George Francis Hiller was born in 1916, the son of a British father and French mother, and was educated at the Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris, and Exeter College, Oxford. He pursued a diplomatic career, and was a consular officer at the outbreak of war. Taking a junior commission in the Reconnaissance Corps, he was recommended to SOE and passed to F Section, which he joined in May 1943.

A quiet, thoughtful character with a cool and confident persona, Hiller was selected for the job of organiser, and was parachuted with wireless operator Cyril Watney into south western France in January 1944. His objective was to begin FOOTMAN, a new circuit to aid the leader of the socialist military wing Jean Vincent (known as 'Colonel Vény'), who had requested SOE's help via Harry Peulevé in the Corrèze. FOOTMAN's first action, the sabotage of the Ratier aircraft works in Figeac, was a complete success, but Hiller soon ran into problems which would draw heavily on his skills as a diplomat.

Contrary to Vény's claims of numerous established maquis fighters, Hiller was dismayed to find virtually no sign of organised resistance on the ground, and he and Watney were forced to build up a secret army from scratch, employing the help of writer André Malraux, who had recently joined the resistance as one of de Gaulle's regional commanders. When D-Day came FOOTMAN had 600 men in its ranks, and successfully reduced railway traffic and telecommunications in the Lot to almost zero, but continued political wrangling between the communist FTP, Vény and Gaullist maquis hampered Hiller's attempts to organise a unified resistance movement: neighbouring groups would steal arms and ammunition from each other, and anti-British feelings made it difficult to impose any proper order on the situation. To make matters worse, on 23 July Hiller and Malraux ran into a German roadblock near the town of Gramat - Malraux was taken prisoner, but Hiller managed to escape despite being seriously wounded. Watney was able to summon an RAF aircraft to transport him back to England, and then took over as FOOTMAN's leader.

By the time he had recovered, Hiller had no reason to return to the Lot: the retreat of German forces from the south-west and the dominance of de Gaulle's Forces Françaises de l'Interieur (FFI) meant that FOOTMAN had nothing more to contribute. However, the manner in which he had undertaken one of F Section's most difficult liaison missions did not go unnoticed, and he was awarded the DSO in 1945. After the war Hiller worked in variety of diplomatic posts across the world, and married in 1963. Following a move to the British embassy in Brussels he was diagnosed with a serious muscular illness, and he died two years later, in 1972. His wartime exploits are remembered in Jacques Poirier's The Giraffe Has a Long Neck, published in 1995.