- In 1940, he had been captured in France by the Germans and sent to a POW camp. He escaped and made it to Russia, but there he suffered more internment because the Nazi-Soviet pact was still in effect. When Germany invaded Russia in 1941, he was released and, along with other French soldiers, taken from the Arctic port of Archangel to Glasgow, and on to London.
- In 1944, he was a French soldier exiled in London. He was assigned to inform his compatriots how they should react once the liberation of their country began. He wrote the instructions to be read over the French service of BBC radio. The main purpose was to put France in a state of general alert. There were specific instructions for particular sectors of the population, such as town mayors, police, and factory workers.
- Major public servant, he was the co-founder of La Documentation française and was one of leaders in London of Free French Radio. He became an awarded historian.
- Grand-nephew on his mother's side of Louis Lagasse, famous lawyer, defender of Ravachol who, as a lyricist, used the pseudonym of Louis Lapie (18..-1940).
- His Résistance pseudonym Brilhac is the name of the street where he lived during the phony war with his wife. He is the nephew of poet and translator Benjamin Crémieux,.
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