Claude de Baissac

His father was Marie Louis Marc de Boucherville Baissac (1878-1945) and his mother was Marie Louise Jeanette Dupont.

He was the youngest of the couple's three children.

His family were large landowners in Mauritius, but British subjects as all Mauritians then were.

Claude Marie Marc Boucherville de Baissac, DSO and bar, CdeG, known as Claude de Baissac or by his codename David (born 28 February 1907, Curepipe, Mauritius; died 22 December 1974) was a Mauritian of French descent who was an agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) organization in France during World War II.

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

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

De Baissac was the leader of an important SOE network called Scientist.

The family moved to Paris in 1919.

Prior to World War II, de Baissac was employed by a mica mining company on Madagascar and at an advertising agency in Paris.

In 1940, Paris was occupied by the Germans.

His eldest brother, Jean de Baissac, joined the British Army.

With his sister Lise, de Baissac travelled to the Dordogne region in southern France in an attempt to reach England.

He obtained help with travel arrangements to England from the American Consulate and crossed into Spain and went to Lisbon, where he and his sister waited for five months for permission to travel to Gibraltar and on to the UK.

The pair arrived in Scotland in 1941.

Both Claude and Lise were recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

Because of their proficiency in both English and French, Mauritians were often recruited as agents in France by the SOE.

Fourteen would serve with the SOE during World War II.

He worked in the city of Bordeaux and southwestern France from July 1942 to August 1943, organizing and supplying the French Resistance with arms and gathering intelligence on blockade-running ships entering and leaving Bordeaux harbor.

In March 1942, de Baissac joined SOE in the same class of trainees as Francis Suttill, Harry Peulevé, and Roger Landes.

His leadership qualities were recognized, but he was also regarded as "volatile" and "stubborn."

F Section leader Maurice Buckmaster would later call him "the most difficult of my officers without any exception. De Baissac and his sister, Lise, shared the family characteristic of being "difficult but determined." In the words of SOE's official historian, M.R.D. Foot, de Baissac was of "exceptional character" but "suffered no fool gladly." He was "an imposing man with the air of someone who expected to be obeyed."

De Baissac's first mission began the night of 29/30 July 1942, when he and his wireless operator Harry Peulevé were parachuted blind (no welcoming party) from a Halifax near Nîmes, However, they were dropped from too low an altitude and landed badly.

De Baissac sprained his ankle and Peulevé broke a leg.

De Baissac left Peulevé (and his wireless) behind.

After recovering from his injury, he continued on to Bordeaux in late August to establish The Scientist network.

His duties were defined as to prepare for sabotage operations against the blockade runners entering the port of Bordeaux carrying vital products such as rubber from Southeast Asia for the use of Nazi Germany.

In the following months, de Baissac received additional personnel: Roger Landes, (codenamed Stanislas), a wireless operator, parachuted into France on the night of 31 Oct/1 November), and Mary Herbert (codenamed Marie-Louise), a courier, landed by boat on 3/4 November, and Victor Charles Hayes, an explosives expert, arrived by parachute on 18/19 November 1942. A second wireless operator, Marcel Défense, arrived on 13 May 1943. with three new and better radios enabled Landes to locate radios at different locations and move from place to transmit and receive messages and thus run less risk of capture. De Baissac's sister Lise, stationed in Poitiers, was a liaison of Scientist with other networks. De Baissac's Scientist network and the Prosper network of Francis Suttill, based in Paris, were the two most promising SOE networks in France.

In Bordeaux, de Baissac quickly found success, building up two groups of resistors, potential saboteurs among the left-wing workers in the port of Bordeaux, and a larger group of rural resistors led by right-wing former French army officers.

He also had contacts in Paris for liaison with Prosper.

Each SOE network was supposed to operate independently with little contact between networks, an unrealized objective because of a shortage of wireless operators

In December 1942 a commando raid, Operation Frankton, carried out by Royal Marines was launched against ships in Bordeaux port.

Baissac was unaware of the plans for the raid and was poised to launch a similar mission to sink ships in the harbor.

The commando raid was only partially successful and de Baissac was angry about the raid and had to cancel his plans for sabotaging the port because of increased German security.

De Baissac continued to gather information about the coming and going of ships from Bordeaux and by fall 1943 blockade-running had largely been prevented.

He flew back to England when his network was betrayed, but returned to action in Normandy from February to August 1944, carrying out sabotage missions against the Germans after the D-Day invasion of France by the allies.

His elder sister Lise was also an SOE agent and worked with him.

Claude de Baissac was born in Mauritius.

On 1 November 2011, a BBC Timewatch television documentary called "The Most Courageous Raid of WWII" was narrated by Paddy Ashdown, a former SBS officer.

Ashdown described the lack of coordination among government agencies as "a Whitehall cock-up of major proportions."

The loss of the opportunity for the commandos and de Baissac to work together to strike a harder blow against the Germans in a combined operation led to the setting up of an office in London with responsibility for avoiding inter-departmental rivalry and duplication.