Pickersgill, Frank

  • From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: See full biography at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Pickersgill
  • Wiki Biography Notes:
    • Frank Herbert Dedrick Pickersgill (May 28, 1915 – September 14, 1944), code named Bertrand, was a Canadian agent of the United Kingdom’s clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) organization in World War II. The purpose of SOE in occupied France was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance. SOE agents allied themselves with French Resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. Pickersgill was captured by the Germans shortly after his arrival in France, imprisoned, and later executed.
    • 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. Frank Pickersgill was the younger brother of Jack Pickersgill, a member of the House of Commons of Canada and a Cabinet minister.
    • Pickersgill spent the first two years of World War II imprisoned by the Germans 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.Pickersgill made his way to the American Consulate in Lyon, France. The United States still had diplomatic relations with Vichy France, not yet occupied by Nazi Germany. On arrival in Lyon, American diplomat Constance Ray Harvey described him as lean, hungry, and with practically no clothes. He helped the Americans write a newsletter in French describing events in the war while he waited for them to arrange an exit permit from France for him. He made his way to neutral Lisbon where the U.S. Embassy had a fund to help escapees from Nazi-controlled Europe.
    • Once Pickersgill was safely back in Britain, he rejected the offer of a desk job in Ottawa and instead received a commission in the newly created Canadian Intelligence Corps. Because he was fluent in German, Latin, Greek and especially French, he became an agent of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). 
    • Together with fellow Canadian, Ken Macalister, Pickersgill was parachuted into occupied France during the night of June 15/16, 1943. Pickersgill was to be the organiser (leader) of a new SOE network called Archdeacon, to be located in northeastern France in the Ardennes.
    • Pickersgill was imprisoned for several months. Pickersgill, in May 1944, attempted to escape, attacking his guards with a broken bottle, killing one or two of them, and jumping out of a second story window, breaking an arm. A soldier fired at him. He was hit twice by bullets and recaptured.
    • On 8 August 1944, with the allied armies advancing on Paris Pickersgill and 36 other SOE agents, including three women, were loaded onto buses, given Red Cross parcels containing food, and taken to the railroad station where they boarded a train for Germany. After a few days of brutal treatment, all 34 of the male prisoners were loaded into trucks and taken to Buchenwald concentration camp. The three women were sent to Ravensbrück, a camp for women.
    • On 9 September at Buchenwald, the camp commandant received an order to give 16 of the prisoners “special treatment.” At Buchenwald that meant execution by being choked to death while suspended above the floor on a meat hook. Pickersgill was among the 16 executed on or about 14 September 1944.
  • Third Great Grandson of United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=2142
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