Women who Spied for Britain

by Walker, Robyn

  5

  Diana Rowden (1915–44)

  Code Name: Paulette

  Late in the afternoon of 6 July 1944, four women arrived at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp, the only German extermination camp known to have been located on French soil. This fact did not bode well for the futures of the four new arrivals. The presence of the women in what was an all-male camp sparked a wave of interest among the inmates, and speculation rippled through the barracks. This interest peaked later that evening when witnesses saw the four women being led towards the crematorium. Flames shot from the crematorium chimney four times, marking each time that the oven doors were opened and closed. The women were never seen again. One of these women was Diana Rowden.

  Diana Hope Rowden was born on 31 January 1915 in London, England. The First World War was just a few months old, and no one could have predicted that the newborn baby girl would eventually lose her life defending her country in a similar conflict, less than thirty years later. Her parents, Aldred Rowden (a Major in the Army) and his Scottish wife Christian, separated when she was very young. Diana, her two brothers (Maurice and Cecil) and her mother then moved to the French Riviera where she enjoyed what was, by all accounts, an idyllic childhood. The family had enough money to afford a comfortable lifestyle and, indeed, lived much of the time aboard a yacht, named the Sans Peur (Without Fear), sailing up and down the French and Italian Mediterranean. Diana was an extremely capable boater and enjoyed many an afternoon dozing on deck with a string tied around her toe, waiting for the jerk of a fish on her line, which she would quickly reel in and gut with relish. She was known as quite a tomboy with a sweet and reserved personality.

  When Diana was a teenager, the family returned to Britain so that Diana might receive a proper boarding-school education. She attended the Manor House School, located in Limpsfield, Surrey. Diana did not particularly enjoy her Manor House experience, and was terribly homesick for the Mediterranean, but it was here that she met and befriended Elizabeth Nicholas, a woman who later wrote a book about Diana, entitled Death Be Not Proud in 1958. Diana’s unhappiness at school was probably responsible for the impression that her personality left on Elizabeth Nicholas. Nicholas remembered Diana as a mature and introverted girl, who kept herself removed from teenage drama and who seemed to stoically endure life rather than embracing it. She was shocked, years later, to discover, during an interview with Diana’s mother, that Diana had been a true tomboy who relished life on the Mediterranean, and who spent her days boating and fishing and carousing with her brothers. Upon leaving Manor House School, Diana returned with her mother to France in 1933, while her brothers remained at school in Britain. Unsure of what she wanted to do with her life, and with no romantic prospects on the horizon, Diana enrolled at the Sorbonne to study journalism. She found that she enjoyed her studies here much more than she did at Manor House, and upon completing her programme was able to find steady work in her chosen field. Diana was working as a journalist in Paris when the Second World War broke out in 1939. Both she and her mother watched with apprehension as Germany moved against its weaker neighbours. France was invaded by Germany in May 1940. Like many English civilians who found themselves in France and facing the German invasion, Mrs Rowden evacuated quickly, securing a spot on a coal boat for the dangerous Channel crossing. Communications were a shambles during this time and Diana lost touch with her mother, discovering only later that she had made it safely back to Britain. Diana chose not to evacuate, and remained in France where she joined the Red Cross and was assigned to the ambulance service. With the Allied forces committed to stopping the German advance through the Low Countries (Belgium and the Netherlands), the German juggernaut smashed through the lightly defended Ardennes Forest and raced for the French coast. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF), which had been stationed in France, pulled back to the port of Dunkirk where, over the course of nine days, the majority of its soldiers were evacuated back to Britain. Rowden was not among the evacuees and she spent the next year witnessing the complete subjugation of her adopted country. Her position was clearly an uncomfortable one, since Britain and Germany were at war, and she was a British citizen essentially trapped in German-occupied France. For over a year she worked feverishly, endeavouring to arrange passage back to Britain. Eventually, with the help of a burgeoning Resistance movement, Rowden made her way back to Britain by travelling a circuitous route through Spain and Portugal. After her arrival in Britain she located her family and made arrangements to share a flat with her mother in Kensington. Rowden was devastated by the German occupation of France, and had witnessed first-hand the vicious treatment of the French at the hands of the Germans. She desperately wanted to be involved in the war effort and, in September 1941, Rowden joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). After three months of training she was assigned a position as Assistant Section Officer (ASO) for Intelligence Duties. An ASO was the approximate equivalent in rank to a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force (RAF) and as such her position was supervisory. Rowden was posted to the Department of the Chief of Air Staff from December 1941 until July 1942 when she was promoted to Section Officer (rank equivalent Lieutenant). From there she was posted to the RAF station at Moreton-in-Marsh, which served as the home strip for many of the Wellington bombers that were used for night-time bombing runs against Germany. She remained at Moreton-in-Marsh until March 1943, and it was during her time here that Rowden was sent to an RAF convalescent home to recuperate from a minor operation. While convalescing she met Squadron Leader William Simpson, who was being treated for the multiple burns he had suffered after being shot down over France. Simpson was also working for the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Impressed by Rowden’s commitment to the war effort, as well as her command of the French language, Simpson brought Rowden’s file to the attention of the SOE recruiters. A memo about her recruitment, found in Rowden’s personnel file, simply reads, ‘Has interesting linguistic qualifications which might make her of value for operational purposes.’1

