Émile Lemonnier
French general (1893–1945)
Émile René Lemonnier (November 27, 1893 – March 12, 1945) was a French Army general who served during World War I and World War II. Stationed in French Indochina in 1945, he was beheaded by the Japanese during their March coup d'état.
Early life
Lemonnier was born to Émile Jean Lemonnier, a saddler by trade, and Marie Ernestine Fournier on November 27, 1893, in Château-Gontier in the Mayenne. He graduated from the College Château-Gontier in 1910 and entered the École Polytechnique in 1912.
Military service
In 1914 Lemonnier was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the 25th Artillery Regiment and received several citations. In 1918, he transferred to the French Colonial Forces, subsequently serving with various regiments of the artillerie coloniale. In 1920 Lemonnier was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour. From 1925–1936 he served in French West Africa. He left France for the last time in 1937.
World War II and death
On March 9, 1945, General Lemonnier while commander of the Lang Son area received an invitation from the Japanese forces to a banquet of the headquarters of the division of the Imperial Japanese Army. Lemonnier declined to personally attend the event, although he allowed some of his staff to take part.
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This entry incorporates text from “Émile Lemonnier” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.