From 1943 Francis Cammaerts, who has died aged 90, was one of the star performers of the "independent French" section of Special Operations Executive (SOE), which staged guerrilla operations against the Nazi occupiers and Vichy regime during the second world war. He later became a professor of education in Kenya and England.
His father, Emile, was the eminent Belgian poet who settled in England early last century on his marriage to Helen (Tita) Brand, a Shakespearean actor and daughter of Marie Brema - a still more notable opera singer. Cammaerts, who was born in Kensington, west London, had two older and two younger sisters and a younger brother, Pieter. The children were brought up, bilingual in English and French, at Radlett, Hertfordshire.
He was educated at Mill Hill school and Cambridge University, where he graduated with a lower second in English and then history at St Catharine's College. After teaching briefly in Belfast, he became a schoolmaster at Penge county school for boys. He also became a pacifist, refused to put on uniform when called up for war service in 1939, lost his job, and was directed to work as a farm labourer in Lincolnshire.
His brother Pieter's early death as an RAF pilot changed his mind about violent opposition to Nazism. Through his friend and fellow schoolmaster Harry Rée (obituary May 20, 1991), he secured an introduction to SOE in 1942, where F, the independent French section, took him on and sent him on their routine paramilitary training courses.
Training staff did not think highly of him and reported that he would make a competent sabotage instructor, but did not appear to have leadership qualities. He was sent into France on March 23-24 1943 to a field near Compiègne, where the Lysander aircraft that carried him picked up Peter Churchill, whose circuit Cammaerts was to assist.
The young men who drove him to Paris that night gave him a series of security scares; when he got to St Jorioz, near Annecy, where other leaders of the circuit were holed up for the time being, the set-up seemed to him dangerous and so he left.
He went down to the Riviera, gave it out that he was a French teacher recovering from tuberculosis, and watched how life under German occupation and the Vichy regime was run. Gradually, he built up his own circuit, codenamed "Jockey" by headquarters at Baker Street. He had one serious disadvantage for the secret life: 6ft 4in (1.93m) in his socks, he could not help catching policemen's eyes; but he had common sense, a strong love of France, an even stronger sense of security and an iron will.
He began by sounding out a few retired policemen whom, in turn, he got to watch and sound out a few more men and women on whom he hoped he could rely. Step by step, he built up reception committees, who could break curfew and receive drops of arms in remote country. He secured Auguste Floiras, a model of discretion, as wireless operator, through whom drops were arranged. In 15 months' activity, described in the official history as "flawless", Floiras sent 416 messages, a section record.
Once Cammaerts had received arms, he could start training. He left the Riviera for its hinterland, never staying more than two nights in the same spot. No one, not even inside his circuit, ever knew where he was going to be or how to get in touch with him: he got in touch with them. This enabled him to carry out important sabotage missions in spring 1944, and, after the Normandy landings in June, to interfere severely with German troop movements.
Once, driving in remote country, he was stopped by a chance SS patrol. They searched him and his car, found nothing and waved him on. They had not noticed that the car sat stern-heavy on the road, because its boot - which they forgot to open - was full of arms and ammunition.
Through a misunderstanding - nothing to do with Cammaerts - the Vercors plateau, south-west of Grenoble, declared itself independent on hearing of the Normandy landings, and Cammaerts was present when the Germans counterattacked in July. Sensibly, he slipped away instead of waiting to be slaughtered. He was made chief of all resistance forces on the left bank of the Rhone, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and helped to organise secret assistance to the Franco-American landing on the Riviera coast in mid-August.
Bad luck led him into German hands at a snap road control. He was recognised and sentenced to death; with astonishing courage, his courier, a Polish countess known as Christine Granville, bribed his captors to let him go. She was awarded a George medal, and he a DSO.
After the war, he created an international system for the exchange of schoolchildren in western Europe, run from Paris under Unesco auspices. He ran this for more than a decade, then felt the call to go back to teaching; he did so, in Kenya, and became professor of education at Nairobi University. He then returned to England, to be head of Rolle College, a teacher training college at Exeter, which was soon incorporated into Exeter University.
He had married, early in the war, his beloved Nan. For their silver wedding, he gave her the freehold of a house on the Isle of Dogs, which she was able to sell at a large profit. They retired to France, to the Drôme, where he lived among former members of his circuit. They moved on into the Hérault, near Montpellier, where Nan died in 2002.
He is survived by two daughters, Joanna and Nicola, and a son, Paul.
· Francis Charles Albert Cammaerts, resistance hero and teacher, born June 16 1916; died July 3 2006