Henry Thackthwaite
British soldier (b. 1904, d. 1982)
Major Henry Hopkinson Augustus Thackthwaite OBE (1 April 1904 – 8 November 1982) was a British soldier and veteran of the Special Operations Executive.
Thackthwaite was born in West London in 1904. His mother and paternal grandmother were French and Thackthwaite was bilingual from an early age. He read physiology at Oxford and worked as a teacher/translator in Beaminster, Dorset before WWII.
Thackthwaite joined the Royal Army Service Corps in March 1940. In 1942, he began working for Special Operations Executive RF section. In January 1944, he parachuted into a drop-zone near the village of Eymeux where he helped organise French Resistance groups, in an operation known as UNION-I. Thackthwaite was exfiltrated in May 1944 to take up an important administrative position of the SOE (RF) section. The General Staff of the French Forces of the Interior (EMFFI) was set up just ahead of the D-day landings in June 1944, and SOE (RF) became the 6th bureau of the EMFFI charged with special missions. In late 1944, EMFFI mounted a dual operation, JUDEX, from an office in the Hotel Cecil in Paris. The two operations were commanded by Col. M. Buckmaster for 3rd bureau and Thackthwaite for 6th bureau.
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