Sarah Helm

by Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins;the Missing Agents of WWII

  It was Vera's job to look meticulously through pockets, checking labels and laundry tags, examining every article of equipment and clothing for any telltale signs that these people had come from England. Then she completed their disguises with a packet of French cigarettes, a recent French newspaper, or perhaps photographs of a “relative” to go in a pocket or a bag. If any last-minute adjustment to clothing was needed, Vera could deftly stitch on a French manufacturer's label or a French-style button. As she knew, the tiniest trick could sometimes perfect a disguise.

  Instructors had warned that Nora was so distinctive she could never be camouflaged, but on this operation Vera felt just as worried about Cicely Lefort's poor French accent and Diana Rowden's English looks. Born in England of Irish descent, forty-three-year-old Cicely had married a French doctor and lived for a number of years in France yet had never lost her English intonation. Diana was thoroughly bilingual, having grown up in the South of France, where her family had a villa and a yacht. But she was English and educated at an English girls' private school, and this showed—even down to the bow in her fair wavy hair.

  The checks complete, Vera gave each agent a chance to see her alone, should they wish. She took Nora up to the bathroom, and as they spoke for a moment on the landing, Vera was relieved to find that she seemed quite relaxed, almost elated. She even commented on a silver bird pinned to Vera's lapel. “You are so clever, Miss Atkins. You always make sure you wear something pretty.” Vera responded by unpinning the brooch and pressing it into Nora's hands.

  Just before ten p.m. a large army Ford station wagon arrived at the cottage. The group were then driven out to the tarmac, where the moonlight was now bright enough to light up the Lysanders. The group got out and stood huddled together as Verity briefly explained takeoff procedures, describing how luggage was stowed under the hinged wooden seat.

  Then Verity nodded to Vera, who moved forward, embracing Nora, Diana, and Cicely and shaking Skepper's hand, before taking several paces back.

  The pilots signalled their passengers to step up to the ladder and climb into the plane. Nora, heaving both her ordinary suitcase and a much heavier one containing her wireless, was the last to board. She was so slight she could hardly get a foot on the ladder, and an airman moved forward to give her a leg up.

  Within moments the engines had started and were left ticking over for several minutes as the pilots carried out their checks. The engines briefly opened up to full throttle and then returned to fine pitch. As the first “Lizzy” turned its nose towards the runway, Vera looked up towards the silhouetted heads in the passenger seats and waved goodbye.

  Back at the cottage, Vera paused only to collect up the few oddments left behind by her agents—a novel, a coat, and a small vanity case—and then asked her driver to take her back to London. The moon was now high in the sky. June had been an excellent month for the Lysanders.

  2.

  Disaster

  Just as Vera's colleagues knew nothing of her background, so nobody I I spoke to in my researches knew what her real role was within SOE. Penelope Torr, F Section's records officer, said she was “nothing special—the same as me.” But Pearl Witherington, perhaps SOE's most outstanding surviving woman agent, said: “For me Vera Atkins was SOE. She still is.”

  Details of Vera's service would be in her personal file, I was told. SOE personal files were still secret. I would have to see the “SOE adviser,” who turned out to be an amiable man in a dark suit. His secretary, Valerie, led me down a deserted corridor in the bowels of the Old Admiralty Building to find him. It got darker, and there was quite a chill. She pointed to where Ian Fleming's office once was, and we talked about the suggestion that Vera was Miss Moneypenny, M's alluring secretary in the James Bond books, as mooted in an obituary. Valerie thought this most unlikely as Fleming worked in naval intelligence, although he might have caught a glimpse of Vera when she came to Room 055a, which was also down here somewhere, along a corridor that connected to the old War Office.

  Up stone steps, Valerie stopped outside a door bearing a picture of Maurice Buckmaster in late middle age, looking kindly, almost ecclesiastical, and smoking a pipe. The door swung open onto a tiny room, and amid a pile of files—stamped “secret” or “most secret”—sat the SOE adviser. “Closed until 2020,” it said on one file identified by a yellow sticker as “pending release.”

