Early career He was born in
Neuilly sur Seine. He studied at the
Collège Sainte-Croix and then entered his father's business. After In 1926, Duclos joined the
Colonial artillery and served for two years in
Madagascar. In November 1928, he was released from active service with the rank of sergeant and became an insurance broker.
La Cagoule In the 1930s, he became an active member of the ''
Organisation secrète d'action révolutionnaire nationale known as La Cagoule
, an extreme-right-wing terror group. Members were called Cagoulards
. On 11 September 1937, bombs planted by Cagoulards
destroyed the Confédération générale du patronat français and the Union des industries et métiers de la métallurgie in Paris, killing two gendarmes and injuring two other people. The bombings became known as the Étoile attacks because of their proximity to that Paris landmark. Duclos was imprisoned in February 1938 for three-and-a-half months in La Santé Prison for trafficking the explosives for the attacks from the ship Atalante''.
World War II He was called up on 22 August 1939. Having been an artillery lieutenant in the army reserve, he was made a lieutenant, fourth battery, second group of the ''10e régiment d'artillerie coloniale
(10th Colonial Artillery Regiment). From May to June 1940, he fought with his unit in the Norwegian campaign. Detached as a liaison officer to the 13e demi-brigade de Légion étrangère'', he distinguished himself in the fighting around
Narvik, was promoted to honorary corporal of the
Foreign Legion and received the
Norwegian War Cross with sword. His unit returned to
Brittany on 15 June 1940 and was encircled but he escaped from
Plénée-Jugon on 17 June. Having landed on the beach at
Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer, Calvados on 4 August to assess the Nazi military potential for
Adolf Hitler's planned invasion of England, he went to Paris, where he created the
Saint-Jacques network based at his premises at the
Place Vendôme, before laying the foundations of the
Paris Job network and then helping to found the
Confrérie Notre-Dame network with
Gilbert Renault (codename "Rémy"). The
Saint-Jacques network - part of the BCRA and operational from August 1940 - was the first French intelligence network of the war. On 18 August, he met fellow former
Cagoulard, journalist
Gabriel Jeantet, who became the propaganda chief of the
Vichy régime. Jeantet introduced him to a number of Vichy colleagues in their new roles; despite the fact that Duclos had sided with de Gaulle, Jeantet maintained it was possible to be both anti-German and close to Pétain. Duclos crossed between the two wartime zones in France making contacts, especially in the
:fr:Compagnie parisienne de distribution d'électricité and the railways. He used Renault's operator to transmit messages instead. From Mulleman's information, Duclos' older sister, Anne-Marie Lefèvre, was arrested in August (along with her husband and two children) and sentenced to death, before being pardoned. The network was gradually dismantled through September, also through information provided by another collaborator, André Folmer; captured male resisters were shot at
Fort Mont-Valérien by the
Wehrmacht and female resisters deported (they could not be executed in France by firing squad under French law). On 27 May 1943, at the Free French officer cadet school at
Bewdley, de Gaulle awarded Duclos and Dewavrin the
Croix de la Libération. Duclos was bitter afterwards, stating, "I do not want to know any more about this country. It's not mine any more." He died on 23 February 1981 in Buenos Aires, where he was buried. ==Awards==