![\"FC5\"](\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/01\/fc5.jpg?w=620\")
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Occupied France, 1944. Francis Cammaerts stepped from a train onto the railway station platform in Avignon.\u00a0Almost immediately, German security forces at a checkpoint became suspicious and asked\u00a0for his papers.<\/p>\n
The son of a Belgian poet and English actress, he was everything you would never<\/em> expect in a secret agent.\u00a0Cammaerts\u00a0had been a pacifist and conscientious objector assigned to tend sheep in Lincolnshire when he refused to join the British Army. His job before World War II broke out? School teacher. And at six-feet, four-inches tall he hardly blended into a crowd.<\/p>\n But in France, Cammaerts was \u201cRoger\u201d \u2014\u00a0his code name in the British Special Operations Executive \u2014 and the organizer of a highly effective resistance group called Jockey.\u00a0If captured, the Gestapo would have brutally tortured him in an effort to gain information about his network. If he broke under torture, it\u2019d mean the lives of thousands more.<\/p>\n Travelling under the cover story that he was a French teacher recovering from severe illness, Cammaerts thought fast.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were spending a lot of time looking at my papers and I coughed and spluttered, bit my lip and spat blood on the platform,\u201d he recounted in SOE: An Outline History of the Special Operations Executive 1940-46<\/a><\/em>.<\/strong> \u201cThe Germans were very frightened of T.B. My papers were returned very quickly and I was sent on my way.\u201d<\/p>\n Luck, a penchant for survival and sheer guts \u2026. that was Lt. Col. Francis Cammaerts. He died in 2006 at age 90, and is\u00a0still remembered as one of the most effective British operatives of World War II.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the earliest days of his work it was apparent that he was one of the most outstanding organizers in the field,\u201d his citation for the Distinguished Service Order<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0stated. \u201cThis was borne out on D-Day when his organization numbered 20,000 men of which at least 15,000 were fully armed\u201d \u2014 a boon to the regular Allied forces as the French resistance destroyed rail lines, sabotaged German communications and ambushed German troops.<\/p>\n Only a handful of men and women who worked with Cammaerts are alive today. But historians and family friends of Cammaerts remember him as a man who expressed fierce loyalty toward the French people, and a fervent determination to wipe out the Nazis because of the personal loss the war brought to his family.<\/p>\n