Frank Bauer, voice of French wartime resistance, dies at 99

PARIS – Franck Bauer, a French radio broadcaster who transmitted coded messages to underground networks in France during the Nazi occupation, has died at 99.

His son, French singer Axel Bauer, said on Twitter that his father had been the last living announcer of a radio broadcast in French by the BBC in London from 1940 to 1944. He died Friday.

French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted that Bauer’s voice “guided so many perilous operations that led to victory” during World War II.

The broadcast that French citizens secretly listened to with wireless radios gave news from the free world, countered Nazi propaganda and transmitted coded instructions to resistance fighters.

“Ici Londres” — “This is London” — became a code word after Charles De Gaulle’s appeal for armed resistance in June 1940.