Robert Marcel Charles Benoist (20 March 1895 – 11 September 1944) was a French Grand Prix motor racing driver.

[2] Looking for excitement in the post-war world, Benoist joined the de Marçay car company as a test driver.

[4][5][6][7] When the Delage company dropped out of racing, Robert Benoist was without a job and was appointed manager of the Banville Garage in Paris.

[8] The following year he teamed up with Attilio Marinoni to win the Spa 24 Hours race in Belgium, driving an Alfa Romeo.

On 29 May 1942, SOE agent William Grover-Williams, a former race car driver and rival of Benoist, parachuted into France.

[10] Grover-Williams' job was to create a network, called "Chestnut," to operate near Paris and assist the incipient French resistance.

Beginning in mid-February 1943, Chestnut received from SOE headquarters six large parachute drops of weapons and other supplies for the French resistance.

Benoist next took refuge for twelve days in the apartment of his secretary, Stella Tayssedre, who kept him informed of what she knew of the German search for him.

Benoist got in touch with Henri Dericourt, SOE's air movements officer in France (and later believed to be a double agent working also for the Germans).

Dericourt arranged for a Royal Air Force Lockheed Hudson to land secretly on a farm field near Angers on the night of 19 August to pick up Benoist and nine SOE agents who were also on the run.

Benoist went beyond his mandate, visited Paris, and made plans (never realised) to assassinate senior German SD officials in France.

[17] Lacking explosives to carry out the destruction of the pylons he returned to Britain by clandestine flight on the night of 4-5 February 1944.

[18] At SOE headquarters in London, Benoist argued that he should be allowed to return to France to carry out his plan to destroy the power pylons.

[20] In late April and early May, they received three large parachute drops of arms for the resistance and additional radios.

On 5 June, Benoist was told via radio that the invasion of France was imminent and he alerted the resistance which destroyed the telephone system of Nantes and sabotaged railroads.

However, Benoist's instruction to his associates to disperse had not been heeded and at 8 p.m. on 18 June the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) raided the villa and captured Bloch and the others.

Kieffer's methods of interrogation were often apparent kindness combined with suggestions that prisoner had been betrayed by one of his own and that SD knew all there was to know about him and his network.

[24] On 8 August, Benoist and 36 other SOE agents, including three women, were loaded onto buses, given Red Cross parcels containing food, and taken to the railroad station where they boarded a train for Germany.

The prisoners were loaded onto trucks and continued their journey to Neue Bremm a concentration camp near the city of Saarbrücken.

[28] Following Germany's surrender, on 9 September 1945, the "Coupe Robert Benoist" automobile race was held in Paris in his memory.

[1] Captain Robert Benoist is recorded on the Brookwood Memorial in Surrey, Britain as one of the SOE agents who died for the liberation of France.