Lise de Baissac

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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