Peter Lake - Telegraph Peter Lake, who has died aged 94, won an MC and the Croix de Guerre while serving with Special Operations Executive (SOE) in enemy-occupied France. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Lake was working for a merchant bank in West Africa. He was called up in October 1940, and served with the Intelligence Corps for a short time before being recruited by the SOE. Posing as a shipping agent on the island of Fernando Po, in the Gulf of Guinea, he carried out disruptive actions against German interests. In mid-1943, he returned to England, and after a refresher course in parachuting, small arms and explosives, was transferred to SOE's "F" Section. On April 9 1944, accompanied by Ralph Beauclerk, a radio operator, he was dropped into the Dordogne valley. The pair had been presented with silver cigarette cases, briefed by Colonel Maurice Buckmaster, and seen off by his assistant, the formidable Vera Atkins. Lake, field name "Jean Pierre", was given the job of helping Captain Jacques Poirier, a Frenchman with a British commission, start a new circuit – "Digger" – after "Author" had been blown. On landing, he narrowly missed a farmhouse roof and was met by Poirier, pistol in hand, who challenged him, partly in jest, to identify himself. Poirier later recalled that Lake was short, rather stiff in manner and a stickler for the rules but, over the following months, he found that he was completely reliable, courageous and full of humour. André Malraux, the French author and statesman, called the trio les farfelus, or the madcaps. Peter Ivan Lake, the son of the acting consul in Majorca, was born on January 30 1915 at Limpsfield, Surrey. He was educated at Clifton before going up to St John's College, Oxford, where he read Modern Languages. The main tasks of his mission in France were to organise supply drops, gauge the potential of the Resistance units, estimate their arms requirements and their ability, given proper support, to make good use of them. This involved covering wide stretches of the Corrèze, Lot and Dordogne, using small roads. Lake knew that his cover would not hold up under expert interrogation. He carried his identity papers in one pocket and a revolver in the other. If he was cornered, he decided that he would have to try to shoot his way out. On one occasion, he was bicycling towards Brive-la-Gaillarde with radio messages in a bag concealed beneath some vegetables when he came across a German patrol. His French was good enough to fool them, but not the Vichy milice accompanying them. In the course of producing his identity papers and chatting to the Germans, he dropped his bicycle and the vegetables tumbled out. The miliciens busied themselves with picking them up and omitted to question him. Lake instructed the maquis in the use of arms and explosives. Some of them, being Republican veterans of the Spanish Civil War, thought they had nothing to learn, and said as much among themselves in their native Catalan. Lake, because of his boyhood, spoke the language and reproved them for their carelessness in openly using their own tongue. Then, questioning their vaunted knowledge of explosives, he snapped open his cigarette lighter, picked up a slab of plastic explosive, and put it to the flame. The maquisards ducked smartly out of the way, and were somewhat mortified when he stood his ground. Lake then added a fuse and a detonator and threw it into a pond; there was a large explosion. In the nearby village of Siorac-en-Périgord, where they sought storage, lived two pro-Vichy families. Worried about the danger that this posed, Lake recruited a local "heavy," the commander of a maquis unit, known only to the group as "Soleil." A man of villainous aspect, he made a late-night visit, shone his torch in the faces of the heads of the families and warned them that if the Gestapo arrested any of his friends he would return and kill them. Lake took part in sabotage operations and in raids on the enemy. In one attack on a dam, the Germans had been tipped off and were waiting for him. As Lake and his men crawled through thickly- wooded country towards their target, a maquisard arrived to ask for some tips on the use of a bazooka. At that moment, powerful searchlights caught them in their glare and the Germans opened up with machine guns. Lake and Poirier dived into the undergrowth and managed to get away. As D-Day approached, Lake made his headquarters at a chateau at Limeuil. The maquis, adept at guerrilla warfare, were operating over large tracts of the countryside and inflicting heavy losses on the Germans, who no longer dared venture outside the towns except in strength. On June 4 Beauclerk reported that the BBC had broadcast the long-awaited message that the invasion was imminent: "The giraffe has a long neck". Poirier spoke later of an unforgettable headlong drive through the night to alert the maquis detachments. It was the precursor of a series of major operations to sabotage the German lines of communication. Lake and three comrades blew up two sections of the track ahead of an armoured train carrying a German division northwards to threaten the Allied bridgehead in Normandy. The Germans mounted punitive expeditions, some savage in scope. On June 23 a village postmistress, one of a network whose job it was to telephone if they spotted any suspicious activity, called to say that panzers were heading for the chateau. They were already at the gate when Lake and his comrades made a run for it. Pursued by machine gunfire, they reached the river where they were helped across by a fisherman in a dinghy. On August 15 Lake played a notable part in negotiating the surrender of the German garrison of Brive-la-Gaillarde, A British uniform for him was dropped by parachute for the occasion. The grip of the maquis on the region had grown ever tighter and it was the first city in occupied France to be liberated solely by the Resistance. Freedom prompted an explosion of popular joy and the foursome led by Lake entered the city standing in the back of an open car to great acclaim. Others were not so welcoming. Passing through Marennes, General de Gaulle, having been introduced to Lake, told him that, as an Englishman, he had no business being there. "Go away!" de Gaulle said, and turned his back on him. Lake was deeply wounded by the snub, but, some years later, when he was consul in Brazil, the French ambassador there invited him to a reception in Rio de Janeiro in honour of the General. This time, de Gaulle greeted Lake in a charming manner and the earlier slight was forgiven. At the end of his mission in France, Lake moved to the Italian section of SOE. After the war, he joined the Foreign Office and served as consul in, among other postings, Mozambique, France, Iceland, Syria, Indonesia, Italy, Belgium and Brazil. After retiring in 1975, he worked for the Cambridge Wildlife Trust. His great interest was bookbinding and he was a skilled practitioner. He was a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur. Peter Lake died on June 26. He married, in 1944, Kathleen (Kay) Sheffield. She survives him with their son and daughter.
