with food and currency. He was back in France in May that year, carrying messages from Winston Churchill to former French prime ministers Édouard Herriot and Paul Reynaud, inviting them to come to England. The mission started well with the demolition of the locomotive turntables at Le Mans. But when his fellow SOE officer and associate, Francis Suttill, was arrested on 23 June and his PROSPER circuit destroyed, Antelme was on the run. He managed to evade the Gestapo for a month, being extracted from France by a Lysander aircraft on 20 July. He had failed to meet Herriot and Reynaud, but he learned that they were willing, though unable, to act. They were too well guarded for their extraction to be feasible. He nevertheless took back with him a valuable recruit — the well connected international lawyer, Maître W. J. Savy. Savy later returned to France and organized the WIZARD network that provided the intelligence leading to the destruction by the Allies of 2,000 V1 rockets. While Antelme was in France, Noor Inayat Khan landed on 17 June 1943 as wireless operator to the PHONO circuit that he had set up. Antelme put Henri Garry in charge as sub-organiser for Francis Suttill's PROSPER circuit. Shortly after she arrived, PROSPER was betrayed and the Germans seized Suttill and his friends. Inayat Khan evaded capture, sending more than 20 messages on the run until she was betrayed by Garry's sister, Renée, four months later and arrested in her apartment. Garry was captured by the Gestapo shortly afterwards. Betrayal, capture and death The seizure of Inayat Khan's wireless set and code-books enabled the Germans to play back false messages to London. Despite the growing certainty that the PHONO circuit was in German hands, Major Antelme volunteered to be dropped to a PHONO reception committee. He, his radio-operator, Captain Lionel Lee, and courier Madeleine Damerment — three of the SOE's best agents — took off from RAF Tempsford airfield in Bedfordshire late on 28 February 1944. Early the following morning, they parachuted into a field near the village of Saintville, some 50 km east of Chartres. The Gestapo was waiting for them. Reportedly in a towering rage, Antelme was taken to Gestapo headquarters at 84 Avenue Foch in Paris and reportedly would not talk even under torture. Antelme was one of 18 SOE agents who were parachuted directly into enemy hands. Eleven of