- Received the Croix de Guerre for heroism in combat by de Gaulle's government in exile.
- At the conclusion of Operation Salesman II he joined SOE's Force 136, an elite commando group aiding resistance groups in Southeast Asian territories occupied by Japan. He was mainly based in Laos.
- His final SDECE assignment involved overseeing assassinations of North African leaders in revolt against France.
- On 15 June 2014 he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
- Both his parents worked as language professors at Adelphi University in New York.
- During his school days took boxing lessons from world featherweight champion Andre Routis.
- During World War II he served with the SOE (Special Operations Executive) and was part of the Salesman II circuit in Occupied France in the Limousin region with Jean Claude Guiet (the wireless operator), Violette Szabo (the courier) and Philippe Liewer (the organizer) as the team's saboteur.
- At the height of the Cold War the SDECE sent him to Austria to identify which targets should be blown up in the event of a Soviet invasion. He then established a recruitment program and a training school for Central Europeans, infiltrating them as spies into the USSR and running their operations.
- In 1953 he co-invented the dive watch, "Fifty Fathoms watch'", for the Swiss watchmaker Blancpain.
- After World War II he helped found the Service de Documentation Exterieure et de Contre-Espionnage (External Documentation & Counter-Espionage Service) in France where he worked from 1946 to 1959.
- Founder of France's equivalent of the Navy SEALs, the nageurs de combat, or combat swimmers.
- His older brother Jacques was a member of the French national track and field team.
- To escape Occupied France and join the Free French he went to North Africa to enlist with the Armee de l'Armistice, the small French force the Germans permitted the Vichy government to maintain. On 8 November 1942 he escaped from the Bizerte, Tunisia airbase while under assault by German troops and joined up with the Allied invasion force Operation Torch.
- After ending his relationship with the French government he ran lumber camps deep in the jungles of the Congo. He set up and ran a security force for the Congo's first Prime Minister Leon M'ba.
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