They Fought Alone

by Maurice Buckmaster

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I think he’ll turn up. We’ve got Churchill in Antibes.’ Peter Churchill was here, there and everywhere – testing methods of introducing our men into France, recruiting new units and encouraging existing ones – in short, doing the work of ten men. The story of his work has been told; its value cannot be too highly estimated.

  ‘Yes, and Rake’s due to go any day now.’

  ‘You don’t seem too happy about him, B-P.’

  ‘You know I’m not.’

  ‘I think he’ll do a good job,’ I said.

  I had to admit that we had taken a bit of a risk with Rake. He was rather older than the rest of our agents and lacked certain of the qualities which were present in them.

  Denis Rake was born in Belgium and came to England between the wars. He went on the stage and appeared in No, No, Nanette and a number of other musical comedies. He went into the army as soon as war was declared – he had been a Territorial before – and went to France with the BEF. After Dunkirk he did a number of jobs where his French made him useful, including that of interpreter and wireless officer on a Free French minesweeper. He was not particularly happy in this work, however, for he wanted something in which he could feel that he was doing a job which really tested his mettle. He was stationed in Portsmouth on this minesweeping job, and as he was rather depressed he spent a fair amount of his time around the pubs. One day in late 1941 he was sitting in the saloon bar of a big and deserted pub in Southsea when a cluster of RAF men came in.

  ‘I don’t think I shall have anything to do with it, old boy,’ one of them said. ‘Sounds a damn sight too risky!’

  They laughed. ‘Getting windy, Ginger?’

  ‘Jumping out of a kite isn’t what I joined the RAF for, old boy.’

  Denis went up to the bar. ‘Half a pint of beer, please.’ Seeing he was alone, the RAF men asked Denis whether he would care to join them. He did. Carelessly and indifferently they continued to discuss the ‘parachute job’ they had been talking about when they came in.

  ‘Let’s face it, it just isn’t our cup of tea,’ they concluded.

  ‘Have you any idea what the job entails?’ Denis asked.

  ‘Thinking of volunteering, old boy?’ one of them asked, in a joking voice.

  ‘Yes,’ Denis said, ‘as a matter of fact I am.’

  II

  A month later, after devious enquiries through his solicitor, Denis was put in touch with Major Lewis Gielgud who was at that time our recruiting officer. Afterwards Gielgud came in to see me.

  ‘Any useful chaps?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not too sure,’ Gielgud replied. ‘I’ve just been talking to this fellow Rake who was put on to us by the War Office.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Well, he’s very keen and his French is all right. He says he wants to do a worthwhile job and hasn’t been able to find one yet. Apparently he’s a qualified wireless operator.’

  ‘Good Lord, that’s just what we’re short of—’

  ‘Yes, I know, but—’

  ‘If he’s really a qualified W/T boy, I don’t think we should turn him down,’ I said. ‘Let’s put him through the training course anyway and see how he shapes up.’

  Denis Rake was sent to our training school near Guildford. At first the reports we received of him were far from encouraging; he hated explosions and refused to have anything to do with assault courses which contained them or with demolitions in which the use of dynamite was necessary. He even refused to do revolver practice, maintaining that a wireless operator would not need to use one. Our escorting officer’s report was that Rake was ‘hopeless’. If he had been recruited in the later years of SOE, when we could be more selective, it is doubtful if he would ever have got past the first few weeks of his training. (Incidentally, there was no disgrace in failing in this way; many brave men who were to prove themselves tough, resourceful and heroic in other spheres found the work which we demanded of them called for something they could not provide.) Rake insisted, and I saw his point, that all this explosive work was quite beyond anything he was likely to be called upon to do in France. I allowed him to remain at the training school. We were able to exercise a much greater flexibility in our attitude to our men than were other branches of the service: to us they were always individuals and, in return for the hazards of their work, we felt they deserved the trouble which such treatment sometimes entailed. For instance, I remember one man on the point of leaving coming to me and saying that he could not go. Of course we were neither able nor wished to force a man to go against his will; he would probably fail and might bring disaster on those who met him.

