Antelme was given the finest courier Vera had in training, Madeleine Damerment, a remarkable young woman who had escaped from France after being involved in the highly dangerous work of rescuing Allied prisoners. A devout Catholic, she had made her home in England, at a French convent in Hitchin. “She does not know how many prisoners she handled but said it was a considerable number,” said an official who interviewed Damerment on her arrival in England. “She was modest and looked upon the whole matter as something very natural. She said many French women are willing to do this sort of work every day.”
Antelme s radio operator for the mission was an experienced man named Lionel Lee. As always, the agents were told before departure that their task was a risky one, but nobody told Damerment or Lee of the most immediate and potentially catastrophic risk they faced. They were to be dropped to a reception committee organised by Nora's circuit, now called Phono. Furthermore, the plans for the drop had been made over Nora's radio, despite yet further fears—now shared by several staff officers, including Gerry Morel and Penelope Torr—that she might be in German hands.
If Vera had her own renewed doubts about Nora, she made little obvious attempt to make them known. Buckmaster was in no mood to change his mind about the planned drop, and her personal relationship with him had never been more delicate. While Antelme, Damerment, and Lee were waiting to fly out to France, her own naturalisation application was being decided, and at no time since joining SOE had Vera been more determined to maintain Buckmaster s support.
Yet somebody did instruct Antelme, in a note on his mission statement, to “cut completely with the Phono circuit on landing,” which suggested an attempt by a hidden hand to warn him of possible penetration. And in the days before the drop Vera certainly invited Antelme himself to look at Nora's recent wireless messages and make up his own mind as to whether she was free. After all, Antelme knew Nora as well as anyone and was widely believed to have developed an intimate affection for her when they were thrown together, hiding out in Paris the previous July. Had Vera been entirely sure of Nora's fist herself, no consultation with Antelme would have been necessary. In any event, Vera made it very clear to anyone who asked later that Antelme was reassured when he saw Nora's messages, and it had been his own personal decision to go.
The flight was delayed for several days owing to bad weather, but on the evening of February 29 the skies suddenly cleared. The prearranged BBC message was broadcast to the reception committee, who then knew that they were to prepare to receive agents on the ground near Rambouil-let. The flight was cleared to go, and Vera was on the tarmac at Temps-ford to see the agents off.
The Halifax, due to take off at 2100 hours, was even able to leave a little early. On his return the pilot reported that the lights from the reception committee on the ground had been particularly good.
Penelope Torr told me that Antelme was by no means reassured by reading Nora's messages. “He knew he would not be coming back. You see, by this time we were engaged—well, anyway, he had been talking to me of things we might do after the war. He took me out to dinner on Valentine's Night, before he was due to go. That was when he told me he would not come back. He had a premonition.”
“Yet he still wanted to go?”
“I know,” she said. “I can't explain it. There was a very unreal atmosphere in the office at that time.”
By early March nothing had been heard from Lionel Lee, Antelme s radio operator, but strange messages had come over from Nora's radio saying that, on landing, Antelme had fractured his skull. Subsequent messages gave bizarre medical reports on his worsening condition. London sent messages back giving Antelme s medical history for the French doctors and cheering him with the news that he had won an Order of the British Empire (OBE). Antelme was “very pleased and touched by the award,” said one reply from the field. Then a week later he had “deteriorated,” and on May 2 it was announced that he “died after an attack of meningitis.” He was “buried by moonlight,” and “deepest sympathy” was sent to his family.
Penelope Torr produced an analysis of these messages and even sought the opinion of a doctor, who said the position of the head fracture as described in one message was “very unusual for a landing accident.” Penelope's analysis, however, went unheeded, and the next time she raised questions about messages from the field—by taking her concerns to an MP—she was removed from her job for “letting sentiment override her duty.”
In April 1944 the date of the Allied landings was still not known, but SOE's role in the runup to D-Day was now clear to every agent: all circuits were to organise the destruction of German lines of communication in order to prevent enemy troops reaching the landing beaches. D-Day action messages directing circuits to blow up railways, telephone lines, fuel depots, and dams could now go out at any time.
The briefing of agents going out to the field at this moment demanded the utmost calm, and so Vera's presence at Orchard Court was often required; she was now at the height of her powers. On March 24 she had been issued her certificate of British naturalisation. Just two weeks later, on Buckmaster's recommendation, she secured a promotion and was at last officially designated F Section's intelligence officer, with the symbol “F Int.”
Among the agents whom Vera was now briefing for their first mission was a spirited, attractive young woman by the name of Violette Szabo. Born in Paris, Violette was the daughter of a British First World War veteran, Charles Bushell, who had met and married a Frenchwoman after serving in France. The Bushell family had returned to live in England, and Violette had grown up in Brixton, south London, where as a teenager she worked at Woolworth's and gained a reputation in shooting galleries as a talented shot. In 1939, soon after the outbreