The Heroines of SOE E-Book

Squadron Leader Beryl E Escott

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

'They were the war's bravest women, devoted to defeating the Nazis yet reluctant ever to reveal their heroic pasts. Now a new book tells their intrepid tales.' - Daily Express Britain's war in the shadows of male spies and subterfuge in the heart of occupied France is a story well known, but what of the women who also risked their lives for Britain and the liberation of France? In 1942 a desperate need for new recruits, saw SOE turn to a previously overlooked group – women. These extraordinary women came from different backgrounds, but were joined in their idealistic love of France and a desire to play a part in its liberation. They formed SOE's F Section. From the famous White Mouse, Nancy Wake, to the courageous, Noor Inayat Khan, they all risked their lives for King, Country and the Resistance. Many of them died bravely and painfully, and often those who survived, like Eileen Nearne, never told their stories, yet their secret missions of intelligence-gathering and sabotage undoubtedly helped the Resistance to drive out their occupiers and free France. Here, for the first time is the extraordinary account of all forty SOE F women agents. It is a story that deserves to be read by everyone.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Title Page

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Beginnings/Gillian Gerson

2 Virginia Hall

3 Yvonne Rudellat

4 Blanche Charlet

5 Andrée Borrel

6 Lise de Baissac

7 Mary Herbert

8 Odette Sansom

9 Marie-Thérèse Le Chêne

10 Sonia Olschanezky

11 Jacqueline Nearne

12 Francine Agazarian

13 Julienne Aisner

14 Vera Leigh

15 Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan

16 Cecily Lefort

17 Diana Rowden

18 Elaine Plewman

19 Yvonne Cormeau

20 Yolande Beekman

21 Pearl Witherington

22 Elizabeth Reynolds

23 Anne-Marie Walters

24 Madeleine Damerment

25 Denise Bloch

26 Eileen Nearne

27 Yvonne Baseden

28 Patricia O’Sullivan

29 Yvonne Fontaine

30 Lilian Rolfe

31 Violette Szabo

32 Muriel Byck

33 Odette Wilen

34 Nancy Wake

35 Phyllis Latour

36 Marguerite Knight

37 Madeleine Lavigne

38 Sonya Butt

39 Ginette Jullian

40 Christine Granville

41 Imprisonment

42 Epilogue

Glossary

Bibliography

Copyright

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There have been many people who have helped me over the years, since my first book on this subject (Mission Improbable, 1991) and the several others in between, until this one. I don’t doubt that the trail will end here, as the National Archives presently hold closed the Personal Files of eleven of these forty women and there are no files on four of the others.

As you may guess, this has caused much detective work through many other sources. When I began investigating my fifteen SOE WAAF women in about 1990, almost half of them still survived (including four who had been wireless operators). For various reasons only a few were willing to help, through the indefatigable Vera Atkins, whose memory was invaluable and to whom all thanks is due. It was, however, long before I envisaged covering all forty SOE women. One of their number warned me that they were ‘dropping off their perches every day’ – but they did seem long-lived. The opportunity for personal contact has now nearly passed me by, so I am trying to capture the essence of what remains.

One further spur drove me on, and I suspect may be shared by many readers in this subject. Whereas the male agent’s role in a narrative is often given fully, female agents frequently appear and disappear in only a few lines, with little indication of their contribution in the gap between. Of course, they were usually a part of a team led by the male agent and working to the same objectives, but their assistance was peculiar to themselves and not inconsiderable. And sometimes circumstances forced them to work alone. These chapters may, therefore, I hope, add a little to each story and fill in the gaps.

Now I must express my thanks to all who have helped me over the years – there have been so many.

For moral support, I must thank my mother – alas no longer here – who often tried to alleviate, with her optimistic nature, what sometimes seemed to be an impossible task. Her lively but frequently frustrating diversions helped to keep me afloat.

Then I must thank my present brilliant typist Sue Bishop and her partner John, whose long-suffering patience and skills with the computer, together with the editorial team of The History Press, have helped smooth my rather bumpy path.

In the following list I must apologise for any whom I have forgotten to mention, but I have been sincerely grateful for the help they have given me. They include:

Hugh Alexander, Vera Atkins, Barbara Barrie, John Brown, Maurice Buckmaster, Yvonne Burney, Sonya Butt, Francis Cammaerts (Fr.), Jean Claude Comert (Fr.), Joanne Copeland (US), Yvonne Cormeau, Pearl Cornioley, Gervase Cowell, Sonya d’Artois (Canada), Howard Davies, Pat Escott, Major Farrow, Frank Griffiths, Major Hallowes, David Harrison, Queenie Hierons, Frankie Horsburgh, Robert Ibbotson, Ronald Irving, Liane Jones, Rita Kramer (US), Roger Landes, Bob Large, Louis Lauler, Sister Laurence Mary, John and Olga Leary, Peter Lee (SFC), Wendy LeTisier, Pierre Lorrain, Keith Melton (USA), Mrs Midgley (CWGC), Linda Morgan, Nora Mortimer, Lesley Nightingale, Molly Oliver-Sasson (Aus.), Yvonne Oliver, Claudine Pappe (US), Valerie Pearman-Smith, Alan Probert, Henry Probert, Mrs Raftree (MC), Norma Reid, Rosemary Rigby (of the Violette Szabo Museum), Prof. Barry Rolfe, Margaret Salm (US), Dee Scandrett, Wyn Smith (NZ), Faith Spencer-Chapman, Decia Stephenson (FANY), Duncan Stuart, Pat Sturgeon, Martin Sugarman, Roger Tobell, Terry Trimmer, Maddie Turner, Hugh Verity, Lise Villameur, Miss C. Walters, Jim Wilson and Christoper Woods.

