George Bégué’s first transmission

In a house on the rue des Pavillons, near the centre of the Roman town of Chateauroux, Georges Bégué makes his first Wireless transmission to London. (In 2016 there is a re-enactment of the event between the same house in Chateauroux and Whaddon Hall, where early SOE messages were received, and using the same type of equipment.) This is the first recorded wireless transmission from France by an SOE agent from the British ‘F’ Section.

However, it is far from the first transmission from France, Nazi-occupied or non-occupied: Gaullist and British intelligence agents had been transmitting for some time; in a corner of the Place Vendôme, at No. 8 between Dior and Mikimoto, a plaque records just such an earlier transmission, in April 1941, for the SAINT-JACQUES circuit run by Maurice Duclos, and Philip Schneidau made his first semi-successful attempt on 15 April, with a set that had been damaged when he landed in trees.