Francis Cammaerts

Francis Charles Albert Cammaerts, DSO (16 June 1916 – 3 July 2006), code named Roger, was an agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II.

The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe and Asia against the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany.

In France, SOE agents allied themselves with French Resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England.

He became a pacifist in the 1930s while at Cambridge, where he read English and history at St Catharine's and also won a hockey Blue.

After university he briefly began a teaching career.

He taught in Belfast before moving on to Beckenham and Penge County School for Boys, near London, where he taught with his close friend from university, Harry Rée who also joined the SOE.

At the beginning of World War II in 1939, Cammaerts declared himself a conscientious objector, but in 1942 he joined the SOE.

He recruited and supplied with arms and training a large number of resistance networks and cells over an extensive area east of the Rhone River extending to the border with Italy and north from the Mediterranean Sea to the city of Grenoble.

In 1940 Cammaerts was refused registration as a conscientious objector by his Local Tribunal, but it was granted by the Appellate Tribunal, conditional upon him taking up agricultural work.

He joined a farm training project at Holton cum Beckering, Lincolnshire.

During this period he met Nancy Findlay (Nan), and they married on 15 March 1941.

After the death of his brother Pieter while serving in the Royal Air Force, Cammaerts believed he could no longer stand aside from participation in the war, and, as a French speaker, he succumbed to the urging of Harry Rée to join SOE.

Cammaerts began extensive training with SOE in October 1942.

Training included fieldwork experience in the New Forest, Scotland and Manchester.

Cammaerts was considered by some of his training officers to be lacking in physical skills, and 'more intellectual than practical'.

Nevertheless, he was considered to be above average in all areas.

Cammaerts was the creator and the organiser (leader) of the Jockey network (or circuit) in southeastern France in 1943 and 1944.

He was given the rank of captain and the code name Roger, and flown into occupied northern France in March 1943.

More than a dozen SOE circuits were active in France at that time.

Cammaerts was assigned to the Donkeyman network or circuit, then operating in the upper Rhône Valley, but his reception party from Donkeyman and the Carte network drove him first to Paris, with a dangerous disregard for security that alerted him to the risks of such behaviour.

Cammaerts concern was heightened by his appearance.

He was 193 cm (six feet, four inches) tall with feet so large his nickname in France was "Big Feet."

He spoke French with a noticeable Belgian accent.

Cammaerts worries about security were confirmed one day after he arrived in Paris when Carte leader, André Marsac, was arrested by the Germans.

Cammaerts fled Paris by train to Annecy

Near Annecy in the village of Saint Jorioz he met with Odette Sansom, Adolphe "Alex" Rabinovitch, and Auguste Floiras of the Spindle network.

Once again his antenna warned him of the poor security of Spindle and he departed after two or three days for Cannes.

Rabinovitch declined to work with Cammaerts because his "appearance was too English" and he spoke French with an "atrocious" accent, but gave him the address of a safe house in Cannes.

Floiras would soon join Cammaerts and become his best friend and wireless operator; Sansom and several other members of the Spindle network were arrested and imprisoned shortly after Cammaerts departed Saint Jorioz.

He spent a month in Cannes establishing his cover story as a teacher recovering from jaundice.

Cammaerts worked primarily in rural areas.

SOE networks were more secure in rural areas which had a much smaller presence of German soldiers and milice, the pro-German French militia, than large urban areas.

In the words of the official historian of the SOE M.R.D. Foot, impeccable security, the hallmark of the best SOE agents, characterized Cammaert's survival as an SOE agent for two tours totaling fifteen months, far longer than the average agent served or survived in France.

Cammaerts never stayed in the same house for more than three or four nights, he avoided hotels as their registers were checked by German and French police, and he also avoided large train stations which frequently had check points.

He never told anybody his plans, nor made appointments nor visited unknown addresses without careful reconnoitering.

Despite being very careful in his work, Cammaerts was captured by the Germans in August 1944, but saved from execution by his courier, Christine Granville.

Of the more than 450 SOE agents who worked in France during World War II, M.R.D. Foot, the official historian of the SOE, named Cammaerts as one of the half-dozen best male agents.

He was one of only three SOE agents to be promoted to the rank of Lt. Colonel, along with George Starr and Richard Heslop.

Cammaerts was born in London and raised in Radlett in Hertfordshire, the son of Professor Emile Cammaerts, a Belgian poet, and Tita Brand, a successful actress.

He was educated at Mill Hill School, where he was a contemporary of Francis Crick and Patrick Troughton.