The CLAM Mission

Allied intelligence services, including Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS/MI6) and Special Operations Executive (SOE), collaborated extensively with France's Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action (BCRA) to conduct critical sabotage operations in occupied France. This collaboration involved shared training facilities and coordinated missions.
Agents like Pierre Boutoule (codename CLAM) and Marcel Pellay (codename PAKEBO) underwent specialized training. Boutoule, a BCRA agent, attended a special industrial sabotage course at Brickendonbury Manor (MI6's agent training school which became SOE's industrial sabotage school) and clandestine warfare training at Beaulieu, learning methods for attacking machinery, power stations, telecommunications, demolitions, and incendiaries. Pellay received specialist training in operating the Eureka ground-to-air communication system and the portable S Phone at SOE's Home Made Devices School (STS 18 at Frogmore Hall). Agents were also provided with false documents from SOE's Forgery Section (STS XIV) and transported by the RAF's Special Duties Squadron, often from RAF Tempsford, which specialized in parachuting agents and supplies.
A key target for these coordinated missions was the Saône valley, identified as a vital waterway for transporting German military equipment, including landing craft, Schnellboote (fast boats/midget submarines), artillery, tanks, and ammunition, to the Mediterranean after the Allied invasion of Sicily.