Pierre Louis Le Chêne LdH

CdG CDG may refer to: Transport * Charles de Gaulle Airport (IATA code), Paris, France * Chandigarh Junction railway station, Chandigarh railway station * ComfortDelGro, a Singaporean multinational land transport company * Shandong Airlines (ICAO code ...

MBE (14 June 1900 – 1979) was a British-born French

Special Operations Executive Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a British organisation formed in 1940 to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in German-occupied Europe and to aid local Resistance during World War II, resistance movements during World War II. ...

agent during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

Early life

Le Chêne was born in

Brixton Brixton is an area of South London, part of the London Borough of Lambeth, England. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. Brixton experienced a rapid rise in population during the 19th century ...

in 1900, the son of Achille Henry Le Chêne, a London-born civil servant in HM Customs service, and Louise Mélanie Ragot, born in

Réunion Réunion (; ; ; known as before 1848) is an island in the Indian Ocean that is an overseas departments and regions of France, overseas department and region of France. Part of the Mascarene Islands, it is located approximately east of the isl ...

.''1881 England Census''''1911 England Census'' In 1922, his parents retired and moved to France. Le Chêne worked for a while at the American Express Travel Agency in Nice and Monte Carlo, where he married a Frenchwoman. During the German invasion in 1940 Pierre, his older brother

Henri Henri is the French form of the masculine given name Henry, also in Estonian, Finnish, German and Luxembourgish. Bearers of the given name include: People French nobles * Henri I de Montmorency (1534–1614), Marshal and Constable of France * H ...

, and his sister-in-law Marie-Thérèse, left France for England on the last boat leaving from

Bayonne Bayonne () is a city in southwestern France near the France–Spain border, Spanish border. It is a communes of France, commune and one of two subprefectures in France, subprefectures in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques departments of France, departm ...

. He served in the

London Fire Brigade The London Fire Brigade (LFB) is the Fire department, fire and rescue service for London, the capital of the United Kingdom. It was formed by the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Act 1865 (28 & 29 Vict. c. 90), under the leadership of superintendent ...

. He then volunteered to join the

in the footsteps of his brother

and sister-in-law Marie-Thérèse. On the night of 30 April/1 May 1942 he was parachuted near

Loches Loches (; ) is a Communes of France, commune in the Departments of France, department of Indre-et-Loire, Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is situated southeast of Tours by road, on the left bank of the river Indre (river), Indre. History Loch ...

to assist

Edward Zeff Edward Zeff MBE Croix de Guerre (1904–1974) was a British agent of the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War. Early life Edward Zeff was born to Jewish parents in Brighton on 22 April 1904. He was educated at York Place El ...

in the

Lyon Lyon (Franco-Provençal: ''Liyon'') is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, southeast of Paris, north of Marseille, southwest of Geneva, Switzerland, north ...

s area, as a radio operator of the SPRUCE network, successively headed by Georges Duboudin and Robert Boiteux. He worked there for six months, often changing his place of transmission. In October and November 1942 several radio operators were arrested, and Le Chêne remained the only radio operator in the sector, however on 9 November 1942 he was located by a German radio-direction van, having transmitted well beyond the safe period, and was arrested by French police accompanied by Gestapo agents. He was taken to the police station in Lyons for two weeks, then handed over to the

Sicherheitsdienst ' (, "Security Service"), full title ' ("Security Service of the ''Reichsführer-SS''"), or SD, was the intelligence agency of the Schutzstaffel, SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence ...

headquarters in Avenue Foch in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, then moved to Fresnes prison. He was the first British officer to be interrogated by the notorious SS Captain

Klaus Barbie Nikolaus Barbie (25 October 1913 – 25 September 1991) was a German officer of the ''Schutzstaffel'' and ''Sicherheitsdienst'' who worked in Vichy France during World War II. He became known as the "Butcher of Lyon" for having personally tortu ...

, head of the

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

in Lyons, but did not betray anyone.Nick van der Bijl, ''British Military Intelligence: Objects from the Military Intelligence Museum'', Amberley Publishing Limited, 2017 In 1943/1944 he remained in solitary confinement to 10 months, then deported to

Mauthausen concentration camp Mauthausen was a German Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria, Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with List of subcamps of Mauthausen, nearly 100 f ...

, where he was subjected to the notorious “ stairs of death” in which prisoners were forced to climb 186 steps while carrying a 50 kg block of granite, leading to many deaths. After 10 months he was transferred to Gusen I where he endured even worse physical and mental torment: sorting internees for the gas chamber, mass executions, and accumulation of corpses. When he was liberated by the Americans on 6 May 1945 he weighed only 38 kg and was ill with typhoid. He was brought back to England and spent 10 months in convalescence.

Post-war

He returned to France in 1946 and opened a hotel in

Sainte-Menehould Sainte-Menehould (; ) is a Communes of France, commune in the Marne (department), Marne Departments of France, department in north-eastern France. The 18th-century French playwright Charles-Georges Fenouillot de Falbaire de Quingey (1727–1800) ...

in collaboration with his brother Henri and sister-in-law Marie-Thérèse, and later another hotel in the French Jura. In 1964, he filed for compensation under the Anglo-German Compensation Agreement of 9 June 1964. He died in 1979, and his widow, Evelyn, subsequently added his French Resistance medals to her long-term loan of his other medals and items to the Military Intelligence Museum in

Chicksands Chicksands is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Campton and Chicksands in the Central Bedfordshire district of Bedfordshire, England. The village is on the River Flit and close to its parish village of Campton and the tow ...

Bedfordshire Bedfordshire (; abbreviated ''Beds'') is a Ceremonial County, ceremonial county in the East of England. It is bordered by Northamptonshire to the north, Cambridgeshire to the north-east, Hertfordshire to the south and the south-east, and Buckin ...

Early life

Post-war

Awards

References

Further reading