Comte Robert Jean Marie de La Rochefoucauld (16 September 1923 – 8 May 2012) was a member of the French Resistance and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II, and later served as the mayor of Ouzouer-sur-Trézée, a canal town in the Loire Valley, for thirty years. In honour of his work for France and as a secret agent for the British during the war, La Rochefoucauld was awarded the orders Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, Croix de Guerre, Médaille de la Résistance and the British Distinguished Service Order and Distinguished Conduct Medal.
Biography
Early life
Robert de La Rochefoucauld was born in Paris, one of 10 children in a family living in a fashionable area near the Eiffel Tower. His father, Olivier de La Rochefoucauld, and his mother, the daughter of the Duke of Maillé, were members of the French nobility; he used the aristocratic title of count in his later years. He studied at private schools in Switzerland and Austria, and, at age 15, received a pat on the cheek from Adolf Hitler on a class visit to his Alpine retreat at Berchtesgaden.
World War II
French Resistance
La Rochefoucauld was 16 and a follower of Charles de Gaulle when Nazi Germany invaded France. His father was taken prisoner and he was also reported to the Gestapo so, with the help of the French Resistance, he took a pseudonym and fled to Spain in 1942, hoping to go on to England and link up with de Gaulle's movement. He escaped with two downed British airmen, who were also being sheltered by the underground. The Spanish authorities (under Francisco Franco) interned the three men in the prison camp Miranda de Ebro, but La Rochefoucauld pretended to be English and was delivered to the British Embassy during an organised evacuation.
The British, having secured the men's freedom, were so impressed with La Rochefoucauld's boldness and ingenuity that they asked him to join the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the clandestine unit which Prime Minister Winston Churchill created in 1940 to "set Europe ablaze", as he put it, by working with resistance groups on the German-occupied Continent. Received by Charles de Gaulle, he expressed his difficulty choosing between service in the SOE and the Free French Forces, and was encouraged to choose the SOE: "If it is for France, then go ahead."
Work for the SOE
The British flew La Rochefoucauld to London, where they trained him to jump out of aeroplanes, set off explosives and kill a man quickly using his hands. In June 1943 they parachuted him into France, where he destroyed an electric substation and blew up railroad tracks at Avallon, but was captured and condemned to death by the Nazis. While being taken for execution, he jumped from the back of his captors' truck, dodged bullets, then ran through nearby streets. He ended up outside a German headquarters, where he spotted a limousine flying a swastika flag, its driver nearby and the keys in the ignition. He drove off in the car and then caught a train to Paris, hiding in one of its bathrooms. The Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying, "When we arrived in Paris, I felt drunk with freedom." The SOE later evacuated him to England.
In May 1944, La Rochefoucauld parachuted back into France. Dressed as a workman, he smuggled explosives into a huge German munitions plant in Saint-Médard-en-Jalles, near Bordeaux. Over the course of the four-day mission, La Rochefoucauld, code-named "Sun", smuggled 40 kilos of explosives, concealed in hollowed-out loaves of bread and specially designed shoes, into the factory. He set off the explosives on 20 May and, after scaling a wall, fled on a bicycle. After sending a message to London (the reply read simply: "Félicitations"), he enjoyed several bottles with the local Resistance leader, waking the next day with a hangover.
However, La Rochefoucauld was soon imprisoned by the Germans once more in in Bordeaux. In his cell, he feigned an epileptic seizure, and, when a guard opened the door, hit him over the head with a table leg and then broke his neck. He took the guard's uniform and pistol, shot two other guards, and escaped. Desperate to avoid recapture, he contacted a French underground worker whose sister was a nun. He donned her habit and walked unobtrusively to the home of a more senior agent, who hid him. With D-Day imminent, La Rochefoucauld was not extracted back to London, choosing instead to stay in France to help the Resistance overthrow the Germans. He carried out dozens of sabotage and espionage missions throughout the Normandy campaign as the Allies pushed the Germans back to Berlin.