  The intention after the war was that all these files would remain secret indefinitely. SOE was closed down in January 1946, its staff sworn to secrecy and its papers locked away. But versions of the SOE story emerged anyway, in particular about the many agents who lost their lives. Sinister conspiracy theories were elaborated about SOE's true wartime role, and debate began about whether the organisation had served any useful purpose at all. So persistent were the questions that an official with experience in secrets was appointed to “advise” the general public by reference to these files. But the questions kept on coming. So now, explained the SOE adviser, the files were finally being opened up, and people could read what happened for themselves.

  However, he added, I would have to wait at least a year or two to see the files, as before their release they were being declassified. This meant that all sensitive material was being weeded out forever. Sensitive material meant anything the people “upstairs”—the MI6 “weeders”—felt should not be seen. I asked if Vera Atkins's file had already gone upstairs, and Valerie went to see.

  In any event, the adviser told me, personal files often had nothing much between the parachute training and the casualty report. “Look at this,” he said, picking up a file on one of the agents, Vera Leigh, which held two or three scraps of paper. “Born, Leeds. Abandoned by mother,” said a note. She had once been put up for a George Cross, but this was not pursued, and there was no explanation why.

  “The fact is that in those days if people died they scrubbed their files because they were of no further interest. You see, effectively whole periods of history were just junked. Only thirteen percent of the files remain.”

  “Why thirteen percent?”

  “I don't honestly know. It was a figure handed to me by my predecessor. ”

  Immediately after the war many files were supposed to have been lost in a fire, but of course, said the adviser, “those conspiracy theorists” did not believe in the fire. They thought the files had been deliberately destroyed as a cover-up.

  Valerie then brought in a thick brown folder; Vera Atkins had not yet gone upstairs.

  The adviser opened it and started to read very fast: “ ‘Rosenberg, alias Atkins. Vera May. ARC number: 334 Bow Street Magistrates 1937. Identity papers: expired Romanian passport.'

  He paused. “That's interesting,” he said.

  I asked what an ARC was.

  “Aliens Registration Certificate,” he replied. “Now, let's see—‘Languages spoken: French, German, English. Status: Single. Political views: None. Private means: Yes. Do you ride, swim, ski, shoot? Answer: Yes. Do you drive a car, a motorcycle or a lorry, do you sail a boat, mountaineer, run, bicycle, fly an aeroplane, box, sketch, or transmit Morse? Answer: No.'

  “She says she is fluent in German and French with some knowledge of Romanian. ‘Countries visited prior to 1939: Romania, France, Turkey, Greece, Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Hungary—etc. What districts are you most familiar with? Sussex.'

  “She was put through the cards and there was ‘no trace.' Everyone was ‘put through the cards'—which meant checked for anything suspect in their background. If they found ‘no trace,' there was ‘nothing recorded against.'

  Vera's personal file contained a jumble of information, but among it all was the hitherto hidden fact that she was still of Romanian nationality, and so an “enemy alien,” when she worked for SOE. “She must have had important backers,” said the SOE adviser, who advised me to find her naturalisation papers “if they haven't been destroyed.”

  Vera always arrived at work by the same black cab
. She had an arrangement with a driver, a Mr. Lane, who collected her from her flat, where she lived with her mother, at Nell Gwynne House, Sloane Avenue, every morning and dropped her outside an office block in Baker Street.

  Through lack of space in Whitehall, Baker Street had become the address for SOE, and several buildings here had acquired discreet plaques saying “Inter Services Research Bureau.” Staff called it “the firm,” “the org,” or “the racket.” Vera told acquaintances she had “a boring little job in Baker Street.”

  The headquarters of SOE was at 64 Baker Street, where the executive director, known as CD, had his office, with most country sections located over the road at Norgeby House. On arrival Vera took the lift up to the second floor and walked down the corridor of F Section to reach her office at the end, overlooking Baker Street, just before the door marked “F.”

  The titles for country section desk officers indicated their country and sometimes, though not always, their role. Maurice Buckmaster, as head of F Section, was simply F; the operations officer, Gerry Morel, was F Ops; the head of planning, Bourne-Paterson (nobody knew his first name), was F Plans; Nicholas Bodington, Buckmaster s deputy (until he was removed for other duties), was FN; and Vera, in June 1943, was FV

  Buckmaster, who caught the bus to work, would usually be in before his staff arrived, and he was always in before Vera, who was last of all to arrive. Once he tried to get every staff officer to sign in every morning, which Vera adamantly refused to do. Mornings, she told people, “are not my time of day.” But she was always in the office in time for Buckmas-ter's morning meeting, held promptly at ten.

  Forty-one-year-old Buckmaster had not been an obvious choice for a top job in SOE. Although he had served in the British Army's Intelligence Corps at the outbreak of the war and was evacuated from Dunkirk, he had no knowledge of or training in guerrilla warfare. The son of a Midlands entrepreneur, Buckmaster had shown an academic bent at Eton and gained an exhibition to study classics at Oxford, which he then could not take up as his father had just gone bankrupt.

  Instead he went on a cycling tour of France and stayed there, taking several jobs but showing a particular flair for public relations. Eventually he secured a responsible post as a manager with the Ford Motor Company in France, and it was his knowledge of French industry, gained with Ford, that caught the attention of SOE. But Buckmaster s superiors had also been impressed by his “tireless zeal.”

  Decision-making in SOE was rarely carried out by discussion. If a view was needed from a colleague, a note was dictated, tucked into a brown envelope, picked up by a passing trolley, and delivered. It would then come back marked “approved,” “I agree,” or sometimes “rubbish” and also marked “F,” or “F Plans,” or perhaps “FV.” Anything important was copied to whoever needed to know. SOE had scores of messengers running around and a large typing pool, and every staff officer had a secretary or even two. Vera, by the end of the war, had three. And although the European country sections were largely in one building—Belgium, Holland, and Poland were just above France—there was little contact between sections for fear of leaks.

  The Ops (Operations) room was on the first floor of Norgeby House and was shared, but each country section had its own separate board with hooks on it. On these boards a duty officer would hang up notices detailing each section's separate operations for the day—usually flights dropping weapons or agents—and then draw a curtain across it.

  Even communication with the high command across the road was mostly carried out on paper. Neither CD nor his senior officers ever felt the need to cross to Norgeby House. Country section heads ran operations without day-to-day direction from above. Periodic council meetings were held to discuss policy, but in general the SOE hierarchy was built on trust, and it went without saying that everyone was working to the same end.

  If, therefore, F needed a view from the top, he could simply mark up a note for CD, AD/E (Assistant Director/Europe), or perhaps for C, head of MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, though relations between these two covert agencies were not good. MI6, protective of its territory, feared that SOE's sabotage operations would endanger the quiet gathering of secret intelligence, which was its domain.

  Also constantly at loggerheads with SOE was Bomber Command, which thought acts of sabotage on the ground less efficient than bombing from the air.

  Country sections had little useful contact with MI5, the Security Service, either, though MI5 was constantly trying to exert oversight over SOE, which it knew (from bitter experience) was wide open to enemy infiltration.

  Buckmaster's section not only had to defend itself against rivals in Whitehall, however, but also was constantly wary of the Free French. General Charles de Gaulle, having set up his government-in-exile in London in June 1940, had established his own secret service department in a house in Duke Street, which ran entirely separate guerrilla operations into France and gathered its own intelligence on the resistance. The fact that the British were setting up their resistance circuits “infringed the sovereignty of France,” according to de Gaulle, so that relations between SOE and the Free French were little short of poisonous. A special section of SOE, known as RF Section, was established purely to coordinate operations with the Free French.

  F Section staff therefore welcomed their morning meeting in Buck-master's office as an important opportunity to talk in confidence to trusted colleagues. Only the inner circle attended the meeting: Major Morel, Major Bourne-Paterson, Major Bodington—if he was in the office—and one or two other senior staff. Buckmaster, whose rank was lieutenant colonel in June 1943, also liked Miss Atkins to be present, because although she was of junior status, her views, when offered, were invariably pertinent. As he had recently noted on Vera's personal file, she had “a fantastically good memory and quick grasp,” whereas he had a tendency to get “enmeshed in detail” and “lacked fixity of purpose,” as his superiors had, in turn, observed about him.

  By June 1943 Vera had informally been assigned not only responsibility for overseeing the women recruits but also the task of intelligence officer, which largely meant sifting all intelligence about life on the ground in France. In her encyclopedic brain Vera stored away the latest information on what papers an agent would need to move about; on whether ration cards were issued monthly or weekly; on the hours of curfew; or on the latest trend in hats in rue Royale. Gleaning the facts from magazines, intelligence sources, and returning agents, she circulated highlights in little leaflets for the staff called “Titbits” or “Comic Cuts” after popular magazines.

  Absorbing such information demanded considerable mental acumen, though as a mere GSO III—a general staff officer grade III, the equivalent of an army staff captain—Vera did not enjoy a grade, salary, or title that reflected her responsibilities. And she was not the only woman at the morning meeting. Penelope Torr, who dealt with records, had the title F Recs and also carried the three nominal “pips” of a staff captain, was present too.

  The mood at F's morning meetings in mid-June 1943 was generally positive. There had been setbacks in the spring—not least the capture of an organiser, Peter Churchill, and his courier, Odette Sansom—but a number of promising new agents had recently been sent out to the field. Vera reported, for example, on the successful departure of several agents during that month's full moon. On the night of June 15–16 she saw off two bright young Canadians, Frank Pickersgill and John Macalister. Dropped by parachute to a reception committee organised by a Prosper subcircuit, the Canadians' mission was to set up their own new circuit, Archdeacon, near the town of Sedan, in the Ardennes region of northeastern France.

  Vera also reported on the double Lysander flight of the following night, carrying Nora Inayat Khan and three others, who landed safely north of Angers. On the ground to meet them was Henri Déricourt, F Section's new air movements officer, who was Buckmaster's prize new recruit. A trick aviator who became a pilot with Air France, Déricourt had escaped to England in 1942 to look for wor
k. Buckmaster, at that time in urgent need of an airman to organise his night landings and pickup operations, had snapped him up and had him parachuted back into France with the alias Gilbert. As all at the morning meeting were agreed, air operations in and out of France were, thanks to Déricourt, running more smoothly now than ever before.

  There was, nevertheless, anxiety in F Section in mid-June. It centred on Francis Suttill, alias Prosper. Educated at Stonyhurst College and a barrister by training, thirty-two-year-old Suttill had shown himself to SOE instructors to be highly resourceful and smarter than most. Although he caught polio as a teenager, leaving him with a slight limp, he had overcome the disability and had displayed a certain athletic daring in training, which Buckmaster had admired. With his obvious flair for leadership, Suttill soon became the natural choice for F Section's most challenging job: to establish a circuit based in Paris, covering a vast chunk of central France. Having supposedly chosen his own alias—Prosper was a fifth-century French theologian who preached predestination— he keenly took up his mission, which was to rebuild blown circuits and then recruit afresh. His commitment to the task was beyond question. Raised in Lille by an English father who worked in the French wool industry and a French mother, Suttill had volunteered for the paratroops, saying: “My one wish is to be used in France.”

  Such had been Suttill's success in recruiting followers that by June 1943 his circuit, first named Physician, was already poised to spearhead a general resistance uprising, planned to coincide with the Allied landings. Though the date of the landings was not yet known, the talk in French resistance circles was that it could happen as soon as autumn 1943. Suttill, always thinking ahead, had reported to London in April that he was already planning for the landings by strategic placement of arms caches. He personally intended to “follow the enemy” as they retreated.