Georges Bégué Georges Bégué or George P . Begue ( 22 November 1911 – 18 December 1993 ) was a French engineer and agent in the Special Operations Executive . Early life . Georges Bégué was born 22 November 1911 in Périgueux , France . His father was a railway engineer and the family moved to Egypt when Bégué was a child . Bégué also trained as an engineer at University of Hull where he learned English and met his wife . He went through his military service as a signaller . World War II . At the outbreak of World War II , Bégué was recalled to his unit . Because of his knowledge of English he was assigned to liaison with the British troops . He eventually escaped to Britain during the Dunkirk evacuation . After the surrender of France , he joined the Royal Signals as a sergeant , meeting Thomas Cadett the Paris correspondent of the BBC who was working in SOE ' s F section . It was suggested that Bégué be parachuted into France . Special Operations Executive . In 1940 SOE recruited Bégué to the new French section , and gave him the alias Georges Noble . After a short training course , he was parachuted to Indre on the night of 5 May 1941 with a heavy transmitter in a suitcase . He was the first SOE agent in France . He contacted socialist Max Hymans in Valencay and eventually convinced him that he was not a trap . Bégué settled in Châteauroux with his transmitter and sent the first message to London 9 May 1941 . SOE sent three other agents , including Pierre de Vomécourt , to join him . During the following six months Bégué helped to establish resistance network and agents in France and arranged arms drops . Bégué was the main contact to SOE in London and sometimes transmitted three times a day . Messages personnels . His suggestion that the BBC overseas service from 1940 – 44 , Radio Londres , would be used to overtly send pre - arranged coded messages ( " messages personnels " ) was accepted and led to widespread use , in the style of " There is a fire at the insurance agency " . This was to reduce radio traffic from SOE correspondents in France , and would even be used to tell SOE agents the sex of children born to their wives back in England . This culminated in the line from a French poem " Les sanglots longs des violons de l ’ automne blessent mon cœur d ’ une langueur monotone " which explicitly warned Resistance agents of the imminent invasion of Normandy in June 1944 . The Germans knew what it meant , having earlier tortured a Resistance member , but ( fortunately for the invasion ' s success ) undue bureaucracy got in the way of propagating the message through to more - relevant commanders . Arrest . One SOE agent Gerry Morel went off his own way to recruit resistance members and Milice , the Vichy France police , arrested him at Limoges on 3 October 1941 . His arrest led to more arrests and eventually to Bégué who was arrested 24 October in a Marseilles safe house . He was sent to join other SOE agents in the Beleyme prison in Périgueux . They were later transferred to prison camp in Mauzac on March 1942 , thanks to intervention of the American Consul - General Hugh Fullerton . Bégué managed to create a duplicate key and the group escaped 16 July 1942 , and transmitted from the camp which had left to the escape . Bégué and others hid in Mauzac in the middle of a forest and continued to Lyon on 23 July in separate groups . They contacted Vic escape network and eventually walked to neutral Spain over the Pyrenees . Bégué was interned at Figueres and sent to Miranda de Ebro prison camp but were later released to continue his way to Britain . He managed to get to London in October 1942 . Return to Britain . Bégué was appointed Signals Officer in the F section under Maurice Buckmaster . He stayed in England , and having invaluable experience of being an SOE agent , he was not sent on any more operational duties . He was also awarded Military Cross . Emigration to the United States . After the war Bégué emigrated to the United States . He worked in a number of menial jobs before he could officially become an electronics engineer . He also took US citizenship . George Bégué died 18 December 1993 in Falls Church , Virginia due to old age , he was 81 . Personal life . He was married to Rosemary ( from England ) and had two daughters , Brigitte and Suzanne .