Passing of a patriot: Hilaire du Berrier -- daredevil pilot, intelligence operative, and hard-hitting journalist -- was literally on the front lines of the freedom fight around the world. He will be missed. (Biography).

The American prisoner with the French name was barely conscious as his battered body hit the concrete floor of his 5' x 8' wooden cage. Every muscle, bone, and pore throbbed and screamed with pain. It would be some time before he would recuperate sufficiently to roll over and whisper to one of the six cellmates of various nationalities sharing the cramped cage with him. Having thrown him in the cell, the brutal guards grabbed one of his unfortunate cellmates to replace him in the torture chamber.

The prisoners were in their second week of torture sessions, and the officers of the Kampetai, Japan's equivalent of the Gestapo, were experts at their cruel business. Part of their torture was psychological: One never knew what to expect, but whatever came it was certain to be excruciatingly painful. Sometimes they used the rack. Or they simply beat the prisoners with their hands, fists, clubs, bamboo rods, or metal-tipped sticks. There was also the Kampetai version of water torture: A cloth was placed over the mouth and nostrils and water gradually poured on it until the saturated cloth created the sensation of drowning. The nearly suffocated victim was then revived and the process started all over again.

After 13 days of torture, the American lay on the floor sobbing, fearing that the next session would break him. "How much longer can this go on?" he asked himself in desperation. "I can't take any more. I can't hold out." As he was sinking into despair a rough but soothing voice startled him. It was John Cook, head of the British spy ring in Shanghai. He had received some especially brutal treatment and soon would die of his internal injuries. In great pain, the old Englishman crawled across the floor and reached out to the young American, his comrade in suffering. "Hey, lad, do you happen to know what day it is?" he asked. "As near as I can tell, John, it's the 18th of April," the American replied. "You know, lad," Cook responded, "20 years ago today I was in a cell in Russia for the same thing." But Cook would not make it out of this cell.

The American prisoner with the French name did not break; miraculously, he held on -- through 18 days of torture and nearly three years of harsh prison conditions. Many were anxiously hoping and praying that he would not talk. Many lives hung in the balance. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that Asia and the Pacific theater of World War II may have hung in the balance. The American prisoner with the French name was Hilaire du Berrier. The year was 1943. The place was Japanese-occupied Shanghai, China. Du Berrier was the key member (and the only American member) of a French-Chinese intelligence network responsible for many coups against the Japanese. Du Berrier's spy cells provided much of the intelligence allowing General Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Chinese forces to keep one-and-a-half million Japanese troops tied up in China, instead of killing American soldiers and sailors throughout the Pacific.

Colonel Marcel Mingant was the famed military hero and leader of the ultra-secret French espionage apparatus known as "Reseau Mingant." Aside from du Berrier himself, Mingant was perhaps the one most concerned for the American's fate. Mingant's concern was undoubtedly heightened because he and du Berrier had become close friends, as well as colleagues. Beyond that, however, was the colonel's understanding that his own life and the life of every member of his network would be worthless if du Berrier spoke their names.

"In spite of grave suffering; and the torture to which he was submitted," Colonel Mingant later wrote, "Mr. du Berrier never pronounced a name." "He suffered a veritable martyrdom in the Japanese prison without ever revealing the organization for which he had worked so hard, willingly," said Mingant, and "by his courage, his intelligence, and his disregard for danger, he saved many." Among those whom Mingant credits du Berrier with indirectly saving were American aviators who had crash-landed or bailed out over China and Indo-China. It was often a neck-and-neck race to rescue them before the Japanese captured them. Mingant received the American Freedom Medal for rescuing American flyers and attested that he thought it "scandalous" that the U.S. government not only failed to recognize du Berrier's heroic efforts, but antagonists within the U.S. State Department actually penalized him. Colonel Mingant and other French military heroes continued fighting for years to gain recognition for du Berrier. In 1999, thei r long efforts finally bore modest fruit; the French government recognized some of du Berrier's achievements and awarded him a small pension.

On October 12th of this year, Hilaire du Berrier passed into eternity, less than three weeks before his 96th birthday. He died where he had lived for much of the past five decades, in the lovely principality of Monaco, where the Maritime Alps march down to the Mediterranean Sea. He had been active right up to the end, writing his exceptional intelligence newsletter, HduB Reports, and preparing his memoirs, a chronicle of one of the most fascinating and adventurous lives of the 20th century. Unfortunately, he did not live to see that autobiographical task through to publication, but he has entrusted the final chapters to a close friend, renowned author and historian Otto Scott.