Mathilde was not a pretty girl but she possessed a certain physical attractiveness that made her appealing to both boys and men. She had numerous admirers, and enjoyed an active dating life while she attended the Faculty of Law at the Sorbonne. However, she never completed her law degree, preferring to socialise rather than study. Frustrated that she had to rely on the goodwill of her parents for money, she decided to get a teaching certificate so that she could provide for herself and establish more control over her life. It was during her first teaching placement that she met Maurice Carré. Maurice was a schoolmaster, and Mathilde’s parents did not approve of him, viewing a schoolmaster as beneath their social station. Mathilde herself was undecided about her feelings for Maurice, since he was only one of many admirers with whom she enjoyed spending time. However, she was in her twenties and the time had come for her to be married. Narrowing down her list of suitors, she considered proposals from Maurice and another gentleman. Unable to make up her mind, and never one to let depth of feeling influence her judgement, Mathilde flipped a coin. Maurice it was.
Mathilde and Maurice were married on 18 May 1933. They soon left for North Africa, where Maurice was to be headmaster at a school and Mathilde would work as a teacher. For six years the marriage seemed to work well, but Carré was frustrated that the couple seemed unable to have children, and she was bored with life in North Africa. Aware that her marriage was foundering, Carré searched for a way out. A revelation from her mother-in-law provided her with just such an opportunity. Carré was shocked to learn that Maurice’s father had died in a lunatic asylum, and that Maurice had suffered mumps as a child, rendering him sterile. Horrified by the thought of being married to a man who had a family history of insanity, and furious that Maurice had not told her about his inability to have children, Carré decided to leave her husband. The war in Europe had begun, and Maurice joined the army and was sent to Syria. Carré bid him goodbye and returned to France.
Upon returning to France, Carré immediately volunteered to work as a nurse for the French Red Cross. In April 1940, she was posted to a front-line hospital near the Maginot Line, which was a series of defensive fortifications and tank obstacles that the French had constructed, following the First World War, along their border with Germany. As the Germans smashed through Belgium and into France, the field hospitals became flooded with military and civilian casualties. Carré demonstrated great care for her patients and was untiring in her work. The French armies pulled back under the German onslaught and Carré was transferred to a hospital in Beauvais, just north of Paris. Once again Carré performed well under incredibly trying circumstances, and even received a military citation for her fine work. The French army was on the run, and soon so was Carré. Evacuation after evacuation took place as the hospital units were forced to pull back. Amid the nightly bombings, the stench of death, and the blood and gore of war, Carré proved herself to be a true French soldier. Certainly none of the patients she tended to or the doctors she worked with could have possibly predicted the treachery of which she was capable.
By the middle of June 1940, the Germans had taken Paris, and the war, for France, was effectively over. Carré, who during the evacuations had met and become the lover of a French lieutenant named Jean, found herself pregnant with his child. This was a rather awkward situation for Carré as she was still married to Maurice, but there was no doubt she was pleased about the pregnancy. However, she suffered a miscarriage early in the pregnancy and her relationship with the French lieutenant soon faltered. The defeat of her country and the loss of her unborn child, and lover, saddened Carré, but there was no time to be spent mourning. Her survival skills kicked into high gear. Thousands of French civilians had fled south to escape the advancing German armies, and Carré followed them. After the surrender of France, the country was divided into two zones. The Germans occupied the northern and western areas of France, while an unoccupied zone (called Vichy France), which was essentially a German puppet state, was established in the south of France. Carré reached the city of Toulouse in the unoccupied zone and, despite her refugee status, managed to provide for herself quite well. By frequenting the cafés, and flirting a little, she managed to keep well fed, and always managed to maintain a roof over her head. Clearly she was well aware of how to use men to her advantage! It was during one evening in a café that she met a handsome Polish soldier named Roman Czerniawski. He had been an Intelligence Officer in the Polish army, and after the collapse of Poland, in September 1939, he had joined the French to continue the fight against the Germans. Like Carré, Czerniawski had also made his way to the unoccupied zone after the fall of France. Czerniawski was determined to use his intelligence background to create a large espionage network, funded by London, which would operate out of Paris and send vital information to the British. After several weeks, he shared his plan with Carré, who was only too happy to join her new friend (and lover) in such an exciting enterprise. Carré travelled to Vichy, the capital city of the unoccupied zone, where she received instruction in espionage techniques from several officers who had served in the French Intelligence Bureau before the fall of France. She was taught basic espionage, including recruitment of agents, methods of coding, and the delivery and dissemination of information. Carré lodged at the Hôtel des Ambassadeurs, where her habit of scratching at the hotel’s leather chairs earned her the nickname ‘The Cat’ (La Chatte) from some American reporters who were staying there. Czerniawski liked the name, and Carré adopted it as her code name.