INTRODUCTION

Birth of SOE

In the early 1930s Adolf Hitler began his schemes of conquest. In 1938 he occupied Austria and Czechoslovakia, while Western Europe desiring peace just talked. Then, in a vain attempt to save Poland from the same fate, Britain and France declared war in September 1939.

There was a short pause, known as the ‘Phoney War’, before Germany, in April and May of 1940, attacked and occupied Denmark and Norway, and then turned on Holland and Belgium.

So rapidly had the Germans advanced at this point that the French now faced a German onslaught on their own country. The Germans drove forward, easily outflanking out-of-date fortifications and tactics, until at last they caught the Allies trapped in a pocket around Dunkirk. The British and a large part of the French armies faced defeat.

Then came the miracle deliverance of the little ships, which from 26 May to 3 June 1940, evacuated about 338,226 soldiers – British, French and some Belgians to Britain – amid continuous enemy air bombardment, snatching a moral victory out of the jaws of defeat. Nevertheless, they left the beaches littered with all their heavy equipment and their casualties before Dunkirk fell, followed by Paris ten days later. Clinging to old conventions, the French Government resigned and Marshal Pétain, a First World War hero of Verdun, became President, to sign on 22 June 1940 a humiliating Armistice with Germany. It gave him an ‘Unoccupied Zone’, nominally freely administered from the town of Vichy by the French Premier, then Pierre Laval, while the Germans occupied and governed the larger part of France from Paris, except for a small area in the south held by the Italians.

The Armistice, of course, imposed other conditions too, which only gradually became apparent. France had to pay an impost of 400 million francs for every day the Germans were in occupation. In 1942 forced labour levies of French men and women were removed to work in Germany. An increasing part of their agricultural and industrial produce had to be sent there also. Hostages were to be taken and shot for any sabotage or killing of German soldiers. After a time, French Freemasons, Gypsies, Jews, Communists (after the pact with Russia broke down), Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and others were rounded up and deported, and increasing restrictions on daily life, including curfews, passes and searches for all sorts of reasons were imposed. And yet the Germans behaved, on the whole, more fairly to the French than they did to their other conquered nations.

On the other side of the Channel, General de Gaulle, a little known French General who had escaped to Britain, set up an alternative to the French Government, organising his own Free French Forces in London. He broadcast on the BBC to France encouraging resistance: ‘We [the Free French Forces] believe that the honour of the French people consists of continuing the war alongside our allies, and we are determined to do this.’

Meanwhile, Germany confidently expected Britain to accept its peace overtures. Even the President of the United States of America, not yet involved in the war, refused to help Britain, believing it to be wasted effort. However, in spite of this, with the remainder of Europe either neutral or hostile, Britain still refused to surrender. With German overtures rejected and only a few miles of Channel dividing German-occupied France from Britain, Hitler planned an invasion by air and then by sea. It was only the Royal Air Force planes in the Battle of Britain that thwarted his intentions.

This was the time, in the heat of July 1940, with defeat and victory so evenly poised, when the British Prime Minister of only two months, Winston Churchill, chose to give the management of the recently created1 Special Operations Executive (SOE) to Hugh Dalton – his tall, bald and loud Minister of Economic Warfare. His instructions came with the order ‘to set Europe ablaze’!

The Organisation

SOE was to be a small secret organisation dedicated to encourage and aid resistance in any German conquered country. The F section was dedicated to aiding the liberation of France, and is the subject of this book.

SOE’s home became a large office building, felicitously vacated by the prison commissioners at 64 Baker Street, unavoidably connecting the organisation with the memory of Sherlock Holmes. Peter Lee, Secretary of the Special Forces Club in 1991, in one of his many long helpful letters to me, wrote:

The ‘F’ (for French) Section, like most of us started off in 64 Baker Street, but they moved over to Norgeby House in Autumn 1941, while our Security Directorate went to Michael House, more or less at the same time. The Free French were always at Dorset Square.

Nor was that the end of the moves for F Section.

During the war years its numbers grew and it quickly spread into other countries and counties with its different training schools, listening and deciphering stations, airfields, research and development facilities and other odd but useful places. Agents in the training schools used to joke that SOE stood for the ‘Stately ‘Omes of England’, since many of these were requisitioned or on loan, because in their large buildings and spacious grounds agents could be trained in unusual activities, away from the public gaze. This was as well, since its role had widened, and also grown.

