Jean Renaud-Dandicolle

Joining the French Resistance, fleeing the Gestapo and becoming a wartime secret agent for Britain in Normandy, all before your 21st birthday. That was the incredible, but short life of Captain Jean Renaud-Dandicolle MC.

Dr Claire Hubbard-Hall, Senior Lecturer in History at Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln, has discovered Captain Renaud-Dandicolle’s previously Top Secret file in the National Archives.

These original documents from 1944-46 were only declassified in the last 14 years and reveal his activity as an undercover SOE operative in Normandy in the first half of 1944. As Dr Claire Hubbard-Hall explains, these official records reveal a fascinating tale of betrayal, ‘flaming courage’, outstanding bravery and ultimately the demise of a fearless young man.