Charles Milne Skepper was an economist and socialist intellectual who joined the British Special Operations Executive to operate in occupied France during the Second World War carrying out sabotage and spying missions until he was taken prisoner.
25 Facts About Charles Skepper
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Charles Skepper was tortured for information and subsequently murdered by the Gestapo.
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Charles Skepper was a highly intelligent student with a deep interest in social justice and a gifted linguist from an early age, he learned to speak perfect French and then German and Spanish.
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Charles Skepper had deeply held political views from a relatively early age being a serious socialist and after deep consideration over a long period he decided that he was an atheist.
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Charles Skepper was attracted to theoretical communism and became a member of the "Friends of the Soviet Union" a factor recorded by MI5 in London and in the late 1920s travelling by train he made two visits to the Soviet Union.
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Charles Skepper was a student at the London School of Economics from 1926 to 1929, earning a Bachelor of Science degree First in Economics his specialist subject was Sociology.
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Charles Skepper did not complete his doctorate but worked as an assistant teacher of Sociology from 1930 to 1932 when he moved home to 27 Gordon Square in central London.
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Charles Skepper became deeply interested in modern art and purchased paintings by Da Silva, Max Ernst and Edouard Cortes, his collection was stolen from the family home at Rueil-Malmaison near Paris during the Second World War.
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Charles Skepper sailed on 24 September 1932 from Le Havre aboard the British ocean liner Samaria, returning some weeks later.
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In 1939 Charles Skepper volunteered for military service and was appointed to run the propaganda broadcasting station of the British Ministry of Information in Shanghai.
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Charles Skepper commenced training at the SOE school based at Wanborough Manor in West Surrey learning aspects of the trade such as navigation, parachuting, killing with and without weapons, behaviour if captured, explosives and demolition, wireless and cyphers, shooting with pistols, sub-machine guns and rifles and familiarity with captured enemy weapons.
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Charles Skepper was flown in with a fellow agent Diana Rowden by the specialist covert operations pilot Flying Officer Jimmy McCairns DFC and 2 Bars MM.
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Charles Skepper built up an extremely effective sabotage group and organised a number of significant acts of sabotage.
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Charles Skepper was noted to have always personally led operations and taken on the dangerous role of receiving parachuted supplies from England.
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Charles Skepper was arrested with others on 23,24 or 25 March 1944 in the apartment where he had been staying in Rue Merentie with French friends of the Villevieille family after betrayal by a French national working for the Gestapo.
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When Charles Skepper was seen in the Gestapo offices in the custody of Gestapo Agent Dunker by Villevielle two weeks after their arrests he reported being unable to recognise his friend.
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Charles Skepper was severely tortured by the Gestapo and later transported to Fresnes and then to Compiegne prison.
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Charles Skepper was one of the few SOE agents whose fate has never been finally resolved.
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Charles Skepper's death was officially recognised by the War Office on 28 October 1946, where it was recorded as 'Presumed died while in enemy hands on or shortly after 1 April 1944'.
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Charles Skepper's fate was still unclear to the War Office in December 1945 and he was mentioned in the London Gazette as a lieutenant on the General List still in receipt of pay and allowances.
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The Charles Skepper family maintained his apartment in his name until 1948.
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For official purposes the date of 4 April 1944 was set as his date of death and as he had disappeared Charles Skepper's name was commemorated by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission on the Brookwood Memorial to the missing.
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However, although he had died intestate Charles Skepper had left a 'soldier's will' and his estate was administered on 18 January 1948, with the administration document simply saying that he had died 'on war service'.
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Charles Skepper's name is commemorated on the LSE war memorial in their Old Building.
25.
Mrs Mary Skepper was appointed an OBE in the Birthday Honours List 1950.