Interview A Father’s Secret War
Daniel Guiet
In their 2019 book Scholars of Mayhem Daniel C. Guiet and Timothy K. Smith relate the fascinating story of how Guiet’s Frenchborn American father, Jean-Claude Guiet (1924–2013), went from being a sheltered freshman at Harvard to become a highly trained and immensely successful World War II covert operative for both the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE). One of four SOE agents dropped into German-occupied France in 1944, the elder Guiet started his clandestine career as a radio operator but was soon conducting ambushes, blowing up vital installations and helping prevent a crack Waffen SS armored unit from reaching the Allied beachhead in Normandy.
How did your French-born father end up in the U.S. Army and Britain’s SOE?
My grandparents René and Jeanne met as exchange students from France while studying at the University of Illinois after World War I. They married, had a son named Pierre and moved back to France before my father, Jean-Claude,
