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Duel Of Wits
Duel of Wits is a book written by Peter Churchill, Distinguished_Service_Order, DSO, Croix de Guerre, published in 1953. It was the second of three books describing his wartime experience in the French section of the Special Operations Executive in which he was infiltrated four times into occupied France and spent 225 days behind enemy lines before he was captured. Synopsis ''Duel of Wits'' was the second of three books describing his wartime experience in the French section of the Special Operations Executive. He describes his second mission in April 1942 which was to deliver two SOE wireless operators in Antibes by submarine and then a further SOE wireless operator and another SOE agent on a special mission to organise the VIC Escape Line, who were dropped off nearby at the Pointe d’Agay. He then returned to the UK.''Duel of Wits'', Peter Churchill, Hodder and Stoughton, (1953) In his third mission he was parachuted near Montpellier in August 1942 to organise and coordinat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Churchill
Peter Morland Churchill, (14 January 1909 – 1 May 1972) was a British Special Operations Executive (SOE) officer in France during the Second World War. His wartime operations, which resulted in his capture and imprisonment in German concentration camps, and his subsequent marriage to fellow SOE officer, Odette Sansom, received considerable attention during the war and after, including a 1950 film. Early life and career Churchill's father was William Algernon Churchill (1865–1947), a British Consul who served in Mozambique, Amsterdam, Pará in Brazil, Stockholm, Milan, Palermo, and Algiers. His father was also an art connoisseur, and author of what is still the standard reference work on early European paper and papermaking, ''Watermarks in Paper'',. His mother was Violet (née Myers). He was a brother of Walter Churchill, a Royal Air Force pilot during the war, and Oliver Churchill, who was also an SOE officer. Churchill was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on 14 January ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lake Annecy
Lake Annecy (french: Lac d'Annecy, ) is a perialpine lake in Haute-Savoie in France. It is named after the city of Annecy, which marks the start of the Thiou, Lake Annecy's outflow river.Jean-Daniel Stanley and Thomas F. Jorstad, ''Direct Sediment Dispersal from Mountain to Shore, with Bypassing via Three Human-Modified Channel Systems to Lake Annecy, SE France'' (2004) Vol 20 (4) Journal of Coastal Research pp 958 - 96JStor It is the third-largest lake in France, after the Lac du Bourget and Lac de Grand-Lieu, if the French part of Lake Geneva, which is shared between Switzerland and France, is excluded. It is known as "Europe's cleanest lake" because of strict environmental regulations introduced in the 1960s. It is a popular tourist destination known for its swimming and water sports. The lake was formed about 18,000 years ago, at the time the large alpine glaciers melted. It is fed by many small rivers from the surrounding mountains (Ire, Eau morte, Laudon, Bornette and Biol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1953 Non-fiction Books
Events January * January 6 – The Asian Socialist Conference opens in Rangoon, Burma. * January 12 – Estonian émigrés found a government-in-exile in Oslo. * January 14 ** Marshal Josip Broz Tito is chosen President of Yugoslavia. ** The CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel first meets to discuss the UFO phenomenon. * January 15 – Georg Dertinger, foreign minister of East Germany, is arrested for spying. * January 19 – 71.1% of all television sets in the United States are tuned into '' I Love Lucy'', to watch Lucy give birth to Little Ricky, which is more people than those who tune into Dwight Eisenhower's inauguration the next day. This record has yet to be broken. * January 20 – Dwight D. Eisenhower is sworn in as the 34th President of the United States. * January 24 ** Mau Mau Uprising: Rebels in Kenya kill the Ruck family (father, mother, and six-year-old son). ** Leader of East Germany Walter Ulbricht announces that agriculture will be collectiv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Spirit In The Cage
''The Spirit in the Cage'' is a book written by Peter Churchill, DSO, Croix de Guerre, published in 1954. It was the last of three books describing his wartime experience in the French section of the Special Operations Executive. It describes his captivity in France and Germany, and that of Odette Sansom, from April 1943 until the end of the war, when they were eventually released. Synopsis ''The Spirit in the Cage'' describes the captivity of Peter Churchill and his courier, Odette Sansom, in France then in Germany. Churchill and Sansom claimed they were a married couple and related to Winston Churchill to make themselves seem more valuable as prisoners and less likely to be executed as spies. They were sent to different concentration camps, where they were sentenced to death, and Odette tortured, and but both escaped execution. Churchill was initially taken to the German barracks in Annecy, then to Fresnes, where he remained until 13 February 1944, when he was transferred to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hugo Bleicher
Hugo Bleicher (1899–1982) was a senior non-commissioned officer of Nazi Germany's Abwehr who worked against French Resistance in German-occupied France. Early life and World War I Hugo Ernst Bleicher was born in Tettnang on 9 August 1899. He served as a private soldier in the First World War in the pioneer gas corps and was captured near the Somme. He was held as a Prisoner of War in 165 POW Camp near Abbeville and succeeded in escaping four times, although he was never able to return to the German lines. He is misreported as having been taken prisoner by the British in Belgium as a spy when wearing a British uniform. After the war he became a businessman. World War II Bleicher was recruited into the Abwehr during the Second World War because of his knowledge of French and Spanish; however, he never rose above the rank of Feldwebel (equivalent to Sergeant). He was ruthless in his pursuit of anyone in France who opposed German domination. He disabled the Franco- Polish ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abwehr
