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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2022
On April 8, 2014, Claude Mademba Sy died at the age of ninety. As his father, Abd-el-Kader Mademba Sy, and his grandfather, Mademba Sèye, before him, Claude served loyally his two fatherlands, France and Senegal. Born in Versailles in 1923, Claude was heir to a rich tradition of family service to the state.1 While studying law in Tunis, where his mother had resettled and remarried following the death of Abd-el-Kader in 1932, Claude joined the Allied military forces when Germany invaded. Rising through the ranks of Tirailleurs Sénégalais, just as his father had done, Claude served admirably in the battles to liberate France. Because of his service to France and because of his abilities to lead, Claude was rewarded by being sent to Saint-Cyr for advanced military training. He continued to serve France in Indochina and Algeria and, like his father, became captain and battalion commander. Upon Senegal’s independence in 1960, Léopold Senghor invited Claude to return to Senegal to help remake the colonial troops into the new nation’s army. Claude was next promoted into the diplomatic corps of the new nation and served as Senegal’s ambassador to Zaire (Congo), Yugoslavia, Italy, and Austria. Claude eventually joined the UN’s diplomatic cadre and served the UN’s atomic agency in Austria and in South Africa before his retirement. Even in retirement, Claude took up the campaign to pressure France to increase the paltry pensions that African veterans received from their service to France during World War II. In recognition of his services to France, in 2012, Claude Mademba Sy was awarded the Legion of Honor’s Grand Officer medal.2
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