  A background check was completed on Rowden, and SOE apparently found nothing in her past that caused them any concern. SOE sent her a formal letter indicating that they were interested in speaking with her and, on 15 March 1943, Rowden reported to Room 238 at the Hotel Victoria for a preliminary interview. Her ability to speak French, Italian and Spanish, as well as her familiarity with France, impressed the interviewer, and later that month Rowden was seconded (a military release from assigned duties to temporary duties elsewhere) from the WAAF to SOE. She signed the Official Secrets Act and was told to report for training.

  All potential SOE agents had to complete an initial training course that served not only to train recruits in the subtleties of espionage and the use of explosives, codes, signals, parachutes and firearms, but also to weed out candidates who were not suited for covert operations. French was spoken almost exclusively, and instructors familiarised themselves with every aspect of each candidate agent’s personality. Before leaving for her Preliminary Training course at Wanborough, Diana revealed to her mother the type of work she was being trained for, and Mrs Rowden desperately tried to dissuade her, fearing it was far too risky and worrying about losing her only daughter. The two women were very close, and Rowden struggled with her decision to leave her mother. However, Rowden had seen first-hand what the Germans were capable of, and the news stories trickling across the Channel made it very clear that the French population was suffering terribly under its German occupiers. Diana decided it was important for her to return to France and take action against the Germans, so she chose to ignore her mother’s pleas. After a few weeks of Preliminary Training at Wanborough, Rowden showed enough promise to be sent up to Scotland for further paramilitary training. She did reasonably well on all her courses, and the report she received at the end of her training indicated that she was viewed as physically quite fit (though lacking in agility), and that she performed particularly well in the areas of weapons use, explosives and demolitions,
and fieldcraft. Her instructors noted that she was quite skilled in both shooting and grenade throwing! There were, however, concerns about her map-reading skills and her ability to write clear and concise reports (which was odd since she had worked as a journalist); her work with signals (coding/decoding messages and wireless radio transmissions) was considered so poor that it was thought not to be worth pursuing. Her finishing report was merely adequate, stating,

  She does not seem to be of more than average intelligence and is not very quick. She tried extremely hard and was very anxious to learn. Her practical work, although often rather unimaginative, was nevertheless carried out with care. Her personality, though pleasant, is rather uninspiring. She seems confident in herself and ready to carry out any job to the best of her ability. However she has no particular powers of leadership and is not really capable of occupying an executive position but should be a reliable subordinate in carrying out a straight forward task.2

