The double agent who had betrayed John Starr was not finished with his treachery. It was, in fact, Henri Déricourt, the man who had met Rowden on the night she landed by Lysander and who was employed by SOE to organise all clandestine air movements in northern France. He had been dropped into France in January 1943, and, despite the concerns and suspicions that were voiced by several SOE agents about his loyalty, SOE continued to allow him to remain at his post until February 1944. During this time, a large number of SOE agents fell into German hands as a result of the information Déricourt provided to the Gestapo (German secret police). On 15/16 November 1943, Déricourt supervised the landing of five new SOE agents. The Germans had been made aware of the landing, and attempted to tail the agents from their drop site. Three of the agents were tracked to the train station where they boarded a train for Paris. Upon arriving in Paris, the three were arrested, and, tragically, one of them succumbed to Gestapo interrogation tactics. The SOE agent, named Benoit, was supposed to meet Rowden and Young to join up with the STOCKBROKER network. Neither Rowden nor Young had ever met Benoit, so he carried with him a letter from Young’s wife in order to verify his identity. The Germans immediately sent one of their own officers, in place of Benoit, to rendezvous with Rowden and Young in Lons-le-Saunier. Young received a message that a new agent had arrived in the area, and both he and Rowden were excited about the agent’s arrival, hoping perhaps that he might bring news from home or some letters from loved ones. Always cautious at first, Rowden and Young arranged to meet with the man at one of the homes surrounding the sawmill. A man calling himself Benoit arrived at the mill early in the morning of 18 November 1943. He produced the letter from Young’s wife, which convinced the pair to trust him, and yet Young apparently still had misgivings about the newcomer, though he chose to ignore them. This was to prove a deadly mistake.
Benoit told both Rowden and Young that he needed to go back into town to retrieve a suitcase he had left there, but indicated that he would return to the mill later in the day. Plagued by a sense of unease, Young spent the rest of the day moving his wireless transmitter to different hiding places around the mill. Rowden ventured in to Lons-le-Saunier to meet a Resistance friend, Henri Clerc, for a drink. She told him of the new agent’s arrival and they were both eventually joined by Benoit at the café. Chatting and drinking together, Rowden and Clerc were quite at ease with the newcomer. Benoit quizzed them both about the situation in the area, asking questions about Gestapo activity and whether the two were afraid of being arrested. Rowden dismissed the idea of being frightened, explaining, ‘The Gestapo interpreter was on our side, and tipped them off when action was to be taken.’6 At around six o’clock in the evening of 18 November, Rowden and Benoit returned to the mill and walked up the cobblestone road to the Juif home. Unbeknown to Rowden, Benoit was flashing a torch signal behind his back to allow the German police to follow his trail. A member of the Resistance who was supposed to meet with Rowden, Young and Benoit spotted several German police cars tailing Rowden, and dashed off to warn the others. Unfortunately Diana had no such warning. German police burst through the doors of the Juif farmhouse, startling Young, who was playing chess, and Madame Juif, who was cooking dinner. Rowden, who had been chatting with Benoit, held her nerve as the twenty or so Feldgendarmerie (German military police charged with policing matters in occupied territory), armed with machine guns, stormed the house. Both Rowden and Young were immediately arrested and taken to the Lons-le-Saunier police station. Rowden was locked in a cell by herself, but could hear Young’s cries as he was tortured during his interrogation. He was eventually executed at Mauthausen on 6 September 1944. Later that evening, the Germans returned to the sawmill to search all the homes more thoroughly. However, in their absence, the Resistance had sneaked in and removed Young’s wireless set.
Rowden was taken to Paris the next day and kept at the infamous Avenue Foch for two weeks, during which she was interrogated by German counter-intelligence. Upon her arrival, Rowden was shocked to see her former organiser, John Starr, comfortably situated and apparently collaborating with the Germans. Starr had, in an effort to save himself, agreed to ‘assist’ the Germans in minor ways, either by making other agents feel more comfortable or by using his considerable artistic skills to create artwork for them. He did enjoy quite a comfortable period at Avenue Foch but was eventually transferred to a concentration camp where he managed to survive the war. Captured agents who passed through Avenue Foch definitely questioned his loyalty, and after the war an investigation was launched into his relationship with the Germans. However, there was not enough evidence to prosecute him and no criminal charges were ever laid.
