Early Life
Brouillard was born in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Nord. He participated in the First World War as a resistance fighter and in 1916 was arrested by the Germans at Saint-Quentin, Aisne, condemned to death and later pardoned.
He was educated at Saint-Cyr (1920-1922), Ecole de Guerre (Superior War School) (1932-1934), and Ecole libre des sciences politiques (Free School of Political Science). As an armoured troops' officer, he took part in the campaign against Rif rebels in Morocco and there earned the distinction of knight of the Légion d'honneur.
In 1939, Brouillard was appointed chief of intelligence of the 9th and 10th Armies. During the German invasion of 1940, he was again captured, escaped and became commander of one of the most active units of the French resistance. He ended the Second World War as a colonel and was awarded numerous military decorations.
Brouillard published his first espionage novel, Double crime sur la ligne Maginot (Double Crime on the Maginot Line) in 1936, under the pseudonym of Pierre Nord. The tense and complicated plot revolved around the hunt for a murderous German spy who operated in one of the forts in the Maginot Line. The spy, masquerading as a lieutenant in the French army, was neutralized by an ingenious trap set by the Deuxième Bureau' operative Captain Pierre Ardant. (Curiously, the chief protagonists of Nord's novels almost invariably bear the first name of Pierre). The Double crime was followed by Terre d'angoisse (Land of Anguish) 1937, which described the struggle between the German and French secret services during the First World War. The hero of the story, under the alias of Lieutenant Heim (portrayed by actor Gabriel Gabrio in the 1939 film adaptaion) penetrated the Kaiser's army.
Read more about this topic: Pierre Nord
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Love is the hardest thing in the world to write about. So simple. You’ve got to catch it through details, like the early morning sunlight hitting the gray tin of the rain spout in front of her house. The ringing of a telephone that sounds like Beethoven’s “Pastoral.” A letter scribbled on her office stationery that you carry around in your pocket because it smells of all the lilacs in Ohio.”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“The nature of women’s oppression is unique: women are oppressed as women, regardless of class or race; some women have access to significant wealth, but that wealth does not signify power; women are to be found everywhere, but own or control no appreciable territory; women live with those who oppress them, sleep with them, have their children—we are tangled, hopelessly it seems, in the gut of the machinery and way of life which is ruinous to us.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)