John Renshaw Starr - Military Career

Military Career

When war broke out in 1939, he was a poster artist living in Paris. Nine months earlier he had attempted to join the Royal Air Force but was prevented from doing so on the grounds that his father was American. In 1940, having obtained permission from the War Office, he joined the King's Own Scottish Borderers regiment of the British Army in Rouen before being assigned to the Field Security Police in Nantes. Following the German breakthrough in France, his unit was evacuated to England via Saint-Nazaire.

He continued training with the Field Security Police in Winchester, before being assigend to the War Office as an artist and eventually gaining a commission in the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

His first mission in Valence in August 1942 was relatively uneventful, and he returned to England, but in May 1943 he was sent back to build an organisation, to be known as the Acrobat network, around Saint-Étienne and Dijon.