Lise Villameur, born Lise de Baissac, an agent of the SOE, won
many awards for her leadership in the Resistance and became a major heroine of
the French Resistance. Lise de Baissac, born into a prosperous family in
Mauritius in 1905, travelled far from her origins. During the Second World War
she was staying in Paris when it was occupied by the Germans. She managed to escape to England and obtained
a job at the Daily Sketch, but de Baissac longed to play a part in the war so
she applied to join the Special Operations Executive. She trained at Beauilieu in Hampshire and
impressed her teachers with her excellent work.
Lise de Baissac must have been very nervous when she was
flown into France with Andree Borrell in 1942 in the midst of the Second World
War. These two women were the first
women agents to be parachuted into France.
They worked for the Special Operations Executive, set up by Churchill,
to organise resistance work and ‘set Europe ablaze.’
De Baissac’s mission was to set up a new circuit in Poitiers
and form a safe house to assist agents and provide them with information. The young woman’s ‘cover story’ was that she
was a young widow who wanted a quiet, country life far away from the stress of
the big city. She even fooled the local
staff of the Gestapo with this camouflage – her apartment was apparently quite
close to them.
Lise de Baissac’s Role in the French Resistance
De Baissac felt very lonely in France, but she soon managed
to make many local friends. She held parties and gatherings in her
apartment. This semblance of a normal
life helped her to hide her resistance work.
She found landing zones for the agents, organised reception
committees and organised arms drops. She
also formed her new circuit, which was called ‘Artist’. She also had to form important new contacts.
De Baissac also liaised between other circuits of the Resistance. These were ‘Prosper’, ‘Scientist’ and
‘Bricklayer.’ The ‘Scientist’ network was run by de Baissac’s brother, Claude.
The young woman lacked a radio of her own. This meant that she had to travel to Paris to
obtain messages and funds or go to Bordeaux where her brother worked. Her brother organised sabotage operations and
reported on ship and submarine movements.
In 1943 many circuits were penetrated by the Germans but de
Baissac managed to escape to London. However, after breaking her leg while
training new agents to parachute, she was unable to return to France for some
time.
De Baissac returned in 1944 to work with the ‘Pimento’
circuit. She didn’t like working for
this group, however. She thought that
the leaders were socialists and the workers in the group regarded her as too
smartly dressed to fit into the circuit.
She soon left to work with her brother in the ‘Scientist’ circuit.
This circuit organised landing groups and provided arms for
the Maquis. They also prepared for D-Day
by mining roads and cutting communications.
De Baissac played an important role in sabotage operations against the
Germans. The Germans incurred heavy
losses because of these operations.
Lise de Villameur’s Life after the War
Lise de Baissac married Gustave Villameur after the war in
1950. She had fallen in love with
Villameur, then a penniless artist, when she was a young girl. Her parents were against the marriage and
they separated for a while. Villameur became
an interior decorator, and worked for
the BBC French Service in various roles, including translation. The couple had
no children.
De Villameur was awarded the MBE, and was made Chevalier de
la Legion d'Honneur and awarded the Croix de Guerre avec palme by the French.
The heroine of the French Resistance had a very long life, dying in 2004 at the
age of 98.
NB: This was previously published on Tripod.
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