  ‘But why not?’ I demanded, concealing my slight annoyance that at the last minute the man was going to ruin our timetable.

  ‘My code name is Alphonse, is it not?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘Then I cannot go.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I have a cousin Alphonse. He is a traitor. I cannot take his name: it will spoil my luck.’

  ‘How would it be,’ I asked quite seriously, ‘if we were to call you Alain?’

  ‘Alain!’ His face broke into a smile. ‘That would be different.’

  Alain left on the same plane that would have carried Alphonse.

  One day, Bourne-Paterson came into my office and said: ‘Well, your good friend Rake’s really done it this time.’

  ‘What is it now?’

  ‘Last night he refused to do his balloon jump. I think we’ll have to RD† him.’

  ‘They’re crying out for wireless men,’ I said. ‘Surely there’s another way of getting him in.’

  ‘Look, forgive me for putting it this way, but I don’t see how we can rely on the courage of a man who won’t even pull the trigger of a revolver.’

  ‘Let’s have a word with the trick-cyclist,’ I suggested.

  ‘Oh Lord!’

  In spite of Bourne-Paterson’s disgust, I talked to our psychiatric expert. On the whole, I must confess, I did not find his opinions over-helpful, for while they were careful and explicit and often profoundly interesting, they equally often seemed to me to miss the points with which we were specifically concerned. I never reached that stage of proficiency where I was able to evaluate the importance of the presence or absence of a mother-fixation in the selection of an agent for a particular mission. On this occasion, however, perhaps because he said what I had hoped he would, I was impressed by what he told me. ‘Lots of people are nervous of jumping out of balloons,’ he said, ‘where they could fairly easily be persuaded to bale out of an aircraft. The fact that there’s a cable attached to the ground often brings on an attack of vertigo which would never occur if the drop were from an aircraft totally unconnected with the ground. I wouldn’t attach too much importance to this incident at all.’

  ‘What about the explosion fear?’

  ‘Is he going to do any demolition work?’

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ I said.

  ‘Why worry then?’

  ‘You don’t think he’s going to be in a blue funk over everything he does?’

  ‘From what you’ve told me, he sounds a thoroughly dedicated sort of person who wants to do the job he’s volunteered for and isn’t prepared to do a lot of things he considers outside his range. He’ll play his part but he doesn’t fancy understudying all the others as well.’

  ‘That’s exactly my view,’ I said.

  ‘All the same,’ the psychiatrist went on, ‘I shouldn’t persist with the parachuting. Isn’t there any other way of getting him to the target area?’

  ‘That’s a thought,’ I said.

  Three days later we heard that one of our wireless operators in Lyons had been caught and shot. I gave de Guélis the word to have Rake ready to leave for Lyons in two days. He came straight up to London for his briefing. This was done in the flat in Orchard Court. Rake came into my office immediately after he had finished with de Guélis. ‘Feeling all right,
Rake?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I hope de Guélis told you all you wanted to know.’

  ‘Well, he told me all he knew, I think,’ Rake smiled.

  ‘Anything else you want?’

  ‘No, sir, I don’t think so. It all seems pretty clear.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re going to do a first-rate job. You’re really needed out there and we’ve got a fine lot of people for you to work with.’

  ‘I know that, sir.’

  There was a knock at the door and Jerry Morel, our operations officer, came in. ‘I’ve got the money from the bank, sir,’ he reported.

  ‘Good stuff. I hope it’s in old notes, as we asked.’

  ‘I haven’t looked yet, sir.’ He opened the case which contained the money and emptied it on my desk. Bundles of gleaming new notes cascaded out. ‘Just what the doctor ordered,’ Morel commented sarcastically.

