22-year-old Jack Sinclair after completing SOE selection and training.
Jack Sinclair was born in France to an English father and French mother and they lived in Rouen until Jack was six. The family then moved to Marseille and eventually settled in Bordeaux until France was occupied in 1940.
After escaping to England Jack became a trainee draughtsman before enlisting into the Intelligence Corps and was recruited by SOE in October 1943.
His training assessment states Jack Sinclair did not display the leadership skills required to organise a clandestine circuit but was an excellent saboteur and capable of organising a small group of saboteurs working for the MONK circuit in southern France.
After arriving at SOE Massingham in Algeria he parachuted into France on the night of 6/7 March 1944 to join the MONK circuit and was later discovered Sinclair had been captured during a German wireless deception that MRD Foot described as “a horrible staff muddle with an OSS radio game”. The Germans had captured an OSS (American Office of Strategic Services) wireless and codes and because SOE and OSS ran independent operations it is not known how the Germans used their codes to deceive SOE especially when there should have been no communications between the two organisations and OSS should not have been aware of SOE operations. Instead of being dropped to members of SOE Jack Sinclair was dropped to an OSS group controlled by the Germans and arrested as soon as he landed.
A post-war investigation discovered that after his capture Sinclair was sent to a prison in Marseille but after this there is no trace of him. It is known that after being denounced by a French collaborator several members of MONK were arrested; others went into hiding, the circuit was destroyed and after the war the collaborator was tracked down and executed for treason.
After France was liberated the French War Crimes Liaison Group was asked to investigate what happened to Jack Sinclair and on 19 March 1946 SOE received a report stating “Jack Sinclair was at Baumettes Prison as late as April 1944… I am quite unable to give any further information on what became of him, from the day that the cell door closed behind him… It is presumed Sinclair never left Baumette alive. At the time of his death Jack Sinclair was 22, his name is listed on the Brookwood memorial in the UK and on the F Section Memorial Valéncay in France and like many SOE agents is recorded as having no known grave.
Alan Malcher
Alan Malcher 
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