Edgard Tupët-Thomé, hero of the Resistance and Free French fighter who won an MC – obituary

Edgard Tupët-Thomé, who has died aged 100, was one of the last surviving Companions of the French Order of Liberation and in June this year was awarded an honorary MBE for services to Britain during the Second World War, in which he also won an MC.

Edgard Tupët was born on April 19 1920 in Bourg-la-Reine in the Hauts-de-Seine department of northern France, and grew up at Charleville-Mezieres in the Ardennes.

As a young man he thought of becoming a monk, but, while studying at the Higher School of Theology in Reims, “the superior found me walking on my hands in the hallways. After two years, I realised that I had gone astray and that nothing interested me, except hunting and scouting.”

In October 1938 he enlisted in the 8th Zouaves Regiment, an infantry unit, in which he subsequently took part, as a sergeant, in the fighting in Lorraine, and then in Belgium. There, in May and early June 1940, his unit protected members of the British Expeditionary Force as they embarked from the beaches of Dunkirk.

On June 4, however, he was taken prisoner – though not for long: “The duty of a prisoner is to escape,” he recalled. “I reflected for a few days, and on June 10, Saint Edgard’s day, my feast day, I escaped.”

He found a job in Clermont-Ferrand, where he came into contact with Roger Warin (code name Wybot) who, while working in counter-espionage for the Vichy regime, had established links with the Free French and was busy creating a resistance network.

In March 1941 Warin established a direct link with General de Gaulle in London, through Pierre Fourcaud, one of the earliest Frenchmen to rally to the cause. The following month, Tupët, Warin and three others became the first secretly enlisted members of the Free French Forces.

In August 1941 he crossed the border into Spain with two companions and travelled via Portugal and Gibraltar to England. There, under the pseudonym Edgard Thomé, he was assigned to de Gaulle’s private staff and underwent parachute training.

On December 9 1941 he and a radio officer were parachuted back into France, landing near Châteauroux where, for six months, Tupët-Thomé was involved in Resistance activities. But injuries sustained during his parachute jump eventually forced him to leave for treatment in Britain, where he was promoted to lieutenant.

After a few months convalescence he asked to be assigned to a combat unit, and in November 1942 he left England for the Commando Instructor Detachment of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, a French island territory off Canada controlled by the Free French.

In August 1943 Tupët-Thomé joined the 4th Air Infantry Battalion (4th BIA), a Free French unit integrated into British forces and subsequently incorporated into the Special Air Service Brigade. In January 1944 he was transferred as second in command of the 2nd company of the 3rd BIA, which after D-Day became the 3rd Parachute Chasseur Regiment (3rd RCP) and went on to play a significant role in facilitating the Allies’ rapid advance through France.

On August 5 1944 Tupët-Thomé parachuted into the Finistère department of Brittany where he led his section of 12 men to liberate the town of Daoulas, taking on a German force of 60, of whom he killed 12 and took 40 prisoner.

He and his section went on to liberate the nearby town of Landerneau, a German stronghold, inflicting heavy losses on the garrison there.

On August 27 he was dropped by parachute into the Jura, where he took Clerval (Franche-Comté) which, with 50 men, he defended against a German counter-attack, falling back yard by yard against a much stronger enemy but killing some 30 Germans and destroying a tank in the process.

From September 11 he was attached to the 45th US Infantry Division. On September 15, assigned to a divisional reconnaissance group, he made a recce at Mancenans and Geney in Franche-Comté where, according to the citation for his MC, he killed “several scores of Germans”.

On September 28 he made another dangerous recce in the Epinal area, bringing back valuable information about enemy formations.

The citation to his MC, awarded in December, stated that Lt Thomé had “proved the highest military qualities”.

Parachuted for a third time into the Netherlands on April 7 1945, he led his section of 15 men into further attacks on communication routes, inflicting serious losses on the enemy.

After the war he was admitted to the École nationale de la France d’Outre-Mer and in January 1946 became an administrator in French Tunisia, where he later became a director of a wine co-operative.

In 1950 he left Tunisia for Canada, where he had bought a farm. In 1955, however, he returned to France, and after training as an engineer joined the Singer Corporation in a pharmaceutical laboratory in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Subsequently he worked for the French motor vehicle manufacturer Panhard and later for a tourism agency.

In retirement, Tupët-Thomé lived in Binic in the Côtes-d’Armor department of Brittany before becoming a resident at Les Invalides in Paris.

In an interview he explained why he had been unable to accept defeat by Germany: “I didn’t hate the Germans, on the contrary, I spoke their language. But my uncle had told me: ‘You will one day be confronted with them, sooner or later.’ We had been in 1870 and in 1914. I had been prepared.”

Appointed a member of the Order of the Companions of the Liberation in November 1945, Tupët-Thomé was awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion d’honneur in 2019.

In June this year, during a visit to London by the French President Emmanuel Macron, Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that the last four members of the Order of the Liberation, Daniel Cordier, Pierre Simonet, Hubert Germain, and Edgard Tupët-Thomé, would be appointed honorary MBEs.

He and his wife Geneviève, who died in 2018, had a son and a daughter.

Edgard Tupët-Thomé, born April 19 1920, died September 9 2020