A short succession of energetic and high powered executives took over until 1943 when Colin Gubbins was put in charge. His military bearing was misleading and hid a very flexible and sharp mind. He was an enthusiastic exponent of SOE and had written several handbooks on the art of guerilla warfare, then out of favour. He had the overview of SOE’s many divisions such as finance, supply, signals etc, as well as the country sections, one of which was France.

F section had been headed by Maurice Buckmaster since the autumn of 1941. Hitler is reputed to have said ‘When I get to London, I’m not sure who I shall hang first – Churchill or that man Buckmaster’. Tall, with prominent blue eyes and a pleasant manner, his enthusiasm gave all in contact with him confidence in his choices and judgement, though his relationship with Gubbins was always uneasy. In a letter to me he talks about the magnificent work carried out by members of the WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force) agents in occupied France. He also commented in 1952 in his book SpeciallyEmployed, ‘during the period March 1941–July 1944, we recruited over forty-six male and forty female officers for work in the field. It has always seemed to me surprising that there were so many British or Dominion subjects whose French was faultless, willing and anxious to undertake such supremely dangerous work.’ He was ready to fight for his agents, always in a hurry and snowed under with work, as he was not very good at delegating. Thus he usually put in, with Vera Atkins (his right-hand woman), a good 18-hour day, and insisted on doing all the work himself. Frenchmen often called a network ‘a Buckmaster’, and his care of his agents set him to institute the Judex visits in October/November 1944 to thank resistants who had helped his agents.

His assistant2 was Nicholas Bodington, who came from a public school and Oxford University background. In the 1930s he was working in Reuters in Paris. He was ambitious and attracted to the MI6 Intelligence Service but, never making it, seemed to take SOE as an alternative. His admiration of flying was reciprocated by Henri Déricourt, another young ambitious man who trained as a pilot, and the two became friends. During a short time in Paris before the war they also were acquainted with the elderly homosexual Boemelburg, then attached to the German Embassy but soon recalled. Now in SOE, Bodington visited France four times briefly between 1942–44 to investigate mistakes, despite the danger to agents like himself, who knew too much if captured. His support also cleared Déricourt, in his post-war trial for treachery in France.

Vera Atkins was officially nominated ‘F Int’ for Intelligence (amusingly she called it ‘interference’) but was really Buckmaster’s assistant and was often Conducting Officer with departing agents, particularly the women. Her background was rather peculiar, but her work with SOE F seems to have been loyal and kind. She kept in touch with many of ‘her’ women if they finally returned, and helped them as much as she could. Directly after the war she spent over a year investigating the fate of about 117 agents, men and women, who did not come back, so that she could set at peace the minds of their families. She was the right hand of Buckmaster and had an incredible memory to which I can attest from her letters to me. She later travelled all over the world to keep in touch with her ‘girls’ as she called them, consequently I found her often hard to track down. She also had a strong personality and did not suffer fools gladly. In 1991, after attending the dedication to the memorial at Valencay to the SOE F agents who had died in France, she said ‘I could not just abandon their memory’.

After SOE sprang into existence, it should be of no surprise that – having such close ties with her gallant ally – France was one of the first countries to receive Britain’s aid. It came in various forms, from Britain’s meagre reserves of arms and sabotage materials and around 400 SOE F agents, (Colonel Buckmaster put the total at nearer 500). Numbered among those hundreds of agents were about fifty-one women, of whom eleven looked to de Gaulle’s resistance organisation and were denoted the RF section. The other forty worked for London and were known as the independent F section.

Opposition to Female Agents

Previously the British people would not contemplate the idea of putting women in any danger and the authorities felt themselves responsible for the safety of its women.

In the services, from one of which fifteen F service women agents came3, there was agreement that no women should be involved in carrying arms, far less using them. Neither was it considered right, until nearly the end of 1944, that women should be employed abroad in time of war. At a pure chance meeting, the Head of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) – a uniformed organisation, which, being civilian, had no such limitations – offered her service as cover for SOE. It was, in any case, to be much involved in the communications and other services for SOE, and it knew and understood about the need for secrecy. Nevertheless, allowing women to be included as agents was initially fiercely resisted and only introduced into SOE F in 1942.

It turned out, of course, to be a very wise move, both because of the shortage of suitable male agents (under forties were vulnerable to German rafles4) and because of the large numbers of suitable women available. It was also assisted by the German male attitude to women, which was even more backward than that of Britain, therefore making Germans less suspicious of SOE’s female agents. Moreover, in France, women, during the occupation, were often to be seen everywhere, travelling on all types of transport, especially on bikes with large baskets and carriers, seeking food and commodities, visiting or looking for members of families or working in the place of absent husbands as wage earners. Such women did not arouse suspicion and those acting as couriers slipped into the same role without difficulty, added to which, though no Mata Haris, they could deploy their feminine skills, and some were remarkably beautiful.