Upon completing her training in Vichy, Carré planned to return to Paris, where she and Czerniawski would share a flat and could begin their intelligence-gathering work. Yet before she could leave, her husband Maurice showed up, begging her to return to North Africa with him. Carré had no intention of going with Maurice, but in an effort to avoid a scene she told him she would go to Paris to collect her things, and would return and meet up with him so that they could travel to Algiers together. She never did return, so Maurice left for Algiers alone. He was eventually killed during the Allied invasion of Italy, never having seen Carré again. Carré and Czerniawski, meanwhile, established themselves in Paris. They made numerous contacts and recruited a number of influential Frenchmen to assist them in their intelligence-gathering endeavours. Their organisation was called Interallié. After obtaining a short-wave radio, they were able to establish contact with their recruits in a number of French cities. Carré worked as both a recruiter and a courier. Both she and Czerniawski were responsible for receiving all of the agents’ reports, verifying them and collating them into one larger weekly report that was sent to London. The extensive nature of the reports they received revealed how well organised the Interallié was. They had agents reporting the strength of the land forces in each French sector, the location of fuel dumps and power stations, the number of ships seen in certain harbours on any given day, pill box locations, invasion exercises, the number of genuine and dummy aircraft at given airfields and numerous other vital bits of intelligence. Carré herself would often gather information by flirting with German officers in the Paris cafés. She cultivated their attentions and they often let vital bits of information slip out during their conversations with her. Her café flirtations put Carré at great personal risk. Not only was she making herself known to the enemy, but she also risked being labelled as a ‘collaborateur’ and being assaulted by the French civilians, who might view her flirtations with the Germans as treason! Aside from the use of her feminine wiles, Carré was quite imaginative in her intelligence-gathering schemes. On one occasion, after noticing a For Sale sign in a small café located just opposite Orly airport, Carré approached the owner as a potential buyer and asked permission for her architectural advisor to make some sketches of the property for possible alterations. The ‘architectural advisor’ then proceeded to document the types of planes at the airport, as well as the locations of the hangars and anti-aircraft installations, while Carré conversed with the café owner. Carré and Czerniaw
ski also combed the daily newspapers, searching for news items describing the political situation in France as well as propaganda items that might interest the British. Every Wednesday, Carré carried their full written military report to the Gare de Lyon (train station) where she handed it to another agent (an example of a ‘live’ letter drop). This agent would board the train to Marseille and then proceed to conceal the message underneath the plaque located above the train’s lavatory (an example of a ‘dead’ letter drop). An agent from Marseille would collect the report and forward it on to both Vichy and London.
The Interallié was extremely successful in its work. So successful, in fact, that the Germans realised that there was a highly organised and efficient Resistance circuit operating right underneath their noses. The Germans became increasingly vigilant, and radio-detection finders combed the streets of Paris. Suspicious persons were often arrested at railway stations or simply grabbed off the street. It was becoming more and more dangerous to be involved in undercover work. Carré soon discovered this on one of her recruiting and surveillance trips to the French coast. She had been sent to the French port of Brest, both to recruit fishermen for service in Interallié, and to review and report back on the damage done by a recent British air raid. Knowing that the citizens of Brest were largely pro-British in their sentiments, Carré decided to gain their confidence by pretending to be an Englishwoman. She spoke to the citizens using a thick British accent, and in doing so attracted the attention of an undercover Gestapo (German police) agent. He followed her on the train back to Paris and approached her as she was eating breakfast in a café. Engaging her in conversation the agent was quite shocked to discover that Mathilde spoke with a perfect French accent. When he revealed that he was a Gestapo inspector and that he had followed her because of her use of an English accent, Carré was terrified. The inspector demanded to know why she had visited Brest. Carré had to think fast. Deciding it was best to play the part of a silly and frivolous woman, she replied, ‘There has been so much talk about the RAF raids that, as an inquisitive woman with plenty of time on her hands, I wanted to see it for myself. To amuse myself I put on an English accent to find out the reactions of the townspeople.’4 The Gestapo inspector simply shook his head and laughed, satisfied that Carré was nothing more than a bored housewife.
By October 1941 the increase of German activity in their neighbourhood forced Carré and Czerniawski to move to another part of Paris. Czerniawski travelled to London where he met with Special Operations Executive (SOE) officers, and was told that SOE would soon be dropping its own agents into France to assist Interallié with its espionage and sabotage objectives. This was great news for Interallié, and there was little reason for the group not to be optimistic about the continued success of their network. However, after Czerniawski returned from London, two things happened that would ultimately have devastating results for both Interallié and Mathilde Carré. First, Czerniawski brought a woman named Renée Borni into the group. Her code name was Violette, and she was given the job of decoding radio messages. She also served as Czerniawski’s mistress, and was extremely jealous of Carré. Carré, who had also been romantically involved with Czerniawski, loathed her new rival. Secondly, one of Interallié’s agents was arrested by the Gestapo in Cherbourg. The agent’s name was Raul Kiffer (code name Kiki), and he was apprehended by an Abwehr sergeant by the name of Hugo Bleicher. Bleicher was a patient and skilled interrogator, and he convinced Kiffer that Interallié was on the verge of collapse and that the only way he could avoid being handed over to the Gestapo was to cooperate with Bleicher. Kiffer was used to contact a second Interallié agent, who revealed the address of the group’s headquarters. With Hugo Bleicher hot on the trail, Interallié’s days were numbered.