Unlike Starr, Rowden had no interest in working with the Germans. Despite intensive interrogation she told them nothing, and the Germans finally realised that she was a useless source of information. Rowden left her mark on the walls of 84 Avenue Foch with an inscription, discovered by the Allies in October 1944, which read, ‘S/O D. H. Rowden No: 4193 W.A.A.F arrived 22.11.43 and left 5.12.43.’ She was eventually transferred to Fresnes prison on 5 December 1943, and it was during her time here that she earned the gratitude of fellow SOE agents Odette Sansom and Peter Churchill. Sansom and Churchill were lovers, and been caught together the previous April. Churchill has often told the story about the moment he spotted Odette in a holding pen at Avenue Foch, and, though under guard, slipped over to her so that they could exchange a few words. He recalled,
I slipped up close to Odette, and as she slipped up close to me with her back to the sentry, a girl I had never seen before but who was patently English to her fingertips, stood between me and the guard so that he could not see my mouth moving. Despite my anxiety not to miss a second of the golden opportunity to speak with Odette, I was nevertheless instinctively conscious of the girl’s unselfish act which included a delicacy of feeling that made her turn about and face the German so as not to butt in on our privacy. I could not imagine what this refined creature with reddish hair was doing in our midst. ‘Who is she?’ I asked Odette. ‘Diana Rowden,’ she replied, ‘one of us.’7
It was a brave move that Peter Churchill never forgot.
On 13 May 1944, Rowden, Yolande Beekman, Madeleine Damerment, Eliane Plewman, Andrée Borrel, Vera Leigh, Sonia Olschanezky and Odette Sansom (all SOE agents) were brought from Fresnes prison to Avenue Foch, where they spent the afternoon together. It was a beautiful day, and the women enjoyed the chance to catch up and share their experiences. Odette Sansom remembered the women sharing a lipstick and having tea, and John Starr even dropped in and gave the women some chocolate. Later that afternoon the agents were chained together and transported by train to a civil prison at Karlsruhe. Conditions there, while not comfortable, were not horrendous. Food was adequate, and the female prisoners were expected to do manual labour, such as sewing and food preparation. The women were separated and placed in cells with German civil prisoners. Each cell was long and narrow, and had a spyhole in the door. There was a toilet, a folding table and two plank beds with straw-filled mattresses. A bell rang at 6.30 a.m. to start the day, and all of the prisoners were expected to wash and tidy their cell. Breakfast would be pushed through a hatch in their cell door and then the women would line up for inspection. Weather permitting, there would be a half hour of exercise in the prison yard, during which the prisoners were expected to walk around in two circles, and then their time after lunch was devoted to work. Dinner was followed by an early bedtime. Had they remained there, the women may have survived the war. Yet early in the morning on 6 July 1944, Diana Rowden, Andrée Borrel, Vera Leigh and Sonia Olschanezky were told to prepare for a journey. Two men from the Gestapo escorted them on the 90-mile trip to the Natzweiler concentration camp.
Natzweiler has the dubious distinction of being the only German concentration camp located on French soil. Located in the French province of Alsace, the camp was surrounded by majestic mountains. The Nazis opened the camp in 1941, and by the time Rowden passed through its
gates Natzweiler had already claimed thousands of victims. On 6 July 1944, it claimed four more. Rowden, Leigh, Borrel and Olschanezky arrived at the camp during the late afternoon. Prisoners Brian Stonehouse (SOE wireless operator, who was arrested in October 1943) and Albert Guérisse (organiser of an escape line for Allied pilots, who was arrested in March 1943) both witnessed the four women being brought into the camp. The fact that the women had been brought to Natzweiler, which was a men’s camp, sparked rumours among the male inmates that the women were there to be executed. Later in the evening, a curfew was imposed on the camp, which required all male inmates to be locked down in their barracks with the windows closed. Clearly something was afoot, and the Germans wanted as few witnesses as possible. According to eyewitness statements the women were taken, one by one, out of their cells to the crematorium, where they were told that they were to receive an injection against typhus. Instead they were each injected with phenol. Phenol is an extremely toxic chemical, and the Germans found these injections, whether they be administered into a person’s vein or directly into the heart, an inexpensive and quick method of execution. Death was almost instantaneous, and the bodies of four women were immediately placed in the crematory ovens.
