As we were walking back to our garage from lunch at a pizza restaurant with our mechanic and a friend in Saint Pierre des Corps one day I noticed this commemorative street name plaque on an ordinary private house. Who was Honoré d'Estienne d'Orves I wondered. And what a mouthful of a name!
He turns out to be a fascinating character, a real old school patriot. He was born in 1901 into an old aristocratic family, became a French naval officer, and when France surrendered in the Second World War he joined de Gaulle's Resistance in London. With the Dutch Resistance fighter Yan Doornik and fellow Frenchman Maurice Barlier he set up the Free French information and communications network Nemrod.
His mother was a Vilmorin [link], the family of famous horticulturalists and seed merchants (botany was an aristocratic pursuit back in the day...). At one stage he seriously courted his cousin Louise Vilmorin, but at the time she preferred Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Just before Christmas 1940 he and a radio operator called Georges Marty (real name Alfred Gaessler) crossed the Channel and established themselves in the Nantes home of Resistance members, a couple called Clément. Theirs was the first radio communications link between Occupied France and London. He then went to Paris to get his friend Max André to set up a network there. When he returned to Nantes it became clear that Alfred Gaessler was a double agent, but the group found out too late and 23 members of the network were arrested.
D'Estienne d'Orves was condemned to death along with 8 of his comrades. They were not executed immediately though, and kept in prison until a real showcase moment occurred. He was arrested in January 1941, but not shot until August of that year, an act of reprisal against the assassination of a German officer in Paris. Barlier and Doornik died alongside him.
Further Reading: an article in History Net on the 80th anniversary of his death [link].
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