  It was during training that she met and became close with fellow SOE recruits Robert Maloubier and Eliane Plewman. Maloubier spent many evenings socialising with Rowden during their training and remembered her as ‘a sweet girl, not particularly attractive, red haired and a bit spotty, but with lovely blue eyes’.3 Plewman and Rowden finished their security training at Beaulieu together where they were assigned a training mission called the Ninety-Six Hours Scheme. This was a training exercise set up for couriers where the students were required to reconnoitre the area around, including two English towns that they had been assigned. They also had to make arrangements to establish communications between the two towns, which involved setting up ‘live’ and ‘dead’ letter drops, sending ‘veiled language’ messages and recruiting possible informants. This aspect of training was extremely important since most of the female agents were used as couriers, and thus the ‘passing along’ or retrieval of information constituted the bulk of their work. ‘Live’ letter drops were locations where agents met to pass along information. Cafés, train stations and other public establishments were often used in this capacity, since agents were less likely to draw attention to themselves if they mixed among crowds. ‘Dead’ letter drops were physical locations (secret compartments in furniture, hollowed-out trees) where communications could be securely placed by one agent for pickup by another, thereby avoiding any contact between the agents. ‘Veiled language’ was a more basic substitute for code. One agent might write that he was looking forward to a wonderful birthday present on a certain date, which could mean the arrival of another SOE agent. As with her previous training, Rowden did not particularly impress her instructors with her imagination or initiative. Her performance appraisal on this exercise was not encouraging and she was heavily criticised for providing incomplete reports of her activities. Eliane Plewman, however, received a glowing report. The friendship between the two women grew, and fellow friend and SOE agent Robert Maloubier remembers many good nights sharing drinks and playing cards during their training and during the time before they were each assigned their missions. Sadly, those light-hearted times shared by the friends during the late spring of 1943 would never be repeated. Maloubier survived the war. Plewman and Rowden did not.

  By early 1943 the French Resistance movement was becoming better organised and more effective in its efforts to hamper the German war effort. Acts of sabotage were taking place throughout the country, and escape lines for rescued Allied airmen were operating with much success. The British-controlled ‘F’ Section of SOE (‘F’ Section being the department of SOE that was in charge of agents sent into France) had established a number of regional Resistance networks, or circuits, designed for military intelligence-gathering purposes and to assist in Resistance efforts. In an effort to coordinate the regional pockets of Resistance workers, couriers were required to carry messages from agent to agent and group to group. Rowden was informed that she would be sent into Occupied France to act as a courier for the ACROBAT network, run by a man named John Starr. Well aware of the danger involved in being an undercover agent, she prepared her last will and testament, leaving the bulk of her small estate to her mother. While she was keen to begin her mission, Rowden was troubled about the anxiety her departure would cause her mother. She left behind instructions that if anything were to happen to her, her mother should not be told until the last possible moment. On 16 June 1943 Rowden joined two other agents, Noor Inayat Khan and Cecily Lefort, as well as the ‘F’ Section Chief’s assistant, Vera Atkins, at Tangmere Cottage in Sussex. Lefort, code-named Alice, was assigned to act as courier for the JOCKEY network, and Khan, code-named Madeleine, was to act as a wireless operator for the CINEMA network. The group enjoyed a farewell dinner, and later that evening were transported by car to the RAF airfield. The women flew by Lysander, Khan and Lefort in one and Rowden in the other, and landed in a field deep in the heart of Occupied France, not far from the city of Angers. It was a clear, moonlit night, and the women hurried to disembark and unload the planes. Speed was imperative as the planes needed to take to the air before the Germans had time to track them. Rowden and her fellow agents were met by Henri Déricourt, a man who was ostensibly working for SOE but was later proved to be a double agent. He had with him five people, including SOE agents Jack and Francine Agazarian who would be returning to Britain aboard the Lysanders. The new passengers were quickly loaded on to the aircraft and they took off. Déricourt presented Rowden, Lefort and Khan with bicycles, and the women said their goodbyes and went their separate ways. None of the women would ever return home.

  Rowden, code-named Paulette and using the name Juliette Thérèse Rondeau, travelled immediately to the town of Saint-Amour in the Jura region of France. Here she met both John Starr, the ACROBAT organiser, and his wireless operator John Young. Despite his skills as a wireless operator, Young’s French was hampered by an incredibly strong northern English accent. He was encouraged to speak as little as possible, so one of Rowden’s main responsibilities was to travel with Young and talk on his behalf. This put a great deal of pressure on Rowden for, although she was fluent in French, she too spoke the language with a distinctive English accent. Rowden also began her courier duties immediately. Making good use of the bicycle she had been given, she journeyed throughout the area, even going as far as Paris to retrieve agents’ messages so that Young could transmit them back to Britain. Rowden was the sole link between all of the agents in the Jura region, and the Jura’s only wireless operator. It was physically exhausting work, made even more difficult by the constant threat of German roadblocks and the possibility of meeting with agents who were already under surveillance by German authorities. On one of her trips to Marseille, Rowden’s train was boarded by the German police who demanded to see all of the passengers’ identification papers. Worried that the police might recognise that her papers were forged, Rowden locked herself in the train’s bathroom until the Germans had departed. While her courier duties filled her days, Rowden’s evenings were spent in fields, setting up flares and shining flashlights to guide the RAF planes to their parachute drop sites. The arms and ammunition received from these drops enabled the Resistance to inflict numerous attacks of sabotage against the Germans.

