RÉMY [pseudonym forGilbert RENAULT]. Silent Company [together with:] Courage and Fear … Translated by Lancelot C. Sheperd.

RÉMY [pseudonym forGilbert RENAULT]. Silent Company [together with:] Courage and Fear … Translated by Lancelot C. Sheperd. London, Arthur Barker Ltd., [1950].

Two volumes, 8vo. Original cloth with dust-wrappers (not price-clipped); pp. xx, 406; 320, the fist volume illustrated with plates after photographs; wrappers with minor wear to extremities and repairs to spine ends; previous bookdealer's annotations in pencil to front endpapers; a very good set, rarely found together in such good condition.
Both volumes first editions in English. 'Stunned by the collapse of 1940, Gilbert Renault, a devout Catholic close to the ideas of l'Action Française, a movement however that he was never to join, refused to admit France's defeat. Leaving his wife and four children behind, he left the town of Vannes and sailed for England where he joined general Charles de Gaulle, with whom he forged links of admiration and affection that were never to be broken despite their future differences. De Gaulle assigned him to the 2nd bureau, which was to become the Central Bureau of Intelligence and Operations (BCRA) led by colonel Passy, whose real name was André Dewavrin, who asked him to set up a network along the Atlantic seaboard, where the Kriegstnarine was harassing British ships. Thus began a new life for this impulsive, eccentric and chivalrous adventurer, who had worked for a long time in film as a producer after taking up numerous other occupations. After numerous trips between England, occupied France and Spain, Remy soon had informants in every port. On 6 January, 1942, after visiting the Notre-Dame des Victoires church in Paris, he baptised his movement the Confrérie Notre-Dame (CND) whose success was to gain him "unprecedented prestige with the Intelligence Service" according to Sébastien Albertelli, author of Services Secrets de la France Libre' (Guy Perrier, Chémins de Mémoire, Ministère des Armées, online).

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