I found this website on another thread in this forum, written by Delaney's son:
http://www.du-vair.nom.fr/biography.html Unfortunately, it stops at the point Delaney decided to enlist with Vichy forces in the 'struggle against Bolshevism', and terminates with the words, "The rest is in the history books." So there's no detail about the man's LVF service, nor his more interesting service with the Kurt Eggers regiment and his efforts to propagandise American POWs, nor about his death. I wish I knew which history books the author's referring to...
What can be learnt from this website, however, is that Delaney (or Pierre de la Ney du Vair, as he styled himself) was not really from Louisiana in the modern sense of the term. He was born in Holcomb, a small town in Missouri near the Arkansas border, in 1907. Although there were indeed French-speaking lead-mining communities in Missouri still extant last century, these were mostly concentrated in the St.-Genevieve district southwest of St. Louis, around the towns of Old Mines (Vieilles Mines), Richwood and Racola, and don't appear to have extended as far south as Holcomb. [See Louder and Waddell (eds.)
French America 1983, pp.143-155 for more information about French-speakers in Missouri.]
Delaney instead appears to have been a francophile who was excited by the Norman French origins of his surname and the fact that Missouri, like much of the American Midwest, had once been owned by France (
Louisiane). This seems in particular to have been encouraged by the French wife of a relative who had served with the American
Lafayette Escadrille during WWI. His interest in matters French led to his eventual naturalisation by that country, his service in the French army, and eventual enlistment with the LVF. He certainly appears to have been a supporter of the monarchist and proto-fascist
Action française, which no doubt led him to pro-Vichy and anti-Communist positions.
If anyone has details about the missing parts of his biography -- especially his SS service and efforts to win over American POWs -- please let me know or post them here. It would be much appreciated.
Ben Dekho