The ''Abwehr'' (German for ''resistance'' or ''defence'', but the word usually means ''counterintelligence'' in a military context; ) was the German military-intelligence service for the ''Reichswehr'' and the ''Wehrmacht'' from 1920 to 1944. Although the 1919 Treaty of Versailles prohibited the Weimar Republic from establishing an intelligence organization of their own, they formed an espionage group in 1920 within the Ministry of Defence, calling it the ''Abwehr''. The initial purpose of the ''Abwehr'' was defence against foreign espionage: an organizational role which later evolved considerably. Under General Kurt von Schleicher (prominent in running the ''Reichswehr'' from 1926 onwards) the individual military services' intelligence units were combined and, in 1929, centralized under Schleicher's ''Ministeramt'' within the Ministry of Defence, forming the foundation for the more commonly understood manifestation of the ''Abwehr''. Each ''Abwehr'' station throughout German ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henri Frager
Henri Jacques Paul Frager (3 March 1897 – 5 October 1944) was a member of the French Resistance during World War II . He was in succession, second in command of the CARTE network (under André Girard), then head of the SOE (F section) network DONKEYMAN, rising to the rank of major within SOE. He was betrayed to the Germans, deported and executed. Early life Henri Jacques Paul Frager was born in France on 3 March 1897, the son of Alphonse Jean Frager and Eugénie Louis Adolpine Frager, née Sauvier. He married the Russian-born Louba Frager and worked as an architect in Nice in civil life. On 25 November 1940 he dined with André Girard in a restaurant in Antibes. Girard wanted to develop a local network, whereas Frager was then preparing to get to London via Algeria. He reached Algeria in December that year but, after several failed attempts to get from there to London, returned to Antibes in April 1941 and got back in contact with Girard, who recruited him into CARTE as hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
André Girard (1901–1968)
André Girard (25 May 1901, Chinon, Indre-et-Loire – 2 September 1968, United States of America) was a French painter, poster-maker and Resistance worker. During the Second World War he founded and headed the CARTE network, also taking "Carte" as his personal codename. Life Prewar He was the eldest child born to a pair of brewers, and attended the École des Beaux-Arts before doing military service at Saint-Cyr. He became a painter, studying and friendship with both Georges Rouault and Pierre Bonnard, as well as a caricaturist, and theatre set designer, and as one of the best known publicity poster designers in Paris during the 1930s. He set himself up in Venice in 1936–37 and in Manhattan in 1938. 1939–45 Having married Andrée Jouan (known as "la petite Andrée") and had 4 children (all daughters, including Danièle Delorme) before war broke out, he was not called up in 1939. He refused to see the Germans enter Paris after their success in the Battle of France, and de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saint-Jorioz
Saint-Jorioz (; frp, San-Zhouryo), located on the western banks of lake Annecy, is a commune in the Haute-Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in south-eastern France. Population World heritage site It is home to one or more prehistoric pile-dwelling (or stilt house) settlements that are part of the Prehistoric Pile dwellings around the Alps UNESCO World Heritage Site. See also *Communes of the Haute-Savoie department The following is a list of the 279 Communes of France, communes of the French Departments of France, department of Haute-Savoie. The communes cooperate in the following Communes of France#Intercommunality, intercommunalities (as of 2020): References Communes of Haute-Savoie {{HauteSavoie-geo-stub ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Distinguished Service Order
The Distinguished Service Order (DSO) is a military decoration of the United Kingdom, as well as formerly of other parts of the Commonwealth, awarded for meritorious or distinguished service by officers of the armed forces during wartime, typically in actual combat. Since 1993 it has been awarded specifically for 'highly successful command and leadership during active operations', with all ranks being eligible. History Instituted on 6 September 1886 by Queen Victoria in a royal warrant published in ''The London Gazette'' on 9 November, the first DSOs awarded were dated 25 November 1886. The order was established to reward individual instances of meritorious or distinguished service in war. It was a military order, until recently for officers only and typically awarded to officers ranked major (or equivalent) or higher, with awards to ranks below this usually for a high degree of gallantry, just short of deserving the Victoria Cross. Whilst normally given for service un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Riviera
The French Riviera (known in French as the ; oc, Còsta d'Azur ; literal translation " Azure Coast") is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France. There is no official boundary, but it is usually considered to extend from Toulon, Le Lavandou or Saint-Tropez in the west to Menton at the France–Italy border in the east."Côte d'Azur, côte méditerranéenne française entre Cassis et Menton" ("Côte d'Azur, French Mediterranean coast between Cassis and Toulon") in ''Dictionnaire Hachette encyclopédique'' (2000), p. 448."Côte d'Azur, Partie orientale du littoral français, sur la Méditerranée, de Cassis à Menton" ("Côte d'Azur, Eastern part of the French coast, on the Mediterranean, from Cassis to Menton"), in ''Le Petit Larousse illustré'' (2005), p. 1297. The coast is entirely within the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of France. The Principality of Monaco is a semi-enclave within the region, surrounded on three sides by France and fronting the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Odette Sansom
Odette Sansom (28 April 1912 – 13 March 1995), also known as Odette Churchill and Odette Hallowes, code named Lise, was an agent for the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) in France during the Second World War. She was the first woman to be awarded the George Cross by the United Kingdom and was awarded the Légion d'honneur by France. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers, especially Germany. SOE agents allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. Sansom arrived in France on 2 November 1942 and worked as a courier with the Spindle network (or circuit) of SOE headed by Peter Churchill (whom she later married). In January 1943, to evade arrest, Churchill and Sansom moved their operations to near Annecy in the French Alps. She and Churchill were arrested there on 16 April 1943 by spy-hunter Hugo Bleich ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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