Frank Pickersgill
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Frank Herbert Dedrick Pickersgill (May 28, 1915 – September 14, 1944) was a Canadian Special Operations Executive agent.
Biography
Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Pickersgill graduated from Kelvin High School in that city. Holding an English degree from the University of Manitoba and a Master's degree in classics from the University of Toronto, Pickersgill set out to cycle across Europe in 1934, then returned to Europe in 1938 to work as a freelance journalist for several Canadian newspapers. During his travels he met Jean-Paul Sartre, whose work he hoped to translate into English, though the oncoming war distracted him from the project.
Pickersgill served the first two years of the war in Saint-Denis Internment Camp (Stalag 220) as an enemy alien. He escaped by sawing out a window with a hacksaw blade smuggled into the camp in a loaf of bread.
Once he was safely back in Britain, he rejected the offer of a desk job in
In March 1944, Pickersgill tried to escape from
On August 27, 1944, he was shipped with members of the
After the war, SOE's Vera Atkins interviewed Josef Kiefer, former head of the German SD in Paris. Kiefer named Pickersgill as one of three SOE agents he knew who successfully resisted all German efforts to obtain information from them. Two other successful resistors he named were Noor Inayat Khan and France Antelme.[5]
Posthumously, the government of France awarded Pickersgill the
Frank Pickersgill was the younger brother of Jack Pickersgill, a member of the House of Commons of Canada and a Cabinet minister.
Further reading
- The Pickersgill Letters, written by Pickersgill during the period 1934-43, was published by George H. Ford in 1948. The book was republished in 1978 by McClelland & Stewart in an expanded edition under the title The Making of a Secret Agent: Letters of 1934-1943.
- In 2004, two of his letters sent to his family from Central Europe in 1939 were published by Charlotte Gray in Canada: A Portrait in Letters.
- His story and that of Ken Macalister were retold in Unlikely Soldiers: How Two Canadians Fought the Secret War Against Nazi Occupation, by Jonathan Vance (HarperCollins, 2008). This book used material recently made available from SOE files to tell a more complete story of their endeavours than had previously been possible.
Notes
- ^ Scott, Alec (2007). "Behind Enemy Lines". University of Toronto. Retrieved 19 June 2023.
- ^ King, Stella, 'Jacqueline', Pioneer Heroine of the Resistance, Arms and Armour Press, 1989, pp 313-316
- ^ King, p 345
- ^ King, p 395
- ISBN 0316724971.
- ^ King, p 411