37 Facts About Roger Landes

Roger Landes is best known for his assassination of double agent Andre Grandclement and Grandclement's wife.

Roger Landes was an effective agent for the SOE, organizing and arming the French Resistance in southwestern France, and evading capture by the German occupiers.

Roger Landes was born in Paris the second son to Barnet Landes, of Polish-Jewish descent, and a Russian mother.

Roger Landes remained there with one of his two brothers until his parents' business collapsed during the Great Depression and they moved to London.

Roger Landes graduated in architecture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts before moving to London in 1938 after the Munich Crisis, where he joined London County Council as a quantity surveyor.

Roger Landes was conscripted into the Royal Corps of Signals in March 1941 and, speaking better French than English and already knowing Morse code, he was recruited into SOE in March 1942.

Roger Landes parachuted into France with Gilbert Norman on the night of 31 October 1942.

Roger Landes followed a careful routine to avoid attracting the attention of the German and French police.

Roger Landes used two couriers to carry messages back and forth to de Baissac and other SOE agents.

Roger Landes had to worry about German wireless detector vans which patrolled the streets and curious neighbors who might inform on him to the Germans in exchange for a reward.

The arrival of a second wireless operator, Marcel Defense, on 13 May 1943 with three new and better radios enabled Roger Landes to locate radios at different locations and move from place to transmit and receive messages and thus run less risk of capture.

Roger Landes, left in charge, was furious that de Baissac had taken his sister Lise with him to England and left Mary Herbert behind.

Roger Landes relieved Herbert of all duties and put her into a clinic near Bordeaux where she had her baby.

Roger Landes became aware of Grandclement's turncoat agreement with the Germans.

On 26 November 1943, Roger Landes gave each of his surviving resistance leaders 25,000 francs for living expenses and set out on foot with Charles Corbin to cross the Pyrenees to Spain.

Roger Landes was suspected of being a double agent because of his "miraculous" escape from capture by the Germans, but his name was cleared and he returned to Bordeaux in March 1944 as organiser of the Actor network, a new circuit tasked with making contact with surviving Resistance groups in the area and coordinating sabotage to support the upcoming D-Day landings.

Roger Landes was accompanied by a Canadian wireless operator, Allyre Sirois.

Roger Landes was now a hardened and experienced SOE operative, one of only a few who had survived as long as he had in occupied France.

Roger Landes created the Actor network from the remains of the Scientist network.

Roger Landes equipped a large number of resistance groups and personally led several.

Roger Landes' authority was based on his capability of providing arms to resistance groups.

Roger Landes imposed strict security rules on the leaders and groups of the French resistance which he supported with parachuted arms drops that began on 1 April 1944.

Roger Landes's forces launched many attacks against the German occupiers and crippled the ability of the Germans to move their soldiers from place to place to meet the allied threat.

Roger Landes attempted, with some success, to persuade his captors that his actions were justifiable.

Roger Landes had disapproved of her husband's collaboration with the Germans.

Roger Landes drove to meet him in a jeep decorated with the flag of Great Britain.

Roger Landes replied that he was a British officer who would leave France only when ordered by the British.

Later in the day, Roger Landes had an armed confrontation with French officials and 4,000 people demonstrated in support of him.

In 1945, Roger Landes volunteered to join SOE's Force 136 in Southeast Asia to take part in the war against Japan.

Roger Landes is usually considered one of the most effective of more than 400 SOE agents sent to France.

On 29 July 1947, Roger Landes married Ginette Corbin, his courier in Bordeaux and the daughter of Charles Corbin, his colleague in the French resistance.

Roger Landes worked mostly in the jewelry business, with only modest success.

Roger Landes was devoted to his wife who died in 1983, age 61.

Roger Landes married Margaret Laing in 1990, and the couple bought a home in Hampshire.

Roger Landes suffered from dementia in his later years and died on 16 July 2008.

Roger Landes was the recipient of a Military Cross from the United Kingdom and at the end of 1945 he received a bar to his Military Cross.

Roger Landes was awarded the Croix de Guerre by France.