George Reginald Starr

Lieutenant-Colonel George Reginald Starr (6 April 1904 – 2 September 1980), code name Hilaire, was a British mining engineer and an agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) organisation in World War II.

He was born in London on 6 April 1904, one of two sons of Alfred Demarest Starr, an American bookkeeper who became a naturalised British subject, and Englishwoman Ethel Renshaw.

He was a grandson of William Robert Renshaw.

He was educated at Ardingly College, and at the age of 16, undertook a four-year apprenticeship as a coal-miner in Shropshire.

After studying mining engineering at the Royal School of Mines, Imperial College London, he joined the Glasgow firm of Mather and Coulson Ltd, manufacturers of mining equipment.

He worked in several countries in Europe installing mine equipment.

Starr's second wife, Pilar Canudas Ristol, who he met in Spain, worked in Spain for SOE during World War II.

Starr was described by his wireless operator, Yvonne Cormeau, as short in stature, five feet six inches in height, very nervous, a heavy cigarette smoker, and a man who took duty and responsibility seriously and would never ask a person to do anything he would not do himself.

Cormeau was his closest associate, "confidante and, a few alleged, his lover."

Starr was working in Liège Province, Belgium in 1940 when the German invasion began.

He escaped back to England with British forces in the Dunkirk evacuation.

He joined the British Army, being commissioned on the General List.

He was subsequently recruited into the Special Operations Executive (SOE) for his language skills (although his spoken French was described as "atrocious") and given the code name Hilaire.

He was the organiser (leader) of the Wheelwright network in southwestern France from November 1942 until the liberation of France from Nazi German occupation in September 1944.

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

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

On 3 November 1942 Starr arrived by boat with several other SOE agents at Port Miou on the Mediterranean coast of Vichy France.

A few days later the Germans occupied Vichy which made SOE operations there must more dangerous than previously.

Starr was scheduled to go to Lyon to work there, but the Lyon SOE network was penetrated in October 1942 and the agents arrested.

SOE agent Henri Sevenet persuaded Starr to go instead to the Gascony region in southwestern France where a resistance movement was forming.

His instincts were correct.

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.

Starr based himself in Castelnau-sur-l'Auvignon, a rural village of 300 persons, without running water or electricity.

Local leaders were sympathetic to the resistance and the nearest Germans to the village were in the city of Agen, 35 km distant.

Starr posed as a retired Belgian mining engineer who had made a fortune in the Congo.

From Castelnau, Starr began to build up a local resistance movement, called by SOE the Wheelwright Network (or Circuit).

Starr was very conscious of security, communicating with his contacts only through couriers or the spoken word, never putting words to paper, and building up his network one trusted associate at a time.

In January 1943, the SOE in London parachuted weapons and explosives into Castelnau.

They were hidden in a medieval dungeon beneath the church in the village.

Starr's ability to call on the United Kingdom to provide weapons made him a power among the nascent rural resistance organisations called maquis (whose members were called maquisards).

Also, in January 1943, Starr borrowed a wireless operator from another network to facilitate communication with SOE in London.

These initial successes aside, in spring 1943, seemingly forgotten by SOE headquarters in London, Starr was suffering from a skin disease probably caused by stress and contemplating failure and the abandonment of his mission.

Starr's accomplishments include building up a large network of resistance groups, carrying out a number of sabotage operations in the months leading up to the Normandy invasion on 6 June 1944, rescuing from imprisonment about 50 important resistance leaders and allied airmen shot down over France, and participation as a leader in the liberation of southwestern France from German occupation.

By mid-1944 Starr had more than 20 SOE agents working for him, second in numbers only to the earlier (and defunct) Prosper or Physician network.

In the estimation of M.R.D. Foot, the official historian of the SOE, Starr was one of the half-dozen best agents of the SOE in France.

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

One of the French agents of the SOE, Philippe de Gunzbourg, compared Starr as a leader to Lawrence of Arabia.

Starr's wartime record was not, however, without controversy.

He had a confrontation with Charles de Gaulle after the liberation of France, and one of his agents, Anne-Marie Walters, accused him of permitting the torture of captured collaborators.

Starr's brother, John Renshaw Starr, was also an SOE agent.