Frank Pickersgill

Who was Frank Pickersgill?

Frank Herbert Dedrick Pickersgill 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.

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.