Pierre de Vomécourt
After nearly a year of mostly solitary confinement in Fresnes Prison near Paris, he spent the rest of the war imprisoned in Nazi Germany in Colditz Castle, a POW camp for military officers.
"[2] Vomécourt's "early role was of essential importance" in establishing the framework for British assistance to French groups resisting the German occupation.
The first of many hundreds of SOE airdrops of arms and equipment for the French Resistance was arranged by Vomécourt and his wireless operator, Georges Bégué.
[5] Vomécourt was "a vigorous, talkative, good-looking man in his middle thirties, a good shot, a fast thinker, full of energy and enthusiasm.
"[6] At the beginning of World War II in 1939, Vomécourt joined the French army and became a liaison officer and interpreter with the Scottish Rifles.
In London, he tried unsuccessfully to interest the Free French Forces of Charles de Gaulle in supporting his plans for resistance to the German occupation of France.
[8] On 13 June 1941, SOE airdropped two CLE Canisters onto Bas Soleil, Philippe de Vomécourt's estate 15 kilometres (9.3 miles) east of Limoges, France.
The canisters were dropped by an Armstrong Whitworth Whitley bomber and contained sub-machine guns, explosives, and other materials.
Vomécourt was scathing about SOE's "incredible ignorance of local (i.e. anti-Semitic) conditions" in sending Bloch to France.
Through an attorney in Paris, he was introduced on 26 December 1942 to a 32-year-old woman named Mathilde Carré who was a leader of a Franco/Polish espionage network known as INTERALLIÉ.
[11] What neither SOE headquarters nor Vomécourt knew was that Interallié was "burned" and that Carré was working for the German intelligence agency, the Abwehr.
In October 1941, the Interallié had come to the attention of the Germans and a sergeant who spoke French, Hugo Bleicher, was tasked with infiltrating the network.
[15] In London, Vomécourt met with the highest levels of the British government, including War Secretary Anthony Eden and Field Marshal Alan Brooke, and gave them his assessment of the German army in France, the Resistance, and the SOE's work.
His plans were turned down and on 1 April 1942, he was parachuted blind (no reception party) onto his brother Philippe's estate near Limoges.
[16][17] The arrival of a new wireless operator for Vomécourt was delayed and he was forced to use a courier who carried messages to SOE agent Virginia Hall, an American in Vichy France.
Put on trial near the end of 1942, Vomécourt persuaded the judges "by a final effort of personality" to give him and his associates the protection of the Geneva Convention as prisoners of war (POWs), thereby avoiding the fate of being sent to a Nazi concentration camp and executed.
