Piron was born in
Laeken, then a separate municipality close to
Brussels, Belgium. He was the son of Marie Virginie Van Halle and Henri Joseph Piron de la Varenne. He married and divorced Suzanne Henriette Herzberg and remarried to Servione Marie Laurence Mathilde Stalins. He worked as an engineer and lived at Villa Chatoiseau, in
Fleurines. He volunteered for the French Army during WWI. After WWI, he became the president of the Belgian veterans, giving the inaugural speech at the blessing of the memorial to their sacrifice at
Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris on 8 October 1922.
World War II resistance leader After the
French capitulation to Nazi forces, Piron joined with Henri d'Astier - a French veteran of WWI and right-wing monarchist - in the autumn of 1940 to start a military intelligence network which was initially called
la chaine Franco-Belge, operating in Paris and northern
départements. With the help of Father Dardenne, a local abbot, he organised a group of about 150 men across the region. This was at his own expense. Piron also operated within the
Boulard sub-network of Lucien Feltesse (codename
Jean Boulard) who had been vice-president of the Belgian veterans for five years.
Boulard operated through the
Saint-Jacques network across Belgium and the departments of
Somme,
Pas-de-Calais and
Nord. Piron commanded a protection group within
Boulard. He provided information for transmission to England on
Nazi movements and settlements in the
Oise as well as their operations regarding the ports of
Saint-Nazaire and
Brest. In any case,
Maurice Duclos (codename
Saint-Jacques and creator of the eponymous network), who had recruited Deguy as his assistant, began to suspect his own radio operator - John Gérard Mulleman from
Alsace, of Belgian origins - was a Nazi collaborator after he claimed that (following a parachute drop into the
Dordogne) he was captured with a radio set by the Nazis, imprisoned for only three weeks and then released. Duclos' suspicions were correct: over the next few months the network was almost completely destroyed; dozens of arrests of affiliated resisters across northern
départements and in Paris were the result of information passed by Mullemann and another collaborator, André Folmer. Many people were imprisoned, deported and executed.
Arrest and death Piron's arrest, on 9 October 1941, was directly as a result of Mulleman's denunciation. He was transported from Paris to Germany under
Hitler's
Nacht und Nebel directive, firstly to
Düsseldorf, on 29 April 1942. He was tried and sentenced to death for spying for the British and finally transferred to
Klingelpütz prison in
Köln, his place of execution, where he was decapitated by axe on 15 October 1943.) of the
Forces françaises combattantes. He was given the awards of the
Yser Cross, the
Order of Leopold, the
Crown, ''
Chevalier de l'Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur, the Croix de Guerre with palm and the Médaille de la Résistance'', all posthumously. He is commemorated on the war memorial in Fleurines, in Paris on a plaque at the corner of rue de la Colonie and rue Vergniaud in Paris,
(13th arr.) and a stone at
Père-Lachaise cemetery. ==References==