Maurice Southgate DSO (20 June 1913 – 17 March 1990[1]), code named Hector, was an officer in the Royal Air Force and an agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) organization during World War II.

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

[4] With the coming of World War II, Southgate was part of the British Expeditionary Force, and in June 1940 was evacuated from Saint-Nazaire on the RMS Lancastria, which was sunk by German aircraft.

In England he was posted by the RAF to the Air Ministry where he became reacquainted with his childhood friend Pearl Witherington, who later became an SOE agent working for Southgate.

[4] Southgate had two experienced collaborators, both well-regarded by SOE, on the ground in France: Auguste Chatraine, a socialist farmer and politician in Tendu and Charles Rechenmann, an engineer and former soldier, in Tarbes.

"[8] By the end of the summer of 1943, Southgate's two groups of resisters, called maquis, had begun minor acts of sabotage of railroads, power stations, and aircraft factories.

He said the two most dangerous times for an SOE agent were his first week in France when he was unfamiliar with the environment and after being in the country for 6 months or more when he became complacent.

In August, he was with a group of 36 SOE agents deported, just before the fall of Paris to the allied armies, to Buchenwald Concentration Camp in Germany.

[4] On 13 April, SOE in London received a report from the Red Cross in Buchenwald stating that Southgate was "possibly still Alive (sic)."

Both of them carried out many successful sabotage operations after the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944 and both survived World War II.

[13] Maurice Buckmaster, head of SOE's F (French) Section, would later say of Southgate, "he stuck to his job without any thought for his own safety or welfare.