Pierre Holmes; BBC Host Broadcast Coded Messages During WWII

Pierre Holmes, 81, who used his nightly British Broadcasting Corp. program during World War II to pass coded messages to French Resistance fighters. From 1942 to 1944, Holmes announced a nightly 15-minute segment from London called “Les Francais Parlent aux Francais” (“The French Speak to the French”). Working for the Free French Forces under Gen. Charles de Gaulle, he passed coded messages to Resistance fighters on arms drops, attacks and other missions. D-Day, the June 6, 1944, invasion of Normandy by Allied forces, was signaled by a line of verse from the poet Paul Verlaine: “Long violin sobs rock my heart in monotonous languish.” The British-born Holmes, the son of an English father and French mother, became a naturalized French citizen in 1934. He worked as a hotelier on cruise ships before the war and later worked in shipping and radio before retiring in the 1970s. Near Avignon, France, on Dec. 7.