  ‘We shall have to do something about this,’ I said. ‘Call in anyone who isn’t vitally tied up. Dirtying notes detail!’

  Bourne-Paterson, Gielgud, Vera Atkins and my secretary Yveline came into the room looking very suspicious. I sent Yveline off to get some oil and some grease, meanwhile I undid the elastic bands round each bundle and flung the 1,000 and 5,000 franc notes abandonedly into the air. ‘Get busy,’ I ordered. ‘Rub them in your hands, scribble on them, fold them and generally muck them up. We’ve got to have old notes for new.’

  Yveline returned and we all set to, spattering the notes with ink, bending the edges, greasing them, rolling them into tight little balls and then trying to straighten them out. The work seemed lighthearted, but the purpose was deadly earnest; there was nothing so suspect as new notes and if Denis – or any subsequent agent – were to be caught with a bundle of them he would certainly be detained and, if the investigation were thorough, revealed.

  All the time we sought to protect our men from being betrayed by trivialities: they faced enough danger without being revealed by so small a detail as a tailor’s tab or the fact that they were carrying a British pencil. Before being sent off they were searched by an ex-Scotland Yard expert – trouser turn-ups were emptied, linings examined and cigarette cases brushed out to eliminate the presence of Virginian tobacco. We even had our own dentist who excised British fillings (neat and silver) and substituted French ones (bulky and gold). Some agents thought that we were going rather far in our precautions, for they doubted whether the Gestapo would bother with investigations of a kind likely to discover such microscopic evidence.

  In London, however, we felt it our duty to give our men every possible assistance that we could think of, no matter how niggling. Often, I agree, the Gestapo adopted methods so brutal and so summary that nothing could protect our men from them; what people forget, however, is that quite frequently our men were able to bluff themselves out of awkward situations and here the presence of, for instance, a London bus ticket in a top pocket, might make all the difference between release and death. If this was the case on just one occasion, all our precautions were justified.

  The kind of thing against which we were powerless to protect an agent was instinct, or actions which had become so automatic as to rank as instinctive. One of our girls landed in France in 1943 and successfully reached the large town where she was due to rendezvous with a local Resistance man. In the middle of the town she was obliged to cross a very busy main road. As she went to cross it she looked right to check that the road was clear; this is, of course, the natural thing to do if the traffic drives on the left-hand side of the road. Seeing the road clear, she started to cross; a howl of brakes and the curses of a lorry driver revealed her mistake. She fell back on to the pavement, tripping heavily on the kerb. At once she was the centre of a crowd of towns people to whom the lorry driver was expostulating furiously. It was her bad luck that a Gestapo agent was among the crowd. With cruel speed he deduced the real reason for the girl’s accident and arrested her before she could scramble to her feet.

  At length we had dirtied all the money with which we had been supplied and Morel handed Denis Rake the bundle of now grubby notes to which he was entitled. The next day he was put on a grey, camouflaged trawler, bound for Gibraltar and the south of France. Denis spent most of his time in his tiny cabin, rehearsing the cover story which he had been given; he came to the conclusion that it was rather slender. He had been told to say that he was a Belgian businessman who was seeking contracts in France. It was still difficult for us to give really credible and watertight cover stories to our men and we relied on them to improve their stories once they were in the field and had been able to procure genuine papers as they often were through the friendly mayors of small towns.

  At Gibraltar, Denis was moved from the trawler to a felucca carrying the Portuguese flag. Two nights later a small rowing boat landed him on a beach near Juan-les-Pins. He carried two suitcases, one containing a wireless set, the other with his personal belongings and a large number of dirty notes. Denis made his way through the town. He found that he felt much more confident now that he had landed than he had ever done during training. He had been given the address of a certain Dr Lévy in Antibes whom he was to contact; the password was, ‘Do you know where I can buy some good oysters?’ The doctor would then reply: ‘No, but I have some shrimps you would like.’

