Henri Déricourt (2 September 1909 − 21 November 1962), code named Gilbert and Claude, was a French agent in 1943 and 1944 for the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive organization during World War II. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in countries occupied by the Axis powers, especially those occupied by Nazi Germany. SOE agents allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England.
Déricourt was the organiser (leader) of the Farrier network (or circuit) in France. Déricourt's job with SOE was air movements officer. He found clandestine landing fields for RAF airplanes and organized receptions for the arrival and departure of flights to convey SOE agents back and forth from England to France. Déricourt also acted as a postman, collecting mail and messages from SOE agents for transmittal to SOE headquarters in London with the airplane pilots. He was highly successful at the job and came into contact with many agents of Prosper, the SOE's largest and most important network in France.
In the summer of 1943, the Prosper network was destroyed by the Germans with the arrest of hundreds of Prosper network associates and the execution of many, including Francis Suttill, the leader of the network.Foot, M. R. D. (1966), SOE in France, London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, p. 289-304.Helm, Sarah (2005), A Life in Secrets, New York: Doubleday, p. 53-54.
Déricourt's service with SOE was controversial and he is widely believed to have been a German agent. He is accused of betraying the Prosper network to the Germans. After the war he was tried but acquitted of being a double agent who worked for the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the intelligence arm of the German SS. The theory has also been advanced by some authors that Déricourt was a triple agent working under British instructions and that the betrayal of many SOE agents was an attempt by the British intelligence agency, MI6, to mislead the Germans about the date of the invasion of France by allied forces. M.R.D. Foot, the official historian of the SOE, believed that Dericourt was a German agent but debunked the assertion that Dericourt was a triple agent.Foot, M. R. D. (1966), SOE in France, London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, pp. 289-304. 307
Early life Henri Alfred Eugène Déricourt was born in Coulonges-Cohan, Aisne, France on 2 September 1909. His father worked for the post office and his mother was a domestic servant. He was trained as a military pilot in 1930, but left military service in 1932 to join an aerial circus. In 1935, he joined Air Bleu as a pilot and flew mail around France from then until the beginning of World War II in 1939. In 1936, he also became involved with French intelligence services and delivered aeroplanes to the Spanish Republican Army in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War.Marshall, Robert (1989), All the King's Men, Glasgow: Fontana Paperbacks, pp. 16-26
In Paris in 1937 and 1938, according to author Robert Marshall, Déricourt met and became friends with two people who would become important in his life: a British journalist named Nicolas Bodington, later to become the second ranking officer in the French section of SOE, and a German policeman, Karl Boemelburg, assigned to the German Embassy and later the head of the SD in Paris.Marshall, pp. 19, 22-26
On 13 December 1941 Déricourt married a recently divorced woman, Jean Rose "Jeannot" Gamerre. He "was devoted to Jeannot, but never faithful" staying with Julienne Aisner when he was in Paris. He later recruited Aisner to work for him in SOE. Déricourt had the reputation of being a "witty, self-confident and extremely persuasive charmer, particularly with the ladies."Marshall, p. 45, 49, 68 His friend, fellow pilot Hugh Verity, said that Dericourt "was unscrupulous enough and arrogant enough to think that he could outsmart anyone--but that he was by nature a man who would not stab his friends in the back."Verity, Hugh (1998) We Landed by Moonlight, Manchester: Crecy Publishing Limited, page 168. Originally published in 1978.
World War II and SOE At the beginning of World War II, Déricourt flew civilian aircraft supplying French soldiers stationed near the border with Germany and later as a test pilot of a new French bomber. With the surrender of France in June 1940, he was involved in black market activities. He renewed his friendship with Boemelburg, now SD chief in Paris. Beginning in July 1941, he was a pilot for an airline in Vichy France, at that time unoccupied by Germany. He also came into contact with American intelligence officials as a source of information.
