How a ring tells the story of a forgotten secret agent

[Nevilledog]

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Jon Kelly
@mrjonkelly
The story of a WW2 secret agent had faded into obscurity. Now at last it can be told in full - thanks to his engagement ring. My longread:
Marcel Leccia
How a ring tells the story of a forgotten secret agent
A war hero had been all but forgotten. But now his story can be told - thanks to his engagement ring.
bbc.com

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-56215177

At 15:30 on 9 September 1944, just inside the front gates of the notorious Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp, 16 prisoners of war stood waiting.

All were Allied agents who'd been captured behind enemy lines. Eight of them were Frenchmen working with the UK's Special Operations Executive (SOE) - Churchill's "secret army" - and the remainder were British, Canadian and Belgian. Before these men had been caught by the Germans, they had been parachuted into occupied territory to support the Resistance ahead of D-Day.

Earlier that day, their block chief at the camp had been handed a list of their names. Each one had been struck through in red by the Gestapo.

The men had been given the impression they'd been summoned to be interrogated. They wouldn't necessarily have worried their lives were at risk - they'd been told they were to be exchanged for a group of German officers at some point in the future. But one of the prisoners was suspicious.

"Only little Marcel Leccia, who came from Ajaccio, said, 'We're going to be hanged,'" the block chief, a German political prisoner named Otto Storch who worked as a kapo or inmate-orderly, recalled after the war.

Leccia was 33, from a distinguished Corsican Resistance family, and his experiences of war had left him with good cause to be distrustful - he'd ended up in Buchenwald after he was betrayed by a supposed comrade who was secretly working for the Germans.

*snip*

[BSdetect]

1. So many sacrificed their live to destroy the nazis. We ought to remember.