www.voicesofwar.co.uk
Life Story
His father, Baron Henry de Saint-Geniès and his mother Margaret (née
du Saussay) were both French, though his mother was half English,
and he took French nationality. His parents lived in Cambridge before
and during the war, and Marie Joseph spoke uent French and English.
The the de Saint-Geniès family had a distinguished military background,
including Général Jean Marie Noël de Falcon de Saint-Geniès, who
were ennobled by Louis XVIII and whose name is inscribed on the Arc
de Triomphe. He had one sister, Isobel.
Little more is known about his childhood, but he was sent to the Jesuit
institution of Saint-Grégoire in Tours from 1926 onwards and gained
his Baccalaureat there in 1935, before joining his family in England
where he worked as a clerk in the commercial service of a metallurgical
company, ran by a distant relative.
Military career:
His uency in both French and English came in useful at the beginning of
the war when he joined the British Expeditionary Force as an interpretor,
having completed his military service at the School of Interpretors.
His interpretor career was short-lived as he was captured on 28th May
1940, near Cassel in France. After several months in a POW camp
for ofcers, he was transferred to a work camp, the Germans having
stopped treating interpreters as ofcers. In 1941, Marie Joseph received
the news that his mother has passed away at the end of November
1940 and he became determined to get out of the camp - he asked a
comrade to break his arm, and after being transferred to the inrmary,