Yvonne Cormeau, one of the valiant number of the forty, stressed to me in her strongly accented English ‘We were not spies5. Our work was sabotage’. It was indeed, but latterly it was to prepare the many resistance groups throughout France for the coming of D-Day and their part in driving out the occupying forces. Vera Atkins defined the task to me as ‘to annoy, hinder and damage the Germans’.

The chief aim of SOE F was to support and encourage the French to secretly oppose the Germans. Thus its targets were mainly attacking communications and those industries supporting the German war effort by supplying such things as arms, weapons, vehicles, goods and spare parts of all kinds. Naturally, SOE F was always careful to avoid damaging such places as shops or markets, where people gathered to eke out their rigid rations, since SOE knew that attacking them would put at risk the lives of vulnerable and innocent civilians, whom it was part of its task to protect.

Finding the Female Agents

Generally, SOE recruited their male agents from the universities, with their ‘old boy’ networks, and in the upper echelons of the business and finance world. Such openings did not exist for women, as they rarely appeared in such places. Prior to the war, women were seldom seen in Higher Education or in the workplace.

The war was going to alter this forever. Men were away in the services and women often filled their slots in the workplace, went into new war industries, or, if young enough, joined the new women’s services.

As knowledge of SOE’s existence was secret6, it faced unusual problems in recruiting its ‘special’ women, having no obvious ‘networks’ to tap into. The organisation, nevertheless, still managed to get around this problem. There was, of course, the already accepted cover of the FANY, where around half of its women were involved in work connected with SOE. They came very often from the higher social and leisured classes, and introduced other women from their acquaintances. SOE also tapped the existing pool in the three services, Navy, Army and RAF, added to which was the lower civil service. Here it asked to be notified if any of their recruits had special abilities, such as languages. It also circulated Customs and Immigration and the civilian offices doing the Registration for Employment of the general public, and received regular returns. Most interestingly, SOE issued a broadcast on the wireless, asking for people who had drawings or photographs of ‘interesting’ areas in Europe that they had visited in the last few years. It also advertised on appointments pages in certain newspapers and journals for interpreters in specified languages. Replies were to be sent to the Ministry of Economic Warfare (MEW). As a result, a surprising number of women agents, as will be seen, were drawn from the middle or lower middle classes.

Thus, among the women were shop girls, clerks, some from impoverished families, a doctor’s wife, a commercial traveller, a newspaper editor’s daughter, a hotel receptionist, a film impresario, a professional dancer, journalists, fifteen members of the WAAF, some Americans, an Australian/New Zealander, a Mauritian and others.

Female SOE agents were normally chosen for their language skills and their ability to mix inconspicuously among the French people. In many cases they had one parent who was French, or they had been brought up and educated in France or a French-speaking country. As a rule they were clever, articulate, quick-witted, good actresses and brave, putting an idealistic love for France and Britain, and hope to hasten France’s liberation and end the war, above their own safety.

Agents were given officer ranks in the hope that if captured, they would be treated as Prisoners of War under the Geneva Convention. It proved a false hope.

Interviews

Normally the assessment of men or women to be recruited for SOE was in the hands of Selwyn Jepson or Lewis Gielgud (brother of the actor), but the best ‘talent spotter’ of the women was Jepson.

SOE selection began when a woman received a note asking her to come to London and report to a building called the Inter Services Bureau. This may have been in reply to an offer she may have made of photographs she had taken of the French coast or some other area in very recent years. Or it could have been her noted ability to speak rapid French. One woman complained that she only came in answer to a ‘wanted’ advertisement for a French secretary or an interpreter post, and when she found it additionally required athletic exercises, was mystified.

The Inter Services Bureau seemed to move around a lot and was very discreetly hidden away. Sometimes it was through a side door in a rather dingy, squashed building, or in a large, cold, echoing place of several storeys. A doorkeeper would scan her letter and then send her to wait outside an office door. When it opened to let out a woman like herself, a voice from inside the room would call ‘come in’. And so the interview that could change her life would begin.

There were usually two or three sessions, which would take place somewhere discreet and all with the same man. No names would be exchanged but he would have already found out a great deal about her. He would listen to her stories and draw out her opinions – they would, of course, be speaking fluently in French. Depending on her responses, he would hint at work in France – and not the ordinary kind. (Jepson writes that before he had proceeded this far in the interview with Odette Samson, she had guessed what it was about and immediately volunteered for SOE work. However, for most women he continued the process more slowly and arranged another interview.)

The next interview would be held at the same place and with the same man, but it would be much more serious. At this point the interviewer would test out the girl’s family obligations7. He would emphasise the disadvantages and dangers of SOE work, and the possibility of death in France, where no one would be able help her. If she was still keen to go, she would be told that she must keep it secret (even from her family), but should sleep on it for a while before making a decision.

Then would be her last interview, where she would give her final decision and, among other things, sign the Official Secrets Act. (At this point few people refused to join SOE, so well had they been vetted beforehand.) Before or after this her ‘job specification’ would explain that she will first have to enlist with the FANY (quite an eye-opener for an inexperienced girl).

It is obvious that a number of candidates were refused, but for various reasons we have no records. However, I have one example, Valerie Pearman-Smith, an ex WAAF, who told me she was interviewed by SOE in the cellars of Whitehall. ‘I thought it was for translation work like Yvonne Cormeau, but I was rejected, because my French accent was a Swiss one…’ It obviously remained in her memory, and much later, when more was revealed, she realised what it was about.

Training

For SOE work, F agents were trained sketchily and briefly during the early war years but much more effectively later on. It was believed that Russian agents trained for five to ten years. SOE had no such luxury. Its agents averaged about four to nine months training depending on their type of work – a few in an emergency had even less.

There were approximately sixty special training schools in Britain, as well as in many other parts of the world. Training was divided into various groups: Group A was Guerilla Training, Group B acted as Finishing Schools and Group C was the Preliminary Schools. The majority of agents would go through all stages of training, but not all did.

Preliminary Training

Wanborough Manor, near Guildford, was designated a Group C Preliminary Training School in about mid-February 1941 and male agents would receive two weeks training there. Wanborough did not start the training of women until 1943 when it was carried out in mixed groups of men and women. By this time, it only housed those agents intended for France.

The first women of 1942 began training elsewhere and their whole course was much shortened to only a few weeks. The exception was Yvonne Rudellat in early 1942 who trained at Wanborough with the men and turned out to be better than most, as well as being the best shot of the course – appearances can be deceptive.

Wanborough students usually went through elementary military training and student assessment. The first involved physical training, cross-country runs, basic weapons training and unarmed conflict – (for women later these were modified). The main object was to improve physical fitness. They were also given an elementary introduction to wireless and codes and basic briefing on sabotage. They were watched day and night, though were probably unaware of this constant appraisal and its implications. Candidates were required to speak French most of the time and lapses could fail a candidate, especially if they talked English in their sleep or drank too much and became garrulous. Reports were made on them several times, noting any special aptitudes or difficulties, and the decision made as to their continuing and in what line, or quietly being dropped from the course and returned to their earlier work.

Guerilla Training

If they passed this hurdle, then most went on to the area around Arisaig, a Group A school in the wilds of Scotland, where the weather could be as hostile as the environment beautiful. There they were introduced to guerilla warfare. They learned such things as making, mixing and using explosives. Far enough from habitation they could practise blowing up bridges or hayricks, and carry out various dangerous activities without causing trouble, though the canny highlanders usually knew what was going on. They learned to manage small boats without sinking them, how to use and load German, British and American arms – something Vera Leigh and Violette Szabo shone at – and loading slippery weapons in the dark by touch. They learned how to cross rough country without being seen, creep silently through undergrowth, how to avoid the sky line, wade rock strewn streams and how to live off the land, as well as how to tail people and avoid being tailed, and how to kill silently. Although good at most things, when Nancy Wake did kill a German sentry to save her life, it upset her for days afterwards. Their instructors were often jailbirds, poachers or commandos, and all found that a necessary quality in these activities, even in a gale and the pouring rain, was a sense of humour. Conducting Officers often trained alongside their candidates.

Special Training Courses

Wireless Operators (w/t)

In special schools like Thame Park in Oxfordshire, those who were to become wireless operators had a demanding and long course, unless like a few WAAF they came already from the trade, and even then they had to learn more. All messages had to be transposed into cipher or code, different for each operator, and the full message sent by Morse at a rate of at least twenty-two words per minute, together with special safety checks to prove them genuine. They also developed a ‘fist’ or ‘style’ by which whoever received the message could sometimes tell who was sending it – a kind of fingerprinting in Morse. Learning the skills or changing words into code was always difficult as no message was ever sent or received except in code. At different times different code methods were used – the playfair, double transposition and the best, the one-time-pad. They took time to understand and then learn, and speed was added to the complexity. Agents were also given a schedule (sked) of days and times for ordinary messages (except in an emergency) and told to keep them short, averaging no more than 12 minutes, but very often they took longer and proved to be the reason many agents were caught.

In January 1942 Leo Marks was called up and went to Bedford to train as a cryptographer. He was the only one of his intake not to be sent to Bletchley Park. This was because he cracked the code they had all been left to work out over a week in just one evening. Labelled a misfit, he was dispatched to Baker Street and SOE, and there he remained to become head of their decoding section. His rule was, ‘There is no such thing as an indecipherable message’. Agents risked their lives to send it, so his section was honour bound to break it before their next sked.

Even those who had already mastered the skills of code and Morse, still had to spend time in the laboratories learning the composition of their set(s), fault diagnosis and how to repair it with makeshift materials when it went wrong. When receiving, there were other problems: atmospherics, oscillation, static, skip, dead spots, jamming and other details they had to know how to cure, as well as the mysteries of handling 70 foot long aerials, disguising and hiding sets and general security.

In addition, wireless operators had to be able to control the pressure and the loneliness of their work, together with the daily danger they lived under. It was not surprising that this course might take well over four or five months or more, though sometimes an operator, urgently needed, might be sent out partly trained, occasionally with disastrous consequences.

Agents knew that once in the field their messages would, with the aid of their specially tuned crystals, go to a particular listening station in Britain – usually Grendon Underwood, where there were banks of receivers and relays of men and women – mainly FANY – who listened perpetually to receive their messages. Colin Gubbins referred to the work of the SOE wireless operator as ‘The most valuable link in the whole of our chain of operations. Without these links we would have been groping in the dark.’

Parachuting

Another special school was set up for students who were to parachute into France – a method used by the majority of agents and preferred by SOE. Agents were accommodated at Tatton Park near Manchester and learned to parachute at Ringway Airfield, where all the troops were trained in parachuting. They aimed at doing up to five drops, at least one at night, and later, one with a leg bag for carrying equipment. Sometimes they were sent out into the field having had no more than one or two practice jumps.

Winifred Smith (a WAAF), was a parachute packer at Tatton for two years. She had clear memories of:

…seeing the girls preparing to parachute complete with lipstick and make up – otherwise it was hard to tell that they really were girls, what with their parachute suits, crash helmets and so on. We often watched them waiting to board their plane. It was like follow-my-leader. The girls were towards the back, but they were always laughing and we would wave and call ‘Good Luck’.

Trainers sometimes said that they put the girls to jump first out of the aircraft into the grounds of Tatton Park, since they knew that the men would not hold back if a woman led the way.

Winifred also went into the training hangar:

…and saw them training on what we called The Fan. They were completely fearless. They learned to land properly and were quick off the mark in getting away afterwards. One had the feeling they didn’t expect to come back from France, so they were living for the moment. When VE day was over and we could talk more freely we all agreed that they had an inner strength and sheer determination which allowed them to do what was asked of them. They were inspired by something greater than the ordinary person.

Other Special Courses

At this point certain other short courses considered useful might be introduced. Thus some learned forgery, microphotography, picking locks, safe breaking and an element of industrial sabotage. There were other skills for certain agents intended for specific jobs – not usually assigned to women. Trainers for these other courses would be unusual people, often ex-burglars and felons. Nancy Wake was nearly thrown off her course for using one of these skills to break into a locked file at midnight to discover her training notes and thus what they thought of her!

Finishing School

Beaulieu

Last came a few weeks at Beaulieu in the New Forest in Hampshire, one of the Group B Finishing Schools (now the home of the National Motor Museum), which enabled students to catch their breath and enjoy the quiet of the abbey cloisters for a few moments when coming to the end of their training. Today a plaque in its wall records the fact:

Remember before God, those men and women of the European Resistance Movement who were secretly trained in Beaulieu to fight their lonely battle against Hitler’s Germany, and who before entering Nazi-occupied territory, here found some measure of the peace for which they fought.

This course brought students into the classroom, to learn the finer points of security or espionage. Housed in small ‘mock’ cottages, lodges or houses, formerly occupied by friends of Lord Montagu and his family, they looked quite homely.

As part of their security training they learned to recognise the ranks of the ordinary French Police and Darnand’s more dangerous uniformed French Milice. They were to distinguish the different ranks of the ordinary German soldiers. It was hoped they would never encounter, but must know about the two wings of the two main German counter-intelligence bodies: the military Abwehr with its Paris headquarters at the Hotel Lutetia and the SD (Sicherheitsdienst) in its headquarters at 82–86 Avenue Foch – the French sometimes called it the Avenue Boche. This was the intelligence wing of the SS – the political, State Police, which also controlled the Gestapo, whose Paris headquarters was at 11 Rue des Saussaies. These two bodies were rivals and in spring 1944 the Abwehr was absorbed by the SS. French men often confused the SS and called their officers the Gestapo – though all were equally feared. Nevertheless you might be able to trust in any agreement being kept by the Abwehr, and your treatment by them was likely to be gentler – neither of which applied if you fell into the merciless hands of the SD or SS. But if not shot after torture, you might end in a concentration camp either way.

Agents were also given some useful pointers in what to look for in French recruits, and advice on keeping small groups secure. This independence would then safeguard the other members in case of an arrest. Also no list of members was to be written down to be discovered by an enemy (as in the case of the CARTE network, whose list was discovered by the Abwehr). In the same way personal relationships were not encouraged – especially for SOE women.

It was agreed to pay individual full time members of the groups (and compensation/pensions given to their ‘French’ families if one was imprisoned or killed). Money was also needed for bribes or living expenses of agents or members working for them. Extravagant expenditure would always draw attention from the enemy and was to be checked. The money supply, however, was one of the problems about which SOE agents never had to worry, and there are few cases of it ever being abused.