In August 1942, Déricourt, unhappy in Vichy and leaving his wife behind, deceived the local MI9 agent (Escape and Evasion Service), telling him he'd been recruited in Syria to join the RAF. He was collected, with others, by a fishing boat and taken to Gibralter. The local MI6 station queried his name with Arthur Forbes (Lord Granard) who had been sent by the Air Minisrty to Syria to recruit pilots. In 1988 Forbes rrecalled that he replied, "Have no recollection of whatsoever of ever having met Dericourt, and certainly not in Syria." Instead of arresting Dericourt MI6 allowed him to continue to Britain where he was taken to the MI5 clearing house, the Royal Patriotic School in Wandsworth. He left 3 days later, was recruited by Mi6 and six weeks later, in November 1942, his name was passed to the SOE, as someone who might be of use. Meanwhile MI5 (Security Service) began a long and inclonclusive investigation of Dericourt and in its file sent to SOE claimed it was "unable to guarantee his reliability." MI6 had recruited Dericourt because of his personal connection with Karl Boemelburg, at that time the Head of the SD in France. SOE had no idea he was working for MI6 when they sent him into France as their Air Movements Officer. Déricourt's old friend, Nicolas Bodington, now the second in command of SOE's French section, endorsed his employment enthusiastically. In 1946 after his arrest by the DST (French Security Service) he stated during interrogation, "I was transfgerred to SOE, a unit specially concerned with sabotage. This service, like all Allied services at the time, was controlled by SIS (MI6)." MI6 and SOE were two separate organisations. Marshall, pp. 43-48, 52, 64, 65, 75, 97-99Foot, p. 291Helm, p. 53
Air operations SOE had difficulties with the Royal Air Force which reluctantly supplied the planes and pilots for SOE's clandestine operations. The RAF complained about the large number of failed missions. Déricourt with his experience as a pilot and his knowledge of France seemed like a godsend. On the night of 22/23 January 1943, Déricourt was parachuted "blind" (without anybody meeting him) into France near Orléans. He made his way to Paris, was there for a week before travelling down to Marseilles where he reunited with his wife, and brought her to Paris where they moved into the Hotel Bristol for some weeks. In due course they moved into 58 rue Pergolese, thought to be a property confiscated from a jewish family. The SD headquarters (84 Avenue Foch) and the home of his old friend Boemelburg (in Avenue Victor Hugo) were a short walk away. The two met shortly after Déricourt arrived in Paris. Déricourt lived openly under his own name, saying he was too well known to use an alias.Marshall, p. 108, 110-111
Déricourt soon assembled his Farrier team, consisting of Aisner as his courier and another old friend, pilot Rémy Clément, as an assistant. He relied on the Prosper network led by Francis Suttill for a radio operator, Jack Agazarian. Andrée Borrel helped Aisner with the courier duties. Through courier Lise de Baissac, Déricourt also established links with the large SOE Scientist network on the Atlantic Ocean coast of France, which also needed his services to move agents.Marshall, p. 111 These extensive links among networks, although understandable as Déricourt serviced several networks, violated SOE's doctrine that for security reasons networks should be independent of each other with as little contact as possible between and among networks and even among members of the same network.Foot, p. 104, 289, 309-311.
Déricourt's first air operation was the night of 17/18 March 1943 when he met two Westland Lysander airplanes landing near Poitiers which delivered four SOE agents and boarded four others to return to England. The operation was successful and his success continued. Over the next eleven months, he supervised 17 air operations in which 22 aircraft landed at more than six different clandestine airfields and delivered 43 SOE agents to France and took 67 back to England.Foot, pp. 291, 298 The air operations were also a means of communications between the London headquarters of SOE and its agents in France. Déricourt was the "postman" who collected letter and reports from agents and gave them to the pilots of the airplanes to take back to England. Unlike wireless messages which were always transmitted in code, most of these letters and reports were in clear language although code names were supposed to be used for people and places.Helm, p 33
Suspicions The first known criticism by SOE agents in France of Déricourt was in June 1943 when Jack Agazarian complained to London that Déricourt's security was faulty. Several more agents complained in July about "Gilbert" although in the terse language of wireless transmissions it was unclear whether they meant Déricourt, code named Gilbert, or Gilbert Norman, deputy to Francis Suttill, the leader of the Prosper network. In summer 1943, the Prosper network was destroyed by the Germans. Suttill, Norman and many other members and associates of the Prosper network were captured. Francis Suttill's son lists approximately 180 SOE agents and French associates arrested of whom about 80 were executed or died in concentration camps, including Suttill and Norman. Given the clandestine involvement of many people, that list is incomplete.Foot, pp. 299-302.Suttill, Francis J. (2000), Shadows in the Fog, London: The History Press, pp. 277-284
SOE was not immediately aware of the fate of Prosper because the Germans used a captured SOE wireless to feed false information to SOE in London. Déricourt remained at large, and continued to organize aircraft landings into France.Foot, pp. 289, 299 In October 1943 veteran resistor Henri Frager took a Déricourt-organized flight to London with the objective of telling SOE that Déricourt was a German agent. Senior SOE staff members and French Section leader Maurice Buckmaster refused to believe the reports and Déricourt continued his work in France until February 1944 when he was recalled to London. An investigation was inconclusive, but he was not allowed to return to France. Buckmaster later said that Déricourt "never once let any of our boys down and that he has by far the finest record of operations completed of any member of SOE."
Investigations