André Hunter Alfred Hue
7 December 1923
11 January 2005 (aged 81)
Anglo-French
Soldier, spy, diplomat, businessman.
1940-1990
Work with the Special Operations Executive
The Next Moon (2004)
Early life[edit]
Hue was born in Swansea, Wales to a French father and Welsh mother.[1] Hue's father, also named André, was a World War I veteran who had been badly wounded, having taken a bullet in his head, which remained there until his early death in 1938. The elder Hue served as an officer in the French merchant marine who worked on a ship taking coal from Swansea to Le Havre while his wife Caroline Hunter did not speak French, but insisted their children be brought up knowing French.[2] Fluent in both English and French, Hue grew up in Le Havre.[1] Without a father to support him, Hue was working as a sailor in the French merchant marine by 1939.[1]
After the war: spy and businessman[edit]
At the end of World War II, Hue held the rank of major in the British Army.[1] In January 1946, Hue was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour and awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French republic.[16] Hue served in the Palestine Mandate during the last years of British rule, and afterwards he served in Cyprus.[1] In 1954–55, he served as the British military attaché in Cambodia, during which time he met his future wife Maureen Taylor who worked in the British embassy in Phnom Penh as a secretary.[1] Cambodia had been a French protectorate, and the Khmer elite all spoke French while the British Army did not have many officers fluent in Khmer.
In 1957, Hue married Taylor and had one daughter by her.[1] Hue worked for MI6, the British intelligence service in the Far East.[1] After leaving MI6 in 1967, Hue worked for the British-American Tobacco company in Paraguay, Senegal, and Malawi before having a successful career as a businessman in France.[1] In 1980, Hue moved to the town of Chichester in Sussex, where he was served as member of the town council where he was known for pressing for municipal improvements.[1] Hue spent much of the 1990s writing his memoir The Next Moon with the writer and former Royal Marine Ewen Southby-Tailyour recounting his service with the SOE, which was published in 2004.[1] In his last years, Hue suffered from Alzheimer's disease, which killed him in 2005.[1] His wife placed a copy of The Next Moon to him on his hospital bed, hoping that it would remind him of who he was during his final months.[1]