Then came other security matters – more on codes and the use of sending personal messages or receiving replies, other than through the signals. This was achieved very discreetly by the French station of the BBC, usually after the 9 o’ clock news, to which most Frenchmen found a way of listening, to hear a true account – good or bad – of the progress of the war. The Germans had ordered the destruction of all radios in the home, but soon many owners found ways to hide them in unrecognised cellars, attics or cupboards.

It was only after D-Day that the agents began to discover the wholehearted support of people turning to the Allies and then the resistance grew. Until then, it was generally areas furthest from the main German centres of influence that were the resistance’s strongest supporters. Otherwise support was small, secret and careful – save in groups like railwaymen, dockers and very often farmers, where the greatest opposition to the Germans appeared.

Contact was usually made with other members or agents through an intermediary, or by the use of a special phrase with an appropriate coded reply. There were also different means of warning that Germans were present or nearby, by agreed signs – one flower pot removed from a row, a drawn curtain on one side of a window, a book put in a certain place – the kinds of signs or symbols used in most secret societies. Those dealing with wireless learned how the enemy could track down the transmission, and to be aware that sometimes he could mimic their messages on a captured wireless.

All agents had to learn how to code and decode messages to help their wireless operator, and their task too was to arrange reception parties for an aircraft drop or landing, and the laying out of lights in a prescribed pattern to guide the pilots. Additionally they had to spot areas of land suitable for drops and, when checked, work out the co-ordinates on a map to pass to London, with an agreed message of confirmation or otherwise to be made after the 9 o’ clock news, if the plane could come, weather permitting, on the selected date.

Finally the agent was given the last few pieces of her own jigsaw puzzle – her new code and cover name, the name of her network and her organiser – she might have even met him at this stage if he was not in France – information on her contacts, the part of the country where she was being sent, and a hundred other small details. Her personal identity was usually based on a real person, or mixed with facts that were as near as possible to her own experiences, and she was photographed with different hairstyles, from different angles for her new identity documents. She had to go over and over all her personal facts, until her new identity became second nature.

There was so much to learn and absorb, and all the time she was being warned to be careful of security, neglect of which could cost her life.

The Test

At some unearthly hour in the morning, like 3am, she would be shaken out of her sleep by a person in Gestapo uniform, and then, still befuddled by sleep, she would be dragged, none too gently, down to the cellar and surrounded by more men in Gestapo uniforms and made to stand on a table, or alone face an interrogator with a lamp shining full into her eyes, to answer all kinds of questions on who she was, and why was she here – unlikely answers might get a slap and threats of torture would be made. If she stumbled, she would be roughly treated and the questions would come fast, leaving little thinking time, until she was nearly fainting. She would be repeatedly accused of all sorts of things and told that she had been watched ever since landing in France – until she hardly doubted that she was there. She would be bullied and offered an easy way to get out of the situation by telling all that she knew. This would seem to go on for hours, and yet they would keep her there and repeat the same things time and time again. Wearily, she would manage to keep to the same facts about herself.

Then, suddenly, the lamp would go out, the screen across the window would be drawn back and daylight would flood in. The Gestapo men would pull off their caps and laugh, perspiration running down their faces. She would be escorted out, mockingly, and in the corridor beyond her Conducting Officer would sit her down and press a cup of cocoa into her hands. After a while, when her hand was shaking less, she would have been able to drink it. One of the men questioning her would come out and she would recognise one of her training staff. She would be stunned – so this was the test she had heard they were to have!

After she had sufficiently recovered, she would go back to her bed for a short nap and later her test would be gone over in minute detail – so that if next time it was to be real, she could avoid any mistakes made in the practice interrogation. She would learn that this has happened to others, who had real experience of it in France, like Blanche Charlet, who said that this practice test had saved her life.

Finishing

When the training and test was over, the student was as ready as he or she could be. Not everyone passed even at this stage but now, because they knew too much, students who had failed this last stage had to be sent somewhere until their knowledge was out of date – the ‘cooler’ for most was at Inverlair in Scotland – very comfortable, but so disappointing.

Before the final decision of those failing was made, however, their report was considered by Buckmaster, who occasionally, after consultation, reversed it. This he did in a few cases, like that of Noor Inayat Khan, being very often influenced by a shortage of people in a particular role or of time for an urgently requested agent.

Then she would be whirled away to wait for her final destination – at Fawley Court perhaps or Gaynes Hall or a similar comfortable FANY-run kind of hotel. Here some time might have been spent tying up family business, or writing a dozen or so letters saying ‘I am well and all is right’; these would be given to Vera Atkins to send to family at intervals – even after there was no news of the fate of the agent. The rest was just walks, entertainment, games, dancing or going over her new identity.

