Frank Pickersgill Frank Herbert Dedrick Pickersgill ( May 28 , 1915 in Winnipeg , Manitoba , Canada – September 14 , 1944 in Weimar , Thuringia , Germany ) is a Canadian hero of World War II . Pickersgill graduated from Kelvin High School in Winnipeg . Holding an English degree from the University of Manitoba and a Masters degree in Classics from the University of Toronto , Pickersgill had originally set out to cycle across Europe , and then returned to Europe in 1938 to work as freelance journalist for several Canadian newspapers . During his travels he met with Jean - Paul Sartre , whose work he had hoped to translate into English though the oncoming war distracted his labours . He served the first two years of the war in a labour camp as an enemy alien ; he escaped by sawing out a window in the now - clichéd style of a hacksaw blade smuggled into the camp in loaves of bread . Once he was safely back in Britain , Capt Pickersgill rejected the offer of a desk job in Ottawa , and instead requested a commission with the newly created Canadian Intelligence Corps . Because he was fluent in German , Latin , Greek and especially French , he worked in close connection to the British Special Operations Executive ( SOE ) . Along with fellow Canadian , John Kenneth Macalister , he was parachuted into the Loire Valley in occupied France on June 20 , 1943 , to work with the French Resistance . The two men were picked up by the SOE agent Yvonne Rudellat and the French officer Pierre Culioli . Their vehicle stopped at a German checkpoint and after Rudellat and Culioli were cleared , they decided to wait for the two Canadians to come through . Minutes later at the checkpoint , their cover was blown and Culioli tried to speed away , but the Germans opened fire hitting Rudellat in the head and Culioli in the leg , causing the car to crash . Both Rudellat and Culioli survived the crash . In March 1944 , Pickersgill tried to escape the Parisian Fresnes Prison where they were being held , attacking a guard with a nearby bottle , and throwing himself out the second - storey window . He was shot multiple times in the escape attempt and recaptured ; Pickersgill was interned with other agents at a Nazi - camp at Ravitsch 25 miles North of Breslau until on August 27 he was shipped with members of the Robert Benoist group to Buchenwald concentration camp . Pickersgill was executed at Buchenwald by the Nazis on September 14 , 1944 , along with 35 other SOE agents , including Canadians Roméo Sabourin and John Kenneth Macalister . Though there are conflicting reports about their death , the men are commonly thought to have been hung on meat hooks and strangled with piano wire , a painful death typically reserved for traitors and spies . Their bodies were incinerated . Posthumously , the government of France awarded him the Legion of Honor , and as one of the SOE agents who died for the liberation of France , he is listed on the " Roll of Honour " on the Valençay SOE Memorial in the town of Valençay in the Indre département . Captain Pickersgill is also honored on the Groesbeek Memorial in the Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery in the Netherlands , and the University of Toronto has designated a " Pickersgill - Macalister garden " on the west side of the " Soldiers ' Tower " monument . Frank Pickersgill was the younger brother of Jack Pickersgill , a member of the Canadian House of Commons and a Cabinet minister .