Lise de Baissac
Mauritian SOE agent (1905-2004)
Lise Marie Jeanette de Baissac MBE CdeG (11 May 1905 – 29 March 2004), code names Odile and Marguerite, was a Mauritian agent in the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) organization in France during World War II. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in countries occupied by the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany. SOE agents allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England.
De Baissac was one of the first SOE female agents to be parachuted into occupied France in September 1942. During her two missions to France she often worked with her brother Claude who headed the Scientist network of SOE. The two were most useful shortly before and after the D-Day invasion of France by the allies. The de Baissacs armed and organized French Resistance forces to hinder the German response to the invasion and to assist the allies. Lise de Baissac had frequent encounters with German soldiers in the heavily militarized region in which she worked, but she eluded capture. She was awarded several gallantry awards after the war.
Early life
The only daughter among three children, Lise de Baissac was born in British Mauritius. Her father was Marie Louis Marc de Boucherville Baissac (1878–1945) and her mother was Marie Louise Jeanette Dupont. Her family were large landowners in Mauritius, but British subjects as all Mauritians then were.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q435640. VIAF identifies the subject as 4133153653289355900002. The Library of Congress control number is n2018051639. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1905, 2004, 1942 and 1878.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lise de Baissac” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.