The Cardiff-born secret agent who fought the Nazis in France
The incredible story of Jacques de Guélis, a Franco-Welsh spy recruited by Churchll who helped liberate German-occupied France, can finally be told after a hoard of family papers were uncovered. Abbie Wightwick reports...
THE untold story of a FrancoWelsh spy who played a key role in helping liberate Nazioccupied France can be told for the first time after a descendant uncovered family papers.
Cardiff-born Jacques de Guélis was parachuted behind enemy lines to help the French resistance as war rocked Europe.
Carrying out at least three missions in France, occupied Algiers and Corsica, he was tasked with helping the French Resistance sabotage the Nazi advance in preparation for the D-Day landings.
Believed to have been captured by the Germans, at one point the Welsh-born spy escaped and fled across the Pyrenees, where he was captured again and spent time in the Miranda del Ebro concentration camp.
Although he was born, raised and went to school in Cardiff, Jacques was able to vanish under the radar as a native Frenchman partly because he carried out military service in the home country of his family before the start of World War II.
In 1939, with the outbreak of war he was recalled to France aged 32 and assigned to a company of British engineers as liaison officer until he was reportedly captured and escaped via Dunkirk, only to return to France a few days later.
When he returned to England he was recruited by the fledgling Special Operations Executive (SOE) after an interview with Winston Churchill. He became a familiar figure as a recruiting and conducting officer until he was sent to France on a factfinding mission in 1941.
Although his story was passed down verbally by his family, it has only now been researched and written by a cousin on his father’s side, Delphine Isaaman.
Delphine, 82, who was a child when Jacques died and never met him, became interested in his exploits after finding family documents.
She believes his story may have been forgotten because he died in Britain in 1945 following a car accident while serving in post-war Germany – an accident she says some of her family believe to have been suspicious.
Jacques, who is buried in Cathays Cemetery in Cardiff, took much of his secret story with him, but Delphine has spent 10 years tracking down some of those he worked with, documents and letters to fill in gaps in family stories of his bravery.
“He is a hero in the family,” said Delphine.
“His first mission to France was in 1941 when he was sent to find out what life was like in Nazi-occupied France and report back. He was parachuted in and picked up from a field in a Lysander plane and flown back to Britain.
“In 1943 he went to Corsica with the French to help liberate Corsica and in 1944, during the Normandy landings, he co-commanded a seven-man mission sent to France to help the Resistance stop Nazi tank divisions coming from the south to Normandy.
“They did manage to slow them down for a couple of months. The Resistance blew up railway lines and roads and he was a small part of that.
“He was also involved in a battle at Egleton in France in the summer of 1944 when the Germans took over a school and were besieged by the Resistance.
“In Algiers he went with the SOE to train the Resistance to help liberate Corsica.”
All through this time, Jacques returned to Cardiff to visit his mother, who lived in Corbett Road, but details of his exploits were never recorded until now.
Delphine, who travelled to France to interview some of those who worked with him, said much could not be proved owing to the secretive nature of his missions.
“He was quite brave. There are stories of him being held at gunpoint in Corsica, and he was a prisoner and escaped across the Pyrenees. I talked to someone who was on his last mission in France in 1944. He had been a 19-year-old radio operator at the time and remembers Jacques as a good boss.”
Delphine also met the late Bob Malubier, the legendary French agent whom she said Jacques recruited to the SOE. Malubier, known as the French James Bond, carried out missions with fellow agents including Violette Szabo, whom he attempted to rescue from the Gestapo. Szabo was captured by Nazis and sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany, where she was executed aged 23.
Delphine said: “Because of the nature of his work, I could find no trace of him on Corsica and for much of it there is no proof.
“He did not live to tell the tale and most people from the time are gone, but it was talked about in the family and I looked at family letters and documents. He was a hero in the family.”
Before his courageous career, four of his uncles had served in France during World War I. The significant role in the two world wars of Jacques’ family, who made Wales their home, has also now been marked by Cardiff University.
Jacques’ great-uncle Paul Barbier became the university’s first professor of French after coming to the city to take up the post of lecturer at the newly founded University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in 1883.
His eight children were all educated in Cardiff and his four sons were called up to the French army in World War I.
Delphine and other family members have donated documents about the family for an archive at the university which will now be open to the public.
A blue plaque has been unveiled at 3 Museum Place, the house on the Cardiff University campus where Jacques de Guélis was born on April 6, 1907.