Jean Lavallée, a French naval officer who joined the special services during World War II, was parachuted into the Vendée region of France in August 1943. His mission was to monitor the ports of Saint-Nazaire and Nantes, which were critical for German military operations in the Atlantic. Lavallée was captured by the Gestapo and later executed at the Buchenwald concentration camp in October 1944, along with other Allied intelligence officers. He would have turned 31 six days after his execution. Born on October 11, 1913, in Saint-Nazaire, Lavallée came from a family with strong ties to the sea. His father, a municipal worker who had been barred from seafaring due to health problems, was the first local resident to die in World War I. Lavallée was raised by his mother, Lucienne Lemoine, and attended schools in Saint-Nazaire and Lorient before entering the Naval Academy in 1932. He served on several naval vessels, including the Agosta and Henri Poincaré, and was promoted to lieutenant of the navy in 1942. In May 1943, Lavallée was assigned to Algeria and requested to join a special mission for the clandestine military counterintelligence unit known as Travaux ruraux. This unit sought to establish three intelligence posts in France to monitor coastal areas and maritime communications. Lavallée was chosen to lead the post in the Nantes region. After receiving training in London and a false identity, he was parachuted into Vendée with his team on August 16, 1943. Over the next four months, he built a network of informants to observe German activity in the ports of Saint-Nazaire and Nantes. Saint-Nazaire, his hometown, was home to one of the largest German submarine bases in the Atlantic, making his mission particularly dangerous. Lavallée's network was compromised when the German intelligence agency, the Abwehr, infiltrated a double agent into the group. On December 11, 1943, Lavallée and his radio operator were arrested in Paris. The Germans used the intercepted communication link to disrupt the network, but French intelligence, warned in April 1944 by a captured officer, turned the situation to their advantage by using the channel to deceive the enemy. Lavallée was interrogated by the Gestapo at their headquarters on avenue Foch, where he refused to reveal any information despite torture. He was later imprisoned at Fresnes and transferred to the Royallieu camp in Compiègne before being sent to Buchenwald in August 1944. At Buchenwald, Lavallée was among thirty-six Allied intelligence officers, including his radio operator, Chaigneau, and other agents from the BCRA and SOE. Almost all of them were executed in September and October 1944, either by hanging or shooting. Only three survived, including Stéphane Hessel. Lavallée was shot on October 5, 1944. After the war, he was declared dead for France and posthumously honored with the Legion of Honor, the War Cross with Palm, and the Resistance Medal. In memory of his service, the French navy named an avisos, Lieutenant de vaisseau Lavallée (F790), after him. The ship, built in Lorient and sponsored by Saint-Nazaire, was launched in 1979 and decommissioned in 2018.