Pierre Adrien Simonet was a French militant and senior official.
24 Facts About Pierre Simonet
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Pierre Simonet was with the Free French Forces before becoming a colonial administrator and international official.
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France and the United Kingdom had just declared war on Germany, although Pierre Simonet was too young to be deployed.
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Pierre Simonet instead studied preparatory mathematics at the Lycee Montaigne in Bordeaux.
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Pierre Simonet was shocked by this declaration and decided to revolt.
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Pierre Simonet enlisted in de Gaulle's Free French Forces on 1 July 1940 where he set out to be an aviator, but was denied due to his lack of a pilot's license.
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Pierre Simonet was instead assigned to a camp in Surrey.
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Pierre Simonet was supervised by commissioned and non-commissioned officers of the Free French Forces.
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Pierre Simonet left the United Kingdom on 29 August 1940 for an expeditionary force in Dakar which sought to rally French West Africa in favor of Free France.
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Pierre Simonet fought in the Battle of Dakar, which attempted to free the key port from Vichy France.
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Pierre Simonet was then stationed in Cameroon in French Equatorial Africa, where he continued his training until January 1941.
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Pierre Simonet's brigade was engaged in the Second Battle of El Alamein in October 1942, aiding the Eighth Army in the Tunisian campaign against the Afrika Korps, led by Erwin Rommel.
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Pierre Simonet then became an officer candidate at the end of 1943.
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Pierre Simonet often ventured deep into enemy territory in order to gain vital information.
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Pierre Simonet's unit was engaged in the offensive of 8 May 1944, which broke the Winter Line and the Hitler Line.
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Pierre Simonet began taking courses at the Institut national de la statistique et des etudes economiques and the University of Paris.
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Pierre Simonet then worked in Cameroon from 1951 to 1952 as an administrator in various areas, such as Mora, Meiganga, Ngaoundere, and Yaounde.
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Pierre Simonet aided in Decolonization and helped the transfer of power to Cameroonian authorities.
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Pierre Simonet became an international civil servant in 1958 as a statistician and economist in Southeast Asia for the Food and Agriculture Organization.
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Pierre Simonet was a part of the mission for the development of countries along the Mekong.
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Pierre Simonet served in the Comoros and Lesotho from 1981 to 1984.
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Pierre Simonet retired in 1985 and settled in Toulon with his wife, who had followed him in all of his missions.
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Pierre Simonet was awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour in December 2019, presented by General Benoit Puga.
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Pierre Simonet died in Toulon on 5 November 2020 at the age of 99.