239255,[1] was one of 14 Franco-Mauritians who served in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a World War II British secret service that sent espionage agents, saboteurs and guerrilla fighters into enemy-occupied territory.
After being involved in undercover operations in Vichy-held Madagascar ahead of the allied landings there in May 1942, Antelme joined the SOE F (France) section in England.
On this third mission, early on 29 February 1944, he, along with SOE operatives Lionel Lee and Madeleine Damerment, parachuted under cover of darkness to a reception committee composed of the German Gestapo, and were captured.
[2][3] In accordance with Adolf Hitler's "Nacht und Nebel" directive regarding irregular combatants, he and 18 other captured SOE officers were executed at the Gross-Rosen concentration camp in Lower Silesia in July or August 1944.
After attending the Royal College Curepipe, he embarked on a career as broker and trader, travelling extensively between Mauritius, Réunion, Madagascar and South Africa.
Todd, whose task it was to gather intelligence on Madagascar and to try to win political leaders to the allied cause ahead of Operation Ironclad, the British landing at Diego Suarez, on 5 May 1942.
[5] On his first mission to France, from November 1942 to March 1943, Antelme organized the BRICKLAYER [6] circuit and established contacts with political circles and leading French civil servants with a view to supplying the allied expeditionary forces with food and currency.
He was back in France in May that year, carrying messages from Winston Churchill to former French prime ministers Édouard Herriot and Paul Reynaud, inviting them to come to England.
He, his radio-operator, Captain Lionel Lee, and courier Madeleine Damerment — three of the SOE's best agents — took off from RAF Tempsford airfield in Bedfordshire late on 28 February 1944.
Madeleine Damerment was shot at the Dachau concentration camp on 13 September 1944 with fellow SOE agents Noor Inayat Khan, Yolande Beekman and Eliane Plewman.