Jacques Legrand (24 October 1906 – 30 June 1944) was a French Resistance leader and a

chemical engineer In the field of engineering, a chemical engineer is a professional, equipped with the knowledge of chemical engineering, who works principally in the chemical industry to convert basic raw materials into a variety of products and deals with the ...

at the Curie Institute in Paris.

Pre-war life

Legrand was born in Douai, France on 24 October 1906. He worked as a chemical engineer at the Curie Institute in Paris. Legrand was an avid amateur sailor in his spare time prior to the war.

World War II

Legrand joined the French Army in October 1939, following the outbreak of World War II. He served in an anti-aircraft battery during the

Battle of France The Battle of France (french: bataille de France) (10 May – 25 June 1940), also known as the Western Campaign ('), the French Campaign (german: Frankreichfeldzug, ) and the Fall of France, was the Nazi Germany, German invasion of French Third Rep ...

. Legrand was the co-founder of the

Réseau Gloria The réseau Gloria SMH (Gloria network) was a French Resistance network under the German occupation of France during World War II. The Gloria network was founded by Gabrielle Picabia, alias "Gloria", who was running it with Jacques Legrand (resista ...

along with Gabrielle Picabia and served as the leader of the network. Réseau Gloria operated during the

German occupation of France during World War II The Military Administration in France (german: Militärverwaltung in Frankreich; french: Occupation de la France par l'Allemagne) was an interim occupation authority established by Nazi Germany during World War II to administer the occupied zo ...

with the primary task of gathering naval and maritime intelligence. The network was in touch with the British

Secret Intelligence Service The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...

and with the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Legrand's codename with SOE was "Jack Tar" and he was referred to as "SMH" and "Bernard" within his own network. He mostly recruited academics and college professors for intelligence gathering within his network. Legrand and Réseau Gloria provided information, photographs, and maps to American

Virginia Hall Virginia Hall Goillot DSC, Croix de Guerre, (April 6, 1906 – July 8, 1982), code named Marie and Diane, was an American who worked with the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the American Office of St ...

, among others. Among the members of Legrand's cell was

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic expe ...

, who served mostly as a courier. The network was infiltrated by Catholic priest and collaborator

Robert Alesch Robert Alesch (6 March 1906 – 25 January 1949) was a Catholic priest and collaborator with Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Biography Alesch was born 6 March 1906 in Aspelt, Luxembourg. He claimed that his father was a Lorraine Frenc ...

in 1942.

Arrest and death

Acting on intelligence provided by Alesch, Legrand was arrested by the Germans on 13 August 1942, effectively ending the Réseau Gloria network. He was deported to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Mauthausen, Austria where he later died in 1944.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Legrand, Jacques French Resistance members Resistance members who died in Nazi concentration camps 20th-century French engineers French civilians killed in World War II 1906 births 1944 deaths People from Douai