His evacuation ship was sunk by a mine, and he was rescued by a British destroyer, bleeding heavily from a neck wound.
[3][7][8] After his rescue and recovery from his injuries, days after Charles de Gaulle's famous June 18th Speech, he was given the option of being discharged from his duties, or to join the Free French forces.
While at that post, he wrote a letter to de Gaulle suggesting techniques to improve the morale of Free French troops.
He followed de Gaulle on his travels to North Africa in 1943 to inspect Free French forces there, and to Washington, D.C., to visit with American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1944.
In 1955, after the sudden death of the Paris bureau chief, he was given that position back, and for a time he held both posts simultaneously.
In early 1956, he accepted a temporary assignment to head a contingent of writers to cover the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy for Time, Inc.'s fledgling Sports Illustrated, started two years earlier by Luce.
[3][5][10] As assistant managing editor, his first major assignment was to head the team of reporters and photographers covering the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.
He also placed a heavy emphasis on the use of color photography and late deadline, to keep the magazine up to date and visually appealing.
Deford, who worked closely with him for many years, and who looked up to him as a mentor, said of him, "Laguerre was a fascinating paradox: He was almost constitutionally withdrawn, but among the friends he chose, he was magnetic.
The winter months, between the college bowl season and the start of Major League Baseball's spring training, was a slow time for sports journalism.
Laguerre had instituted an annual February issue titled "Fun in the Sun", where he sent his staff to an exotic locale to write about and photograph it for his readers.
In 1964, he asked Jule Campbell, then a fashion reporter for Sports Illustrated, to "go to some beautiful place and put a pretty girl on the cover" of that year's "Fun in the Sun" issue.
Though originally only planned as a one-off event, Laguerre was convinced by Sports Illustrated art director Dick Gangel to bring back the swimsuits in 1965, only "a lot sexier".
In 1968, under Laguerre's direction, and under secrecy from his superiors, the magazine ran a five-part series on the experience of black athletes in America.
In 1968, its coverage of the Mexico City Olympics was heavily criticized, having been "scooped" on most stories by both Time and Life magazines.
A 1969 book by Jack Olsen, titled The Girls in the Office, embarrassed Time Inc. over its treatment of its female employees, including those at Sports Illustrated.
A January 1973 story in New York Magazine was highly critical of the degrading quality of the writing and of the stagnating corporate culture at Sports Illustrated.
[18] After retiring as managing editor, he remained with Sports Illustrated in order to head a group looking into publishing international editions of the magazine.
In 1975, he founded a bi-monthly horse-racing magazine, Classic, which he headed until shortly before his death of a heart attack in New York on January 18, 1979, at the age of sixty-three.