December 31st Lt Cdr Steven Mackenzie DSC (Death)
     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Newcastle­-born Lt Cdr Steven Mackenzie (1918 – 2013), who died on this day in 2013, was an MI6 operative who, in 1942, smuggled General de Gaulle’s Intelligence chief from Occupied France to Britain in a trawler.

Educated at Eton and then at Clare College, Cambridge, Mackenzie joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1939 and was posted to the British Naval Liaison staff at Maintenon, near Chartres where he became friendly with Ian Fleming, who was, at the time, assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence.

After the Fall of France, Mackenzie escaped on a Canadian destroyer, which was seriously damaged but he escaped again on to another boat.  On return to England he was instructed by Fleming to report to Commander Frank Slocum who was constructing a covert network to transport SOE agents between England and France.

In March 1942, Mackenzie took command of ‘Le Dinan’ (pictured left) at Falmouth.  The boat had been a Concarneau-based fishing trawler which had been refitted with Lewis guns and crewed with eight men for one mission:  to extract Colonel Gilbert Renault, head of the Confrérie de Notre Dame, which was the most important of the Free French intelligence networks in occupied France.  The boat was repainted at New Grimsby on Tresco in shades of green and brown and was given a false registration number, a Breton flag and French flags as well as hand weaponry.  

In June 1942, the boat sailed to Brittany, escorted by the RAF until halfway across the Channel before being left to sail to the French coast under cover of darkness and through an area forbidden to fishery vessels.  The plan was to rendezvous off with Renault on the coast off  La Baie d’Audierne, just west of  Quimper, two days later, at 5 pm.  This did not occur as scheduled and the trawler was observed, but fortunately ignored, by a German corvette.

Within a few minutes a small boat, Les Deux Anges, put out from the harbour of Pont-Aven, which had been an artists' colony used by Elizabeth Forbes (December 29th) and others in an earlier generation. came alongside.  Renault, his wife and four daughters came aboard from Les Deux Anges with a detailed map of German fortifications on the North French coast.

For his actions, Mackenzie was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1943 and the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC) in 1944.


In 1945, Mackenzie was recruited by MI6 who despatched him to Bad Salzuflen in Germany on a mission to infiltrate agents into the Soviet area in which role he was unsuccessful.

Completing his service in Germany (1949) he was posted to Holland until, in 1951, he was posted to Hong Kong and was subsequently appointed Director for the Far East and the Americas in 1960 before becoming Head of Station in Buenos Aires from 1962 until his retirement in 1968.

 

 

 

 

 

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