Editing F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas (section)

==Life as an agent==

At first, Yeo-Thomas worked in an administrative capacity, but SOE soon used him as a liaison officer with the [[Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action]] (BCRA), the Free French intelligence agency. He was parachuted into occupied France for the first time on 25 February 1943.<ref name=Time>{{cite magazine |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,817907,00.html?promoid=googlep |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121102203935/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,817907,00.html?promoid=googlep |url-status=dead |archive-date=2 November 2012 |title=Alias Shelley |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |date=2 February 1953 |access-date=13 March 2009}}</ref> Both within France and back in England, Yeo-Thomas forged links with Major [[Pierre Brossolette]] and [[Andre Dewavrin]] (who went under the codename "Colonel Passy"), and between them they created a strategy for obstructing the German occupation of France. During his missions in France, he dined with many infamous Nazis, such as [[Klaus Barbie]] who was known as the "Butcher of [[Lyon]]", to gather vital information, returning again to France on 18 September 1943.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.plan-sussex-1944.net/anglais/pdf/infiltrations_into_france.pdf |title=Tentative of History of In/Exfiltrations into/from France during WWII from 1940 to 1945 (Border Crossings, Parachutes, Planes PU & Sea Landings) |date=31 December 2022 |website=Le Plan Sussex 1944 |access-date=18 September 2023}}</ref> He was appalled by the lack of logistical and material support which the French resistance movements such as the [[Maquis (World War II)|''maquis'']] were receiving, to the extent that he begged five minutes with [[Winston Churchill]], the British Prime Minister. Churchill, reluctant at first, but fascinated by what Yeo-Thomas told him, agreed to help him obtain resources for the resistance.

In February 1944, Yeo-Thomas was parachuted into France after flying from [[RAF Tempsford]]. However, he was betrayed and captured at the [[Passy (Paris Métro)|Passy metro station]] in Paris. In endeavouring to hide his true identity, Yeo-Thomas claimed he was a British pilot named Kenneth Dodkin. He was then taken by the [[Gestapo]] to their headquarters at [[Avenue Foch]] and subjected to brutal [[torture]] by [[Ernst Misselwitz]],<ref>{{Cite book|last=Decèze|first=Dominique|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l-iEAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Ernst+Misselwitz%22|title=La lune est pleine d'éléphants verts: histoire des messages de Radio-Londres à la Résistance française, 1942-1944|date=1979|publisher=J. Lanzmann|language=fr}}</ref> including repeated submersion in ice-cold water (each time to the point that artificial respiration was required to bring him back to consciousness), innumerable beatings, and electric shocks applied to the genitals.  Held in [[Fresnes prison]], he made two failed attempts to escape and was transferred first to [[Compiègne]] prison and then to [[Buchenwald concentration camp]]. At Buchenwald with the help of [[Arthur Dietzsch]] he was committed to block 46, the Epidemic Typhus Experimentation Station (Fleckfieberversuchsstation) as a typhus patient. With [[Stéphane Hessel]] and [[Harry Peulevé]] he was given the name of a Frenchman (Maurice Choquet) who had died a short time earlier and whose death had not yet been reported. Under this new identity he survived as "a hospital orderly," <ref>{{cite ODNB |last=Hutchison |first=J. |chapter=Thomas, Forest Frederic Edward Yeo- (1902–1964), special operations officer |title=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |year=2004 |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/37063 |isbn=978-0-19-861412-8 |access-date=3 October 2021 |chapter-url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-37063}}</ref> being later transferred to "Willie," one of the many sub-camps of Buchenwald, at Tröglitz/Rehmsdorf in Saxony-Anhalt. The inmates were deployed there (from June 1944) primarily in the reconstruction of a coal liquefaction plant destroyed by allied bombing, which belonged to the [[Brabag]] company.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945. Vol. 1, Part B. Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA) |title=Tröglitz [Also Rehmsdorf, Gleina] [AKA Wille] |editor-last=Megargee |editor-first=Geoffrey P. |date=2009 |location=Bloomington and Indianapolis |publisher=Indiana University Press |pages=429–431}}</ref> Within the camp, he began to organize resistance and again made a brief escape. On his recapture he passed himself off as a French national and was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp, [[Stalag XX-B]],<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.wartimememories.co.uk/pow/stalag20b.html |title=Stalag 20b POW Camp |date=7 June 2011 |website=Wartime Memories Project |access-date=7 June 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110919103733/http://www.wartimememories.co.uk/pow/stalag20b.html |archive-date=19 September 2011}}</ref> near [[Malbork|Marienburg]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.wlajournal.com/webcontent/moab/ |title=POW Memoirs, WWII, Europe and North Africa: Marshall, Bruce as told by Yeo-Thomas F. |website=War, Literature, and the Arts |access-date=7 June 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151117063828/http://www.wlajournal.com/webcontent/moab/ |archive-date=17 November 2015}}</ref>

While at Buchenwald, Yeo-Thomas met [[Squadron Leader]] [[Phil Lamason]], the officer in charge of [[KLB Club|168 Allied airmen]], also being held there. At great risk, Yeo-Thomas assisted Lamason in getting word out of the camp to the German [[Luftwaffe]] of the airmen's captivity, knowing that RAF prisoners of war were the responsibility of the Luftwaffe, not of the Gestapo.<ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9303440/Squadron-Leader-Phil-Lamason.html |title=Obituary: Squadron Leader Phil Lamason |date=31 May 2012 |newspaper=[[The Daily Telegraph]]}}</ref> He had to don many disguises, as well as shooting an enemy agent point blank with a pistol, to escape. Eventually he succeeded in escaping, leading 10 French prisoners of war through German patrols to the American lines in April 1945.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/mar/31/edward-yeo-thomas-spy-plaque |title=Forgotten spy and escape artist extraordinaire comes in from the cold |date=1 April 2010 |website=The Guardian |access-date=25 February 2024}}</ref>