Finally the Conducting Officer would warn the agent, if there was time, ‘next day I may turn up to take you to the port or airfield to prepare you for your journey’. At this stage there was usually a last visit to see Maurice Buckmaster, who would greet her with open arms in the sybaritic flat at Orchard Court, sending her spirits soaring with his compliments, and giving her a small gold or silver powder compact as a parting gift – ‘in case you need to sell it or pawn it, if you need money in an emergency’. Now there was no more to do except wait to be called for her journey to France.

Travelling to France

There were a number of ways by which an agent could be taken in or out of France secretly. It was one of the agents, Cecily Lefort, who opened up a route once used by escapees fleeing from the French Revolutionary guillotines. By the early war years there were some specially adapted boats for various routes.

Sea

Breton fishing boats and motor torpedo boats from Falmouth and then Helford were used by the escape lines from the North of France, and they sometimes involved a borrowed Navy submarine. Inevitably, an occasional SOE agent could also be taken in by that route. However, the lines concern to carry in more stores limited their size and operations, and they became mainly the preserve of the ‘Var’ (DF) escape line, the RF service and the SIS.

Getting agents into the South of France by sea produced different needs. F service preferred to send its agents by plane or submarine to Gibraltar at the beginning. From there a pair of specially adapted feluccas (traditional wooden sailing boats) crewed by Polish seamen from the EU/P (Polish) Section, ferried agents in cramped and slow conditions to somewhere along the Mediterranean Riviera coast. Most operations were suspended here when the Germans took over the unoccupied Vichy Zone.

Air – Special Duties Squadrons

Sea Operations were much hampered by Admiralty Rules. SOE found quite early in its existence that air operations were its best option, despite the expected opposition from the Air Ministry.

In February 1941 Air Chief Marshal Charles Portal said ‘I think you will agree that there is a vast difference in ethics between the time honoured operation of the dropping of a spy from the air, and this entirely new scheme for dropping what one can only call assassins’. Later on, when SOE required help from the RAF for taking in agents and supplies for the French resistants, ‘Bomber’ Harris objected, not so much on the grounds of what the planes were carrying, but that he was losing the use of a few of his planes, when he was trying to find enough aircraft for his famous 1,000 Bomber Raids to weaken Germany by destroying its factories, power plants and railways.

Nevertheless two Special Duties Squadrons were formed. Squadron 138 of Whitleys, Halifaxes and Stirling aircraft, which dropped both agents and supplies, and their airfield became Tempsford. Squadron 161 of Lysanders and Hudsons, which carried out mainly the landings of agents, although the Hudson was used in 1943–44 to carry between eight and ten passengers and some ‘packets’, with a range of 1,000 miles, but took longer to turn around. The Lysander was an excellent aircraft for short flights and secret landings. It had a fixed metal ladder at the side and normally carried one or two passengers, and because its range was no further than 600–700 miles it operated from the small airfield at Tangmere and only flew to the north of France. It was a little aircraft with a fixed undercarriage and was reputed to be able to land and take off on a pocket-handkerchief sized piece of land. ‘“The Lizzie”, as it was fondly called, was the result of a concept already out of date by the time it was developed, and failed totally in the role for which it was designed. Nevertheless in the end it was to be put to other uses, in which moreover it was to excel’ – Jean-Michel Legrand, author of Lysander (Editions Vario, 2000).

Together with the little twin-engined Hudson, these were lone aircraft, and were part of the Moon Squadrons, since they would only fly on the few moonlit nights of the month, and there were very few when the moon was not covered by cloud or storm. It was necessary, since the pilot hoped to fly below the eye of enemy radar, and, flying low, to find his destination to a tiny little pin-point of land. To do this he would have to sight-read his way across France, by following, as long as the moon picked them out, the shine of rivers and lakes, railway lines, steeples, roads and any recognisable objects. The ‘Lizzie’ could not carry radar or instruments, and a passenger did not even wear a parachute. The SOE agents had to trust the highly skilled pilot. Such men were few. No wonder Bomber Harris wanted them in his Pathfinder Force. And for delivering agents to France, there were other secret services seeking their aid – as this humorous verse by Robin Hooper indicates:

The moon is sinking in the sky,

We know we damn well got to fly

Or get into a fearful mess

With SOE or SIS,

The messages come thick and fast,

We’ve got a field for you at last,

So come tonight and try your luck…

Frank Griffiths was a co-pilot for his first flight on a Halifax of Special Duties Squadron:

It was such a smooth and uneventful trip – it lulled me into a false sense of security. We crossed the Channel at 200 ft, then jumped the French coast at Cabourg at 4,000 ft. Nothing came up at us. Then down to tree level in bright moonlight. We called at two receptions east of Paris and dropped our loads, then off to Belgium to drop a Joe [all agents were called Joe] and his pianist [wireless operator] to a reception, then back around Paris to, of all places, a sewage farm just south-west of Versailles. A curious place to have a reception, but no doubt few people hang around a sewage farm at 3 o’ clock in the morning! So back to Cabourg to jump the coast – then to Tempsford and bed.

…Walking back, I remarked on the lack of excitement! The way the moonlit countryside rolled by underneath and the water check points came up dead on time.