MORGIEL, Michel

On 28 December 1949, Michel was called up for compulsory military service, later he joined the first contingent as a volunteer. 

When the first contingent was returning home from Korea, Michel took another path, heading to Frankfurt, Western Germany, in November 1951. Here, the American Red Cross got hold of him and reported him as a deserter to local German police. After the Luxembourgish consulate had been briefed about this incident, the Luxembourg Army was about to dispatch a military police unit to Frankfurt to catch and repatriate the alleged deserter. However, Michel was already on his way to France, where he joined the Légion étrangère on 9 January 1952 under his middle name François Morgiel. He soon came to fight in the Indochina War, notably at Diên Biên Phu, where he first was injured and later captured by the Viêt Minh in early May 1954. Two months later, he was released from captivity during a POW exchange and returned to Europe. He was released from the Légion étrangère on 20 January 1955.

From here on out, the only source mentioning his fate is an advertisement of the early 1970ies concerning a pub opening in Bilsdorf, to be run by the Morgiel-Wengler Family.  In the mid 1970s Michel disappeared again, legally abandoning his name for his middle name Franz. He apparently died in a veterans retirement home in Maurin, a suburb of Montpellier.