Date of birth:

September 2nd, 1909 (Coulonges-en-Tardenois, France)

Date of death:

November 20th, 1962 (Laos)

Nationality:

French (1870-present, Republic)

Henri Déricourt, code named Gilbert and Claude, was a French agent in 1943 and 1944 for the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive organization during World War II.

The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in countries occupied by the Axis powers, especially those occupied by Nazi Germany. SOE agents allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England.

Déricourt was the organiser (leader) of the Farrier network (or circuit) in France. Déricourt's job with SOE was air movements officer. He found clandestine landing fields for RAF airplanes and organized receptions for the arrival and departure of flights to convey SOE agents back and forth from England to France. Déricourt also acted as a postman, collecting mail and messages from SOE agents for transmittal to SOE headquarters in London with the airplane pilots. He was highly successful at the job and came into contact with many agents of Prosper, the SOE's largest and most important network in France.

In the summer of 1943, the Prosper network was destroyed by the Germans with the arrest of hundreds of Prosper network associates and the death of many, including Francis Suttill, the leader of the network.

Déricourt's service with SOE was controversial. He is accused of betraying the Prosper network to the Germans. After the war he was accused but acquitted of being a double agent who worked for the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the intelligence arm of the German SS. The theory has also been advanced by some authors that Déricourt was a triple agent working under British instructions and that the betrayal of many SOE agents was an attempt by the British intelligence agency, MI6, to mislead the Germans about the date of the invasion of France by allied forces. M.R.D. Foot, the official historian of the SOE, believed that Dericourt was a German agent but debunked the assertion that Dericourt was a triple agent.

On 21 November 1962, Déricourt took off from Vientiane for Sayaboury with a load of gold and four passengers, but the plane crashed short of the landing strip due to fuel starvation. There were no survivors.

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• Photo 1: Special Forces Roll Of Honour
• - Fuller, J., Dericourt: The Chequered Spy (1989)
  - Henri Dericourt (1909-1962) - Find a Grave
  - Henri Alfred Eugene DERICOURT, alias GILBERT: French. DERICOURT was a trained pilot who... | The National Archives
  - SOE