He was born May 28, 1915 in Winnipeg, Mantoba, Canada. He died September 14, 1944, Weimar, Thuringia, Germany(executed by the Nazis)
Frank served the first two years of the WWII in a labor camp as an enemy alien; he escaped by sawing out a window in the now-cliché style of a hacksaw blade smuggled into the camp in loaves of bread. Once he was safely back in Britain, Capt Pickersgill rejected the offer of a desk job in Ottawa and instead requested a commission with the newly created Canadian Intelligence Corps.
Because he was fluent in German, Latin, Greek and especially French, he worked in close connection to the British Special Operations Executive (SOE).
Along with fellow Canadian, John Kenneth Macalister, he was parachuted into the Loire Valley in occupied France on June 20, 1943, to work with the French Resistance. The two men were picked up by the SOE agent Yvonne Rudellat and the French officer Pierre Culioli. Their vehicle stopped at a German checkpoint and after Rudella and Culioli were cleared, they decided to wait for the two Canadians to come through. Minutes later at the checkpoint, their cover was blown and Culioli tried to speed away, but the Germans opened fire hitting Rudellat in the head and Culioli in the leg, causing the car to crash. Both Rudellat and Culioli survived the crash.
In March 1944, Pickersgill tried to escape the Parisian Fresnen Prison where they were being held, attacking a guard with a nearby bottle, and throwing himself out the second-storey window. He was shot multiple times in the escape attempt and recaptured; on August 27 he was shipped with members of the Robert Benoist group to Buchenwald concentration camp.
Pickersgill was executed by the Nazis on September 14, 1944, along with 35 other SOE agents, including Canadians Roméo Sabourin and John Kenneth Macalister. Though there are conflicting reports about their death, the men are commonly thought to have been hung on meat hooks and strangled with piano wire, a painful death typically reserved for traitors and spies. Their bodies were incinerated.
Posthumously, the government of France awarded him the Legion of Honor, and as one of the SOE agents who died for the liberation of France, he is listed on the "Roll of Honour" on the Valençay SOE Memorial in the town of Valençay in the Indre département. Captain Pickersgill is also honored on the Groesbeek Memorialin the Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery in the Netherlands, and the University of Toronto has designated a Pickersgill-Macalister garden on the west side of the "Soldiers' Tower" monument.
Frank served the first two years of the WWII in a labor camp as an enemy alien; he escaped by sawing out a window in the now-cliché style of a hacksaw blade smuggled into the camp in loaves of bread. Once he was safely back in Britain, Capt Pickersgill rejected the offer of a desk job in Ottawa and instead requested a commission with the newly created Canadian Intelligence Corps.
Because he was fluent in German, Latin, Greek and especially French, he worked in close connection to the British Special Operations Executive (SOE).
Along with fellow Canadian, John Kenneth Macalister, he was parachuted into the Loire Valley in occupied France on June 20, 1943, to work with the French Resistance. The two men were picked up by the SOE agent Yvonne Rudellat and the French officer Pierre Culioli. Their vehicle stopped at a German checkpoint and after Rudella and Culioli were cleared, they decided to wait for the two Canadians to come through. Minutes later at the checkpoint, their cover was blown and Culioli tried to speed away, but the Germans opened fire hitting Rudellat in the head and Culioli in the leg, causing the car to crash. Both Rudellat and Culioli survived the crash.
In March 1944, Pickersgill tried to escape the Parisian Fresnen Prison where they were being held, attacking a guard with a nearby bottle, and throwing himself out the second-storey window. He was shot multiple times in the escape attempt and recaptured; on August 27 he was shipped with members of the Robert Benoist group to Buchenwald concentration camp.
Pickersgill was executed by the Nazis on September 14, 1944, along with 35 other SOE agents, including Canadians Roméo Sabourin and John Kenneth Macalister. Though there are conflicting reports about their death, the men are commonly thought to have been hung on meat hooks and strangled with piano wire, a painful death typically reserved for traitors and spies. Their bodies were incinerated.
Posthumously, the government of France awarded him the Legion of Honor, and as one of the SOE agents who died for the liberation of France, he is listed on the "Roll of Honour" on the Valençay SOE Memorial in the town of Valençay in the Indre département. Captain Pickersgill is also honored on the Groesbeek Memorialin the Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery in the Netherlands, and the University of Toronto has designated a Pickersgill-Macalister garden on the west side of the "Soldiers' Tower" monument.
He was born May 28, 1915 in Winnipeg, Mantoba, Canada. He died September 14, 1944, Weimar, Thuringia, Germany(executed by the Nazis)
Frank served the first two years of the WWII in a labor camp as an enemy alien; he escaped by sawing out a window in the now-cliché style of a hacksaw blade smuggled into the camp in loaves of bread. Once he was safely back in Britain, Capt Pickersgill rejected the offer of a desk job in Ottawa and instead requested a commission with the newly created Canadian Intelligence Corps.
Because he was fluent in German, Latin, Greek and especially French, he worked in close connection to the British Special Operations Executive (SOE).
Along with fellow Canadian, John Kenneth Macalister, he was parachuted into the Loire Valley in occupied France on June 20, 1943, to work with the French Resistance. The two men were picked up by the SOE agent Yvonne Rudellat and the French officer Pierre Culioli. Their vehicle stopped at a German checkpoint and after Rudella and Culioli were cleared, they decided to wait for the two Canadians to come through. Minutes later at the checkpoint, their cover was blown and Culioli tried to speed away, but the Germans opened fire hitting Rudellat in the head and Culioli in the leg, causing the car to crash. Both Rudellat and Culioli survived the crash.
In March 1944, Pickersgill tried to escape the Parisian Fresnen Prison where they were being held, attacking a guard with a nearby bottle, and throwing himself out the second-storey window. He was shot multiple times in the escape attempt and recaptured; on August 27 he was shipped with members of the Robert Benoist group to Buchenwald concentration camp.
Pickersgill was executed by the Nazis on September 14, 1944, along with 35 other SOE agents, including Canadians Roméo Sabourin and John Kenneth Macalister. Though there are conflicting reports about their death, the men are commonly thought to have been hung on meat hooks and strangled with piano wire, a painful death typically reserved for traitors and spies. Their bodies were incinerated.
Posthumously, the government of France awarded him the Legion of Honor, and as one of the SOE agents who died for the liberation of France, he is listed on the "Roll of Honour" on the Valençay SOE Memorial in the town of Valençay in the Indre département. Captain Pickersgill is also honored on the Groesbeek Memorialin the Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery in the Netherlands, and the University of Toronto has designated a Pickersgill-Macalister garden on the west side of the "Soldiers' Tower" monument.
Frank served the first two years of the WWII in a labor camp as an enemy alien; he escaped by sawing out a window in the now-cliché style of a hacksaw blade smuggled into the camp in loaves of bread. Once he was safely back in Britain, Capt Pickersgill rejected the offer of a desk job in Ottawa and instead requested a commission with the newly created Canadian Intelligence Corps.
Because he was fluent in German, Latin, Greek and especially French, he worked in close connection to the British Special Operations Executive (SOE).
Along with fellow Canadian, John Kenneth Macalister, he was parachuted into the Loire Valley in occupied France on June 20, 1943, to work with the French Resistance. The two men were picked up by the SOE agent Yvonne Rudellat and the French officer Pierre Culioli. Their vehicle stopped at a German checkpoint and after Rudella and Culioli were cleared, they decided to wait for the two Canadians to come through. Minutes later at the checkpoint, their cover was blown and Culioli tried to speed away, but the Germans opened fire hitting Rudellat in the head and Culioli in the leg, causing the car to crash. Both Rudellat and Culioli survived the crash.
In March 1944, Pickersgill tried to escape the Parisian Fresnen Prison where they were being held, attacking a guard with a nearby bottle, and throwing himself out the second-storey window. He was shot multiple times in the escape attempt and recaptured; on August 27 he was shipped with members of the Robert Benoist group to Buchenwald concentration camp.
Pickersgill was executed by the Nazis on September 14, 1944, along with 35 other SOE agents, including Canadians Roméo Sabourin and John Kenneth Macalister. Though there are conflicting reports about their death, the men are commonly thought to have been hung on meat hooks and strangled with piano wire, a painful death typically reserved for traitors and spies. Their bodies were incinerated.
Posthumously, the government of France awarded him the Legion of Honor, and as one of the SOE agents who died for the liberation of France, he is listed on the "Roll of Honour" on the Valençay SOE Memorial in the town of Valençay in the Indre département. Captain Pickersgill is also honored on the Groesbeek Memorialin the Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery in the Netherlands, and the University of Toronto has designated a Pickersgill-Macalister garden on the west side of the "Soldiers' Tower" monument.
Inscription
Canadian Intelligence Corps
