- Maurice Buckmaster
-
Colonel Maurice James Buckmaster OBE (11 January 1902 - 17 April 1992, Forest Row, Sussex) was the leader of the French section of Special Operations Executive and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. He was a corporate manager with the French branch of the Ford Motor Company, in the postwar years serving in Dagenham. He wrote two memoirs about his service with the Resistance during World War II.
Early life and career
Maurice Buckmaster was born on 11 January 1902 at Ravenhill, Brereton, Staffordshire, England. He was educated at Eton College, but his studies ended when his father went bankrupt. He left school and first became a reporter for the French paper Le Matin. Later he became a banker and eventually a senior manager with the French branch of the United States (US) Ford Motor Company.
World War II
When World War II started, Buckmaster returned to Great Britain. He joined the British Expeditionary Force and fought in France until the retreat to Dunkirk. Following this he was an IO with 50 Division, which he decided to leave after the division was scheduled to move to the Middle East. Following a meeting with Gerald Templar he was recruited into SOE or MO1(SP) as it was titled by the War Office.
On 17 March 1941, Buckmaster was appointed the Information Officer of the French section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), and following an attachment to the Belgian Section from July 1941, in September he was made head of F Section. His job was to form an organization to supply and train French Resistance members in occupied France and to gather intelligence. He was directly involved in the agent training and worked with the (communist) FTP. He had a habit of giving his agents personal gifts before they departed for their missions. For his service, France awarded him the Croix de Guerre, the Americans the Officer of the Legion of Merit and the British the OBE.
After the war, Buckmaster rejoined the Ford Motor Company, serving in Dagenham as Director of Public Affairs. Just after WWII in 1946 and 1947 he wrote a series of eight articles on F Section for the now defunct Chambers Magazine, entitled They Came By Parachute. He wrote two memoirs, Special Employed (1952) and They Fought Alone (1958), and was interviewed for the 1969 documentary The Sorrow and the Pity.
This biographical article related to the military of the United Kingdom or its predecessor states is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