  Rowden was responsible for helping to plan and for providing the explosives for a major act of sabotage against the Peugeot plant (an automotive factory that the Germans had ordered to produce war equipment) in Sochaux. Demolition and the use of firearms had always been one of Rowden’s strengths, and she relished the opportunity to put her skills to use. The plant was manufacturing tank turrets (revolving armoured coverings) for the German panzers as well as engine components for the German air force (Luftwaffe), and therefore the Allies were quite anxious to see the factory put out of commission. However, its location near the centre of the town of Sochaux was problematic. The RAF had tried to bomb the factory but had missed their target, which resulted in a lot of civilian casualties. Civilian casualties infuriated the French population and made them just as angry at the British as they were at
their German occupiers. SOE operative Harry Rée had worked with John Starr and Rowden in the ACROBAT network, and now headed up the STOCKBROKER network. With Rowden’s help, Rée formulated a plan in which he approached Robert Peugeot, one of the Peugeot plant directors, and suggested that he help them sabotage his own factory. Peugeot, unhappy working with the Germans, agreed to help, and instructed one his foremen to work with Rée, Rowden and their team of saboteurs. Well-placed explosives soon put an end to the turret and engine production at the Sochaux Peugeot plant.

  After the success of the Peugeot plant mission, things seemed to be going well for the ACROBAT group. Then suddenly, less than a month after Rowden’s arrival in France, John Starr was arrested. Starr’s betrayal by a double agent led to chaos in the Saint-Amour area. The region itself was no longer secure, and Rowden and John Young found themselves on the run. Both went into hiding. Diana found refuge in a small shop in the hamlet of Epy, owned by one of her friends in the Resistance. There she eagerly pitched in and helped in the shop, and her willingness to lend a hand was much appreciated by the shop owner Madame Rheithouse, who stated, ‘I knew she was not accustomed to do such things … she was a woman of refinement and education, but she was without vanity. She helped me in the shop because she said it would help her not be bored.’4 Rowden spent three weeks there before joining Young, in August, at a sawmill just outside the town of Clairvaux. Isolated and in a densely wooded area, the mill seemed to be a secure base for operations. The Resistance movement was quite strong in this area and few people asked any questions. The owner of the sawmill, M. Janier-Dubry, was a strong Resistance supporter and was delighted to be providing refuge for the two British agents. Moreover, the woods surrounding the mill made Rowden feel confident that she could escape undercover if the Germans ever did show up. Rowden lodged with the Juif family, who owned part of the mill, in their beautiful Swiss-chalet-style home. The Juif and the Janier-Dubry families put themselves at considerable risk allowing the two British officers to hide there. The risk was magnified by the fact that Young was continuing to send radio transmissions from the mill, and German radio-detection vehicles were hard at work in the area. However, the Juifs and the Janier-Dubrys were quite fond of Rowden, who happily rolled up her sleeves and helped out around the house, and they were determined to keep her safe. They helped her to alter her appearance and told people she was their cousin Marcelle, who was staying with them to recover from an illness. Rowden was frustrated by having to ‘lie low’, and spent many hours smoking cigarettes and walking through the woods surrounding the mill. Sometimes she was accompanied by Young, and she often spent hours playing with the Juif children. Keeping busy seemed to be her principal goal, and she was extremely anxious to get back to work despite its inherent danger. When questioned by the Juifs on whether she was afraid of being arrested or tortured, Rowden said bluntly, ‘I do not think I will talk. I am not afraid of them.’5