William E. Sparks, 80, the last survivor of the 10 British marines celebrated as the Cockleshell Heroes for their canoe-borne raid on German shipping in occupied France in World War II, died Nov. 30 in Alfriston, England.

On the evening of Dec. 7, 1942, five two-man teams of Royal Marines were sent off in canoes, known as cockleshells, from the British submarine HMS Tuna in the Bay of Biscay. They sneaked into the port of Bordeaux four days later and attached mines to the hulls of German cargo ships that had evaded a British blockade. When the mines exploded hours later, they flooded four cargo ships and damaged a mine-clearing vessel.

Pierre Peugeot, 70, who made the automaker that bears his family name into a French industrial success story, died Dec. 1 in Paris. The company said that Mr. Peugeot had been ill for some time but did not provide details about the cause of death.

Mr. Peugeot was influential in the choice of the two executives, one a banker and the other from the aluminum industry, who engineered Peugeot's transformation from an auto industry also-ran into PSA Peugeot Citroen, the company that catapulted past its government-controlled rival, Renault, and commanded the second-largest share of the European market after Volkswagen.

Mr. Peugeot was a great-grandnephew of Armand Peugeot, who in 1885 founded a bicycle shop that later made cars.