Harry Peulevé

Henri Leonard Thomas Peulevé DSO, MC (29 January 1916 – 18 March 1963) was an agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), who undertook two missions in occupied France and escaped from Buchenwald concentration camp.

Henri Leonard Thomas Peulevé, son of Leonard and Eva Peulevé, was born in the East Preston district of Hastings on 29 January 1916. His early childhood was spent in Algiers and later at Stratford-upon-Avon, Winchelsea and Fairlight, attending King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon and Rye Grammar School. In 1929 the family moved to Dinard on the Brittany coast, where Leonard found work as a travel agent. At the invitation of a family friend, Henri also spent time on the Côte d’Azur, during which time he became a fluent French speaker. Following his return to England in 1932, he qualified as an electrical engineer, working for Pye Radio and the Baird Television Company before joining the BBC in 1936. He became one of their first camera operators at the Alexandra Palace studios, where he worked until the outbreak of war.

Peulevé enlisted with the 82nd Essex Anti-Aircraft Regiment in September 1939, but was soon transferred to the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and the Royal Military College of Science, where he was trained on gun laying radar. Promoted to Armament Staff Sergeant, he was sent to join an AA battery with the British Expeditionary Force at Arras in early 1940, but was evacuated in May as German forces approached. He eventually reached Nantes from where he and his men were evacuated, but the traumatic scenes he witnessed during the rout left Peulevé with a profound sense of humiliation, which spurred him to offer his services to the War Office. In March 1942 he was interviewed by Major Lewis Gielgud and accepted for training with the French Section of the Special Operations Executive, a secret organisation formed in 1940 to encourage resistance and sabotage in occupied countries.

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