45 Facts About Francis Cammaerts

At the beginning of World War II in 1939, Francis Cammaerts declared himself a conscientious objector, but in 1942 he joined the SOE.

Francis Cammaerts recruited and supplied with arms and training a large number of resistance networks and cells over an extensive area east of the Rhone River extending to the border with Italy and north from the Mediterranean Sea to the city of Grenoble.

Francis Cammaerts was one of only three SOE agents to be promoted to the rank of Lt.

Francis Cammaerts was born in London and raised in Radlett in Hertfordshire, the son of Professor Emile Francis Cammaerts, a Belgian poet, and Tita Brand, a successful actress.

Francis Cammaerts was educated at Mill Hill School, where he was a contemporary of Francis Crick and Patrick Troughton.

Francis Cammaerts became a pacifist in the 1930s while at Cambridge, where he read English and history at St Catharine's and won a hockey Blue.

Francis Cammaerts taught in Belfast before moving on to Beckenham and Penge County School for Boys, near London, where he taught with his close friend from university, Harry Ree who joined the SOE.

In 1940, Francis Cammaerts was refused registration as a conscientious objector by his Local Tribunal, but it was granted by the Appellate Tribunal, conditional upon him taking up agricultural work.

Francis Cammaerts was considered by some of his training officers to be lacking in physical skills, and 'more intellectual than practical'.

Francis Cammaerts was given the rank of captain and the code name Roger, and flown into occupied northern France in March 1943.

Francis Cammaerts was assigned to the Donkeyman network or circuit, then operating in the upper Rhone Valley, but his reception party from Donkeyman and the Carte network drove him first to Paris, with a dangerous disregard for security that alerted him to the risks of such behaviour.

Francis Cammaerts was 193 centimetres tall with feet so large his nickname in France was "Big Feet".

Floiras would soon join Francis Cammaerts and become his best friend and wireless operator; Sansom and several other members of the Spindle network were arrested and imprisoned shortly after Francis Cammaerts departed Saint Jorioz.

Francis Cammaerts spent a month in Cannes establishing his cover story as a teacher recovering from jaundice.

Francis Cammaerts never stayed in the same house for more than three or four nights, he avoided hotels as their registers were checked by German and French police, and he avoided large train stations which frequently had check points.

Francis Cammaerts never told anybody his plans, nor made appointments nor visited unknown addresses without careful reconnoitering.

Francis Cammaerts did not communicate in writing or by telephone, nor did he know the real names of the people he worked with, only their field names.

Francis Cammaerts had a squad of seven or eight men who followed and investigated potential recruits before they were contacted and he divided his recruits and associates into cells of no more than 15 persons each and discouraged contact between cells.

Francis Cammaerts was always received, he said, with "open arms".

Disillusioned with what he had seen of the Carte Organization and the Spindle network, Francis Cammaerts organised his own circuit.

Francis Cammaerts traveled around on a motorbike visiting each group.

On his return to France in February 1944, Francis Cammaerts' aircraft crashed due to icing and an engine fire, although he was unhurt after bailing out along with the crew.

Francis Cammaerts went on to check that his Jockey circuit was operational and later visited the 3,000+ group of Maquisards.

Francis Cammaerts was appointed head of Allied missions in southeastern France.

Francis Cammaerts understood and was even sympathetic to this view, but he had no control over the belief by French Resistance leaders that, with Allied landings taking place in the north, the war was coming to an end and the Germans were fatally weakened.

Francis Cammaerts had received a large amount of money for operations which he divided among the three of them, an action that would prove a mistake.

Christine Granville, a Polish-born SOE operative and Francis Cammaerts' lover, managed to get Francis Cammaerts and the others released.

Francis Cammaerts confronted two collaborators, Albert Schenck, a French liaison officer to the Gestapo, and Max Waem, a Belgian interpreter for the Gestapo, telling them that American troops would arrive within hours and that if they did not co-operate she would ensure the pair were handed over to an avenging mob of French citizenry.

The collaborators agreed to the release of Francis Cammaerts, Fielding and their French colleague, on condition of the payment of a two million franc ransom, which Skarbek obtained by an airdrop from London.

The rescue of Francis Cammaerts is fictionalized in the last episode of the British television show Wish Me Luck.

Digne was liberated by the American army two days after Francis Cammaerts was released from prison.

Francis Cammaerts was promoted to lieutenant-colonel, awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the Legion d'honneur, Croix de Guerre and the American Medal of Freedom for his work in south-eastern France.

In March 1945, when the Allies had crossed the Rhine, Francis Cammaerts was asked to join the Special Allied Airborne Reconnaissance Force.

Francis Cammaerts was appalled and felt impotent in the face of what he found.

Francis Cammaerts wanted to be transferred to work in the diplomatic world, but despite his extraordinary war record the Foreign Office considered Francis Cammaerts to be a foreigner, as his father was Belgian, and so unable to work at the Foreign Office.

In 1948, Francis Cammaerts became the first Director of the Central Bureau for Educational Visits and Exchanges, which was a UNESCO agency and enabled him to undertake international trips including to the USA.

In 1952, Francis Cammaerts returned to teaching, with the encouragement of John Newsom and Ronald Gould.

Francis Cammaerts was keen to implement the Labour Government's move towards comprehensive education, encouraged by Newsom.

Francis Cammaerts was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1958 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the BBC Television Theatre.

Francis Cammaerts was Principal of the Leicester Teacher Training college in Scraptoft, between 1961 and 1966, overseeing a liberalising of the training methods used.

Francis Cammaerts then moved to Kenya to help with the development of the country's education system in the immediate post-colonial period.

Francis Cammaerts became Professor of Education in Nairobi from 1966 to 1972.

Francis Cammaerts later returned to England, to become head of Rolle College, a teacher training college at Exmouth, which later became part of University of Plymouth.

Francis Cammaerts had a major impact on the development of education on all levels in the country, which had the most advanced policies on the African continent.

Francis Cammaerts finally retired in 1987, returning to live in the south of France until his death in 2006.