Jack Agazarian

Jack Charles Stanmore Agazarian (27 August 1915 – 29 March 1945), code name Marcel, was an agent for 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 Nazi Germany and other Axis powers.

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

Agazarian was a wireless operator with the Prosper network based in Paris.

His younger brother, Noel Agazarian, also joined the Royal Air Force, but as a Spitfire pilot; he went on to be a flying ace in the Battle of Britain before being killed in action on 16 May 1941.

His sister Monique Agazarian flew for the Air Transport Auxiliary during the same conflict.

He joined the Royal Air Force in 1940 soon after the outbreak of World War II and the SOE's French Section on 30 May 1942 and was trained as a wireless operator.

Agazarian received an honorary commission as a pilot officer in the RAFVR on 10 September 1942.

On 29 December 1942 Agazarian parachuted into France near Étrépagny and made his way to Paris to join the newly created Prosper network headed by Francis Suttill.

He was the second of Prosper's two radio operators.

Gilbert Norman was Prosper's other wireless operator and Andrée Borrel was the network's courier.

Agazarian was captured by the Germans on 30 July 1943 when he showed up for a scheduled meeting with a fellow agent.

The Germans had captured the other agent and were trying to lure the deputy leader of SOE's French Section, Nicolas Bodington, to the meeting, but Agazarian attended instead.

He was later executed.

Agazarian's wife Francine was also a SOE agent.

Agazarian was born in London, to an Armenian father, Berge Rupen Agazarian, and French mother, Jacqueline Marie-Louise Le Chevalier, the second of six children.

He was educated in both France and England at Dulwich College.

After completing his education he worked with his father in the family business.

He was promoted to honorary flying officer on 12 January 1943.

During his training Agazarian was well-liked by the instructors at SOE who described him as "intelligent, witty, brilliant, and clever."

M.R.D. Foot, the official historian of the SOE, described Agazarian as "handsome and dashing."

In January 1943, the three were joined by Henri Déricourt, air operations officer, who arranged for clandestine air flights between England and northern France to transport agents and supplies.

Prosper was SOE's most important network in France.

The task of Suttill and his associates was to create and assist a resistance movement that would harass and weaken the German occupiers of France and contribute to the success of an allied invasion of France in 1943.

Agazarian's wife, Francine Agazarian, joined him in Paris in March 1943 as a second courier for Prosper.

Competent wireless operators were scarce and Agazarian and Norman were busy transmitting and receiving messages with SOE headquarters in London.

Agazarian reported that he sent and received messages for more than 20 SOE agents.

That was worrisome from a security standpoint as each SOE network was supposed to have its own wireless operator with little or no contact between networks or even among the members of the same network.

The size and scope of Prosper was also a security problem.

Agents congregated in the same apartments and met each other in the same cafes.

Norman, Borrel, and Agazarian and his wife met frequently to play poker at a Paris cafe.

In May 1943, Hermann Giskes, head of German Abwehr intelligence in the Netherlands, sent two Dutch agents posing as SOE agents to Paris.

The Abwehr agents learned from double agents how to find Agazarian and other Prosper agents and met them at the cafe they frequented.

The Dutch agents said they needed to return to England.

Agazarian accepted the two Dutch men as authentic SOE agents and took on the task of arranging a flight for them to England with Déricourt, the air operations officer.

As it turned out, the objective of the Dutch agents was to infiltrate and gather information about the Prosper network.

On 9 June, in a curious affair perhaps indicating competition and lack of coordination between the German Abwehr and the Gestapo, the Gestapo staged a raid on the cafe and arrested or pretended to arrest one of the two Dutch agents.

Agazarian escaped and continued to work with the other Dutch agent.

Suttill was disturbed by the incident, regarding Agazarian as careless and too ambitious to have his own SOE network rather than working for Suttill as a wireless operator.

(The plans for a 1943 invasion were later abandoned, and the invasion did not take place until 6 June 1944.) Prosper had early and rapid success, setting up or reviving more than 60 resistance networks (or circuits) in northern France and managing and supplying a large number of SOE agents and French operatives.