Leon Dabo - World War I

World War I

During World War I, the multilingual Dabo went to France and offered his services to Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. He ended up serving as an officer in the French and British Armies successively and exposed a number of German spies, using his ear for dialect and accent. He even played the role of spy once, going behind German lines to gain information. For the U.S., he was part of a commission that investigated alleged atrocities that happened in France during the course of the war, and reported that they were indeed true. He was commissioned as a captain in the United States Army and served as an interpreter for the American Expeditionary Force as well as an aide-de-camp to Major General Mark L. Hersey of the 4th Infantry Division.

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