On 17 November 1941, Bleicher and the German police burst through the door of Czerniawski’s apartment. Both he and Renée Borni (Violette) were taken into custody. Czerniawski refused to talk, but Borni was determined to save her own life. She offered to identify one of Interallié’s most important agents, ‘The Cat’, for Bleicher. Bleicher encouraged Borni to tell him everything she knew, and he kept her with him as he organised surveillance of the apartment. The pair watched and waited. Carré, who had spent the night at her friend Mirielle’s home, headed back to Czerniawski’s apartment early the next morning. Although she was warned that German police had been sighted in the neighbourhood, Carré was determined to return to the apartment to collect some of her personal items. As she neared the apartment, she noticed that there was quite a bit of activity on the street, which was unusual for that time of the morning. Carré was approached by the German police and asked to show her identity card. When it was returned to her, she continued up the street, careful to not look at Czerniawski’s apartment. Carré sensed she was being followed. She paused outside a print shop and pretended to look at the window display. Here she was approached by another policeman, and questioned as to why she was out on the streets so early in the morning. Carré quickly concocted a story that she was out shopping for prints, but the shop was closed. She declined the policeman’s invitation to lunch, and retraced her route back from where she had come. Passing by Czerniawski’s apartment for the second time, she glanced quickly at it and saw that the front door had been broken in. A German officer came out of the doorway and arrested Carré on the spot. As she was led away, Carré was shocked to see a familiar face standing with what was obviously a German officer. Recalling the incident, Carré stated flatly, ‘I saw Violette on the pavement with a man in mufti … He was obviously asking her if I was The Cat for she nodded her head.’5 Carré spent the night in a cold, damp cell in the women’s prison of La Santé. Early the next morning she was taken into Paris for interrogation, and formally introduced to Hugo Bleicher. Bleicher informed her that the Germans expected Carré to work for them, and that if she wanted to live she would agree to this arrangement. He even went so far as to promise her freedom by the end of the day! Having confiscated her diary, Bleicher knew that Carré was supposed to meet with one of Interallié’s agents later that morning. Bleicher escorted Mathilde to the rendezvous point, and when the unfortunate agent approached Carré he was arrested. From there Bleicher and Carré travelled to her friend Mirielle’s home to collect all of the Interallié money that had been in Carré’s possession. Both Mirielle and her husband were arrested. After this Bleicher forced Carré to call her uncle, who was also involved in Interallié, to arrange a meeting with him and another Interallié agent, her childhood friend René Aubertin. Carré complied, and both her uncle and Aubertin were apprehended. Incredibly, at the end of this horrific day Carré asked about Bleicher’s promise to free her! Bleicher’s response was that she was now free but that it was too dangerous for her to be released because of the possible backlash against her for her role in the day’s arrests. He explained that she was in his protective custody and that he would take good care of her. That evening, the two became lovers.
Bleicher continued to use Carré as a decoy so that he could arrest the agents of the Interallié. Carré would arrange a meeting with a certain agent, and at the meeting Bleicher would make the arrest. The system worked well, since once the arrest was made the agent could not inform anyone else of Carré’s duplicity. Bleicher also recovered one of Interallié’s radio transmitters, which he used with devastating results. He had Carré write a message to London indicating that Czerniawski and Renée Borni had been captured, but that she was willing to take control of Interallié and continue to run the network. Carré composed hundreds of messages to London, each containing misinformation planted by the Germans, while another captured wireless operator transmitted them. Much to Carré’s chagrin, Renée Borni was brought in to code the messages. The two women continued to detest one another and Carré, rather understandably, could not forgive Borni for betraying her to the Germans. Changing her code name from ‘The Cat’ to ‘Victoire’, Carré was completely successful in duping the British. The proof came when Carré sent a re
quest for money so that she could pay her agents. London directed her to an apartment house in Paris where she collected the money. Clearly she had gained London’s trust. Perhaps her most successful ploy against the British involved the German ships the Prinz Eugen, the Scharnhorst, and the Gneisenau. The Germans were having difficulty getting these warships out of Brest harbour, as the Royal Navy lay in wait just outside, ready to pounce. While the British were successful in keeping the German ships bottled up, their own ships were vulnerable to German air attack, and the Royal Navy desperately wanted to put these ships to work elsewhere. The Royal Air Force (RAF) attacked the German ships in Brest harbour, hoping to damage them so badly that there would be no risk of the Germans sending them into the open sea. Virtually no damage was done to the German ships by the RAF bombs, but Carré sent numerous messages to the British that the ships were badly damaged and out of commission. The British believed Carré’s reports, and relaxed their vigil on Brest harbour, removing most of the ships from the blockade. On the evening of 11 February 1942, the German warships broke out of Brest and reached the open sea, free to prey on Allied shipping.
Women who Spied for Britain Page 14
