Pierre at the  19th August 1942  Operation Jubilee memorial museum Dieppe presenting his model of  Chasseur 10 Bayonne.                                                                            Collection L'Hours

https://marins.fnfl.fr/fiche/9231/pierre-lhours                                       For FNFL service details

https://www.francaislibres.net/liste/fiche.php?index=81541                copy & paste to use

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80018490             IWM Audio File

Pierre L'Hours in Cowes                                                                                               Collection L'Hours

Pierre Alexandre Maurice L'Hours was born in Nantes, Loire Atlantique on the 23rd of April 1921.

His parents divorced when he was 3 years old and he went to live with his grandparents who 

lived in Tours, when his grandfather retired  they moved to Le Croisic, a small fishing port on the mouth of the Loire on the Atlantic coast.

At age 13 he was awarded a scholarship to attend Livet, a technical college in Nantes.

 In July 1939  at the end of his training he returned home to work for his father, who ran a small boatyard, repairing the fishing boats which operated from the harbour in Le Croisic .

When war broke out he took up employment in the machine shop of an aircraft company in St Nazaire. Later a friend asked Pierre to join the merchant navy, as they needed engineers and on the 8th of May 1940 he signed on aboard the French passenger liner Champlain, which departed for New York on the 18th arriving on the 28th.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Champlain 

In New York Pierre was asked, as he was single, to join the crew of the liner Normandie to serve as relief crew as some of the crew members had been on board since September 1939, and were due for home leave.

During his service on the Normandie, on the 18th of June, the call to arms came from General De Gaulle in London. To answer the call was not easy as the Normandie and its crew were technically interned, and according to Pierre L'Hours, the crew wore the officers clothes under their own when going out (2 vests, 2 Shirts and 2 pairs of socks) and left them in a friendly French bar on 52nd Street for collection thus enabling the senior officers to leave the country and travel to Great Britain.

Finding his own exit took time also and on the 3rd of September he boarded the Dutch cargo vessel the SS Soemba travelling to Halifax, Nova Scotia from where they departed for Great Britain on the 9th of September as part of convoy HX 72.

http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/hx/index.html

The convoy was attacked by U-Boats and dispersed, the SS Soemba arriving at her first landfall at Gurock on the Clyde on the 23rd of September. (coincidentally at the other end of the small bay where the Free French memorial at Greenock now stands).

The Soemba continued her voyage around Scotland, offloading her cargo of scrap metal at various ports, eventually landing Pierre in Grangemouth on the 19th of October 1940.

On the 5th of  January following year the SS Soemba was on another convoy run when her cargo shifted in a storm, she rolled over and sank off Cape Race Newfoundland, 34 lives were lost, 24 survivors were picked up by a nearby Swedish ship. 

https://geneakatwijk-webtrees-net.translate.goog/tree/katwijk/note/N49/SS-Soemba?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

Travelling then down from Grangemouth to the Free French headquarters in London, from where he journeyed on to Portsmouth arriving on the 20th. The next day at Victory barracks Pierre was invited to Join the Royal Navy as an engineer, but declined as he had come to join the Free French, so was sent down to the  French battleship Courbet, from there to join his first FNFL ship Chasseur 10 and went on his first patrol in the channel on the night of the 21st.

As stated elsewhere, In February 1942, Chasseur 10 took part in Operation Biting, the raid on Bruneval, escorting the motor gun boats which recovered the parachute assault troops and technicians from the beach.

In August, the same year they were in action, this time in Operation Jubilee, the raid on Dieppe, where the actions of Chasseur 10 resulted in her being highly decorated

and selected as the ship to collect  General De Gaulle from Portsmouth when he 

visited Cowes.

More  routine missions followed the excitement of the raids and the Chasseurs returned to escort and patrol duties in the English Channel.

In March 1943 Pierre was promoted to Engineer on Chasseur 12 Benodet a post in which he remained for the rest of the war.

During his time ashore Pierre met Audrey West, who lived in Arctic Road, ( right in the middle of the row of houses later bombed in the Blitz of May 1942). They married on the 25th April 1944.

After the war, in line with the agreement between Winston Churchill and General

De Gaulle the Free French servicemen were, with the exception of those too ill,

repatriated  to France, even those men who married English girls and had children Pierre, Audrey and their son André  went to live in Le Croisic where they remained until 1947.

The family returned to the Island and lived in Lake, having two more sons Maxime, Born in 1951, passing away in 2009 and Michel born in 1954, Pierre and Audrey lived in the same house until they died Audrey in 1995 and Pierre in 2014.

During his life Pierre worked as an engineer in various companies around the Island.

 

Audrey and Pierre L'Hours

The picture below was reproduced in the Toronto Star, a cutting was sent to Audreys mother

by a Canadian cousin saying "We saw this picture of a town on the south coast, we hope you are not affected" Their house was in the centre of the photo.