  Denis lay up for the rest of the night in a vacant lot on the road to Antibes and did not enter the latter town until the sun was up and there were plenty of people about. There was a faded atmosphere in the place, for the hotels were nearly all closed and the memory of carefree pre-war days remained to blight and mock the sorry present. Denis had been well briefed on how to find the road in which Dr Lévy lived, for we were particularly careful to warn our men against asking directions in the centre of a town where a policeman or the Milice might overhear them.

  The doctor’s house was number eight, Boulevard du Maréchal Foch, a secluded road of detached villas. Denis had been warned that, if there was danger, the statues on the balcony facing the street would be turned towards him and he should not enter. There were no statues at all on the balcony of number eight, Boulevard du Maréchal Foch. Denis turned and walked quickly back out of the front gate of the villa. He hurried on up the road, looking for any house which had statues on the balcony. There was none. He tried to recall his briefing: he was certain that de Guélis had said number eight. He went back to it and walked boldly up to the front door. On it was a small brass plate: D. Lévy, Medecin et Chirurgien. Reassured, Denis rang the bell. A maid opened the door.

  ‘I have come to see Dr Lévy; I believe he lives here.’

  ‘What is the name, please?’

  ‘I have a personal message for him. I must see him myself.’

  ‘Dr Lévy is not here. Will you wait?’

  ‘No, I cannot wait,’ Denis replied. ‘I’ll – I’ll telephone him later. What time are you expecting him?’

  ‘He will be back from his surgery at ten o’clock. If you telephone then you will catch him.’

  Denis took the number from the maid and left the Boulevard du Maréchal Foch. He was getting slightly nervous about time now, for he was due to rendezvous with Clément,† another of our men, in the Bar Sportif in Antibes at noon that day. If he missed that meeting, he would have to wait till noon the next day. Denis walked down into Antibes. This waiting about between appointments when one had nowhere to go and nothing to do and only the most hazy sort of cover story was always a trial to our men; Denis wisely spent it reading all the local and national newspapers on which he could lay his hands, taking care not to buy more than two at any one kiosk. A box on the front page of the local paper warned people against the possibility of terrorists landing on the beaches and reminded them sternly that it was their duty to report any suspicious loiterers or strangers.

  It is one of the most remarkable qualities of the French that they are able to pick out strangers with the greatest facility; the smallest accentual difference, the slightest unfamiliarity wi
th the prevailing slang is sufficient clue. Often an agent would be surrounded by curious – and, thankfully, on the whole friendly – locals, all of whom had within seconds of his entering a restaurant or bar detected his alienness, this in spite of the fact that our men spoke perfect French and wore clothing indistinguishable from Frenchmen. It was for this reason that we liked to drop agents into zones of which they were in fact natives, but this was not always possible, either because they might be known too well or because they were needed elsewhere; in these cases they had to assimilate themselves quickly.

  Denis, with his suitcases, felt very conspicuous. He noticed that there were a fair number of uniformed Milice men on patrol; ten o’clock could not come soon enough. These miliciens, who wore uniforms aping the SS, were at this time extremely officious; the men of Vichy sought to alleviate the natural sense of guilt with which defeat burdened them by that zealous discipline which defeated nations so often impose upon themselves in an effort to associate themselves with their conquerors.

  Most Frenchmen regarded these attempts with cynical derision, but at first they were unable to do anything about them; later, however, when the Resistance took shape and gathered substance, the bumptiousness of the miliciens changed into a kind of arrogant impotence; they no longer tried to control the French but allowed the French to control them. To be fair, many were half-hearted in their allegiance to Pétain and even at the beginning did their best to turn a blind eye to our activities whenever they could do so without incurring punishment themselves. They sensed earlier than the Germans that the Boches had lost the war and took what steps they could to retrench themselves in the affections of their fellow-countrymen. The Resistance permitted them to think that they were being successful in this and on the promise of post-war immunity secured many valuable favours and lives.