Conflicting testimony regarding the death of Rowden and her three colleagues created a lot of controversy at the Natzweiler war crimes trial. An interpreter posted at the camp, Walter Schultz, testified that the camp executioner, Peter Straub, had told him that the women were only unconscious when they were placed in the crematorium, and that ‘the fourth woman as she was being put into the oven regained consciousness … There you can see how she scratched me … Look how she defended herself.’8 However, the camp doctor dismissed the idea that the women were burned alive, and provided different, yet equally grisly, testimony about the women’s deaths, stating,
A sudden cramp spread over the whole body. The breathing stopped, the pupils of the eyes rolled upward, the muscles of the face were paralysed … followed by complete muscular collapse … the face took on a waxen colour, the lips lost colour, the body became limp, the pupils of the eyes again returned to their normal state and the eyes were half closed … the air escaped out of the lungs, caused by the paralysis. The pulse could not be felt anymore, and breathing stopped entirely.9
Whatever the truth, the horror of both versions is undeniable.
Rowden’s mother waited anxiously for news of her daughter’s fate. In October 1944, several months after Rowden’s execution, her mother received a letter from the War Office, saying that London had been ‘out of touch with Diana, and that under the circumstances she must be considered missing’.10 This was followed by a letter in December 1945, which stated, ‘Diana was very keen on this work, and the only aspect of it which troubled her considerably was the thought of the anxiety which you would suffer if you lacked all news … we now know that she was unhappily arrested towards the end of November 1943.’11 Mrs Rowden received a final letter, in April 1946, which stated, ‘The girls were or appeared to be in good health and bore themselves with courage and were utterly defiant in their attitude to the S.S. … all who came into contact with Diana during the time of her imprisonment have spoken most highly of her courage and morale.’12
Diana Rowden was twenty-nine years old when she died. No single-subject biography has yet been written about her life, nor has she been the subject of any movies or television programs. Perhaps this is because she was not quite as glamorous as some of her counterparts. Yet her bravery and devotion to duty mark her as one of SOE’s finest agents. Maurice Buckmaster, head of SOE’s French Section, certainly felt Diana’s story needed to be remembered; in 1957 he told author Elizabeth Nicholas that ‘the stories of some others … had to a certain degree eclipsed her magnificent record’.13 In France, Rowden was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre and appointed a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur. In Britain she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) and Mentioned in Dispatches. Rowden’s name has been registered with the Scottish National War Memorial located in Edinburgh Castle and with the Runnymede Memorial in Surrey. Her name can also be found inscribed on the Valençay SOE Memorial, which was unveiled in 1991 on the anniversary of the first ‘F’ Section agent being sent in to France. This memorial’s Roll of Honour lists the names of all SOE agents who died for French freedom. The FANY Memorial at St Paul’s church, Knightsbridge, also bears her name. A watercolour of Diana Rowden and her three comrades, painted by former SOE agent Brian Stonehouse, now hangs in the Special Forces Club in London, England. At Natzweiler concentration camp, now open to the public as a historical site, a simple plaque hangs on the wall of the crematorium, commemorating the lives of Diana Rowden and her fellow agents:
‘À la mémoire des quatre femmes britanniques et
françaises parachutées exécutées dans ce camp’
Borrel, Andrée
Leigh, Vera
Olschanezky, Sonia
Rowden, Diana
Finally, if one looks carefully, a small plaque memorialising Rowden can be found between two stained-glass windows on the inside wall of Tilford church in Surrey. Diana Rowden is remembered.
6
Odette Sansom (1912–95)
Code Name: Lise
Odette Sansom made things happen. Not content to be a mere spectator in life, she went after what she wanted and, through the sheer force of her personality and her unending resourcefulness, she was usually successful. Throughout her life she seemed to have set a series of goals for herself, and one by one she achieved them. After her capture by the Germans in 1943, Sansom’s only goal was to endure and survive the horrors that awaited her. Of the sixteen FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) and WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force) agents that were arrested in France, only four returned home. One of these women was Odette Sansom.
Odette Marie Céline Brailly was born 28 April 1912 in Amiens, France, to Yvonne and Gaston Brailly. A younger brother, Louis, followed a year later. Odette’s life was touched by war very early on, with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The Germans had launched their western attack by swinging down through Belgium and into France, and Odette’s home town of Amiens lay directly in the path of the German war machine. Heavy bombardment by the Germans greatly damaged the city of Amiens, and German occupation forces moved in during March 1914. Her father, who was employed at the local bank, joined the French army, and his military career was marked by a number of acts of extreme heroism. In October 1918, Sergeant Brailly was stationed at Verdun, and discovered that two of the men in his platoon were missing. He raced back to the front line, and found his two wounded comrades. Attempting to drag both men to safety, Sergeant Brailly was killed by a direct hit from a German shell, a month before the Armistice was signed. Brailly was eventually awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille Militaire for his brave actions on that fateful day.
Just prior to Brailly’s death, British General Haig launched a massive Allied offensive against the Germans in Amiens, sending the German armies reeling into retreat. British soldiers billeted at the Brailly home while the Allied armies continued their push towards Germany. Six-year-old Odette enjoyed the attentions of the soldiers and the treats they shared with her. She also missed her father. Odette’s formative years were marked by fear and tragedy, and by the end of the war she had developed two things. The first was an affection for British soldiers; the second was a gritty determination to survive. Moreover, the seed for her later success as an undercover agent was planted, early on, by her grandfather. In a 1986 interview, Sansom recalled how each Sunday, after church, she and her brother would walk with her mother and grandparents to her father’s grave. Her grandfather told her many times that ‘there is going to be another war. It will be your duty, both of you, to do as well as your father did.’1
Sansom listened to those words for years, and they had a deep impact on her future character development.
Odette was a sickly child, suffering from both polio, whic
h for a time both blinded and paralysed her, and rheumatic fever. Believing that the Normandy sea air would improve her overall health, Odette’s mother, Yvonne, relocated the family to Boulogne, where Odette spent countless hours hiking, and exploring the Normandy coast and countryside. As she grew older, Odette blossomed into a beautiful and vivacious young woman. She was educated at the Convent of Sainte-Thérèse, where the nuns noted in her school reports that Odette was quite bright and had a good sense of humour, but that she also demonstrated the tendency to be quite petulant and obstinate.2 Odette left school at age eighteen, and a year later married Roy Sansom, an Englishman whom she met while he was visiting France. Ironically, he also happened to be the son of one of the officers who had been billeted with the Brailly family during the First World War. Roy Sansom worked in the hotel industry, and he and his bride eventually settled in London. Odette bore three daughters – Francoise in 1932, Lily in 1934 and Marianne in 1936 – and devoted the next several years to motherhood and keeping house. She also kept abreast of current events, and watched with apprehension as the clouds of war once again appeared over Europe. The German armies were once more on the move. One by one, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark and Norway fell before the German onslaught. From her home in Kensington, Sansom, along with the rest of the world, watched breathlessly to see if France and Britain could halt the German advance. On 10 May 1940, the Germans smashed through the Ardennes Forest, battering Allied defences and forcing the French and British back to the sea. By 16 June, France had surrendered, and Sansom was already giving thought to how she could best assist the war effort.
Women who Spied for Britain Page 11
