Victor Gerson

Haim Victor Gerson DSO, LdH (1896 – 14 April 1983), code name Rene, was a British Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent during the Second World War. He organised the Vic escape line in France. Escape lines helped Allied soldiers and airmen, SOE agents, and other people in danger to escape from Nazi-occupied Europe, usually by crossing the Pyrenees mountains into neutral Spain.

Early years Haim Victor Gerson was born in August 1896 in Southport, Lancashire as Haim Gershon Cohen, the son of a fabric merchant. He was educated in England, then in Constantinople (Istanbul) and attended Manchester University

World War I Gerson joined the British army at the declaration of war and was sent to the Western Front In France and took part in the Battle of the Somme. In May 1941 Balmaceda was the first female SOE agent to be sent to France.

First mission On the night of the 6/7 September 1941 Gerson was parachuted from a Whitley bomber, along with five other agents and landed near the Le Cerisier farm of Auguste Chantraine, Mayor of Tendu. He travelled to Lyon and Marseille, where he assessed the possibility of organising subversive networks in cities. and his Service d'Evasion. When he arrived in London, he reported on his conclusions on the French willingness to resist the German occupation. They travelled in HM Submarine P 42 “Unbroken” to Antibes where on the night of 21 April 1942 Churchill took Newman and Zeff and their radios to the shore by canoe, and led them to their contact Dr Élie Lévy. Churchill then returned to the submarine and dropped off Clech and Gerson by canoe at Pointe d’Agay near Fréjus and on 14 September returned to France in a Hudson bomber which landed in France and was met by Henri Déricourt.

Operating rules Gerson imposed strict rules on his members within the VIC escape line: France: Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur

Monument A stone monument at Le Cerisier, Tendu (Indre) commemorates the clandestine parachute landing on 6 September 1941.