . In 1942 he was also awarded the " Krigskorset med Sverd " or Norwegian War Cross with Sword for his earlier service in Norway . This is Norway ' s highest military decoration for gallantry and 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 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 a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour ( " Légion d ' honneur " ) . General Charles De Gaulle named him and his legionaries the " honour of France " for their heroic defence of the Allies ' positions .