US Edition Francis Cammaerts, who died on July 3 aged 90, was a former conscientious objector who became one of the most remarkable members of the wartime Special Operations Executive.
Based in Provence, Cammaerts set up from scratch a resistance organisation comprising more than 10,000 fighters which severely hampered German troop movements and played an important role in the invasion of southern France.
Strikingly tall and powerful, Cammaerts was known to his resistants as le grand diable Anglais, but always insisted that it was the French fighters who should take the credit, describing them as "no ordinary men".
Francis Charles Albert Cammaerts was born on June 19 1916, the son of the Belgian poet Emile Cammaerts, who at the time was Professor of Belgian Studies and Institutions at the University of London.
He was brought up at Radlett, Hertfordshire, but it was the effect of the First World War on his father's homeland that was crucial to his decision to become a conscientious objector. "The whole story of World War I was so overwhelming that I think many of us said we must never be part of this again," he later recalled.
He was educated at Mill Hill and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he read English and History, before becoming a teacher. He taught at Beckenham and at Penge Grammar School, where he became a close friend of the French master Harry Rée, a contemporary at Cambridge.
At the outbreak of war, Cammaerts registered as a conscientious objector and was sent to work on the land in Lincolnshire, where he met and married his wife, Nan, and they had their first child. Rée, meanwhile, joined the SOE, which had been set up by Churchill to assist resistance movements in Nazi-occupied Europe, and he realised that the bilingual Cammaerts would make an ideal recruit.
Persuaded by Rée to suspend his objection to military service, Cammaerts was recruited in July 1942 by Selwyn Jepson, SOE's main head-hunter, who later described their first conversation: "It was one of the most interesting talks of its kind I have ever had. This was a man of the highest principle working on the land. Put there by the Conscientious Objectors' Board. We discussed at length the principle of warfare and the principles of Hitlerism. Cammaerts' motives were absolutely pure."
But others, including the bulk of his instructors, were far less convinced of Cammaerts's suitability, dismissing him as "a plodder" with no flair for sabotage or leadership. They were to be proved spectacularly wrong.
Captain Cammaerts was assigned to F Section, which organised resistance operations in France, and was flown into Occupied France by Lysander to work with the Carte network, a putative group of resistants across southern France. It was immediately clear to him that something was badly wrong with the network's security, since many of his reception committee were swiftly arrested.
Shortly after his arrival, the acting leader of Carte sent a Colonel Heinrich Verbeck to see Cammaerts with a letter of recommendation assuring him that Heinrich could be trusted. Verbeck claimed to be a colonel in the German military intelligence service (the Abwehr) who was anti-Nazi and wanted to work with the resistance. "Cammaerts most wisely distrusted the smell of the whole affair," the SOE official history records. Verbeck was, in fact, an Abwehr sergeant, Hugo Bleicher, who had infiltrated a large spread of French resistance networks.
There were already concerns over the work of another SOE officer, the French pilot Henri Dericourt, who, it later emerged, was supplying Bleicher with details of operations and personnel.
Cammaerts immediately cut off all contact with Carte and its successor organisation, Donkeyman, and moved to the mountains of south-east France to begin creating his own network. Using the codename Roger, and the cover of a French teacher recuperating after jaundice, he rarely stayed in one place for more than one or two nights. He set up an astonishingly loyal network of resistants (codenamed Jockey) that would eventually stretch from the Mediterranean north to Lyon and across to the Swiss and Italian borders.
Although Cammaerts knew how to get in touch with all the members of his group, they could contact him only through a system of "letter-boxes" - agents who would accept or hand over a letter on receipt of the correct password.
Nevertheless, he often only narrowly avoided capture, as Maurice Buckmaster, the head of F Section, recalled: "The wide area in which Roger had to carry out his duties involved him in much travelling. Many were the hairbreadth escapes, the lucky chances of that period, for travelling was the most unhealthy of pastimes. Only Roger's wide circle of friends saved him from certain arrest. "
Their loyalty was returned by Cammaerts, who always insisted that it was the resistance fighters who deserved the credit for Jockey's many successes: "Individual agents… were dependent for every meal and every night's rest on people whose small children, aged parents, property and livelihood were continually put at risk by our presence. Their contribution involved a much greater sacrifice than ours."
After one incident in April 1944, during which faulty parachutes were used to drop supplies to his network, Cammaerts sent a furious message to SOE's headquarters in London's Baker St: "At last delivery para-chutes failed to open as usual containers fell on house and crushed the back of mother of one of reception committee this bloody carelessness absolutely inexcusable you might as well drop bombs stop relatives didn't even complain but my God I do."
Cecily Lefort, one of his two main lieutenants, was captured and tortured by the Gestapo in September 1943, but the system Cammaerts had set in place ensured that the network survived.
Cammaerts would later say that he only rarely felt the pressure of being constantly on the run from the Germans. "I had a close shave transferring some weapons and explosives from Avignon to the north of Marseilles … We were stopped at Senas, which was about halfway on the trip, by some SS troops… Pierre and myself were told to get out of the car and then they started to cut the seat material in the back of the car. Pierre, who spoke very good German, said, 'What on earth are you doing?' They said an American bomber had been shot down and they were looking for the crew. Pierre said, 'You don't think we've sewn them into the back seat, do you?' At which the Germans laughed.
"They didn't open the boot, which was not locked and which was full of weapons. They just told us to get in the car and drive away."
On another occasion he was stopped after getting off a train in Avignon. "They were spending a lot of time looking at my papers and I coughed and spluttered, bit my lip and spat blood on the platform. The Germans were very frightened of TB. My papers were returned very quickly and I was sent on my way."
Cecily Lefort was not replaced, by the Polish countess Krystyna Skarbeck-Gizycka, otherwise known as Christine Granville, until July 1944, shortly before the Allied invasion of southern France. Within weeks, Cammaerts and another SOE officer, Xan Fielding, were captured by the Gestapo. Three days later the Allies began landing on the Mediterranean coast, and there were fears that the two British officers would be shot. Granville used a mixture of threats against the French police officer liaising with the Gestapo, bluff and bribery to secure their release.
Jockey's network was crucial to the speed of the Allied advance in their area. The military planners had not expected to capture Grenoble for several months, but, led by Maquis guides, they advanced over the mountains to gain the city's surrender within a week.
Cammaerts was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and decorated with the DSO, Légion d'honneur, Croix de Guerre, and the American Medal of Freedom for his exploits in southern France.
After the war Cammaerts returned to education. He became the first director of the Central Bureau for Educational Exchanges in London and ran the scheme for the exchange of assistants with French schools.
In 1952 he was appointed headmaster of Alleyne's Grammar School, Stevenage, and in 1960 gave evidence for the defence when Penguin Books was prosecuted for publishing Lady Chatterley's Lover. He then became principal of the City of Leicester College of Education, and in 1966 went to the University of East Africa, Nairobi, to start the education department.
In 1972 he returned to England as principal of Rolle College, Exmouth - one of the largest centres for teacher training. He retired in 1981 aged 65, but then began a further career as the first principal of a new college in Botswana, designed to train teachers for comprehensive, post-primary education. He remained there for five years.
Cammaerts was active, too, in the politics of the teaching profession. In 1975 he became chairman of the Association of Teachers in Colleges and Departments of Education and, when that body merged with the further education teachers to become the much larger National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education, he became president of the new body.
In 1989, with his wife and their son's family, he retired to a small farm in the very region where he had seen service with the Maquis during the war.
Francis Cammaerts's wife predeceased him. He is survived by a son and two daughters.