A FORMER secret agent who won the Croix de Guerre for his part in secret wartime missions in France has died at a Carterton care home. He was 92.

John Jenner Marchant was born in London on January 24, 1920 and educated at Aldenham School, Hertfordshire, where he was the boxing champion.

He joined the Army in 1940 and was commissioned into the Wiltshire Regiment, spending the early part of the war on Salisbury Plain teaching new recruits the art of trench warfare.

In 1943 he joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a secret organisation formed to carry out espionage and reconnaissance across occupied Europe.

During the early hours of July 9, 1944 he was parachuted into Brittany with his team consisting of a French captain and a radio operator.

Their objective was to coordinate Resistance groups as part of a guerrilla campaign against German forces.

Within a month they had 3,000 people under their leadership and were carrying out a string of operations, attacking German forces.

He returned to England on August 23 and was praised for his work, achieved despite the lack of training and equipment the Resistance groups had.

He was subsequently parachuted into Burma behind Japanese lines with a reconnaissance group in January 1945 to assist the Karen fighters, known as Levies.

By the end of the Second World War he had been awarded the French Croix de Guerre with Palm and was twice mentioned in dispatches.

After the war he returned to a career in banking and two years later he married Elizabeth Hermione.

But his career in finance did not last long and in the early 1950s the couple moved out of London to the country to become farmers – first in Buckinghamshire and then in West Oxfordshire.

They moved to Minster Lovell in 1954, where they purchased a farm with the money they had inherited from Mr Marchant’s mother-in-law.

During his time in the village he served as chairman of the parish council and as a member of the Royal British Legion.

Unfortunately the farm was not particularly successful and they sold off part of it.

Through the 1960s Mr Marchant did a range of jobs, including assistant manager at the Old Swan and transporting patients to and from the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

He moved to Shipton-under-Wychwood, where he became a book keeper at Matthews flour mill before retiring, and then to Burford.

The couple then moved to Carterton until the onset of Alzheimer’s disease meant Mr Marchant had to move into the Doris Watts Care Home where he died on January 19.

He is survived by wife Elizabeth and their four sons, Tony, Richard, Nigel and Edward, and his eight grandchildren.

His funeral took place in Banbury Crematorium on Tuesday, February 5.

  • The Special Operations Executive was set up in 1940 to conduct espionage, reconnaissance and sabotage in occupied Europe. Its aim, said Winston Churchill, was to “set Europe ablaze.” Few knew of its existence, but to those who were part of it the SOE was referred to as “the Baker Street Irregulars” after the location of its headquarters. It is estimated that the SOE supported around a million operatives around the world. At the end of the Second World War it was dissolved, but many of its personnel found employment with the British Secret Service, MI6.