It was with great sorrow that the ICRC heard of the sudden demise on 10 November 1984, after nearly forty years of service, of their faithful collaborator Mr. Claude Pilloud.

A law graduate and a barrister, Claude Pilloud made his debut as a delegate in France in June 1940, only a few months after the start of the Second World War. In 1943, he was the ICRC escort on a hospital train in an operation for the exchange of severely wounded Italian and British soldiers between Rome and Lisbon. From January to June 1945, he successfully discharged a delicate negotiation concerning the German armed forces surrounded at Saint-Nazaire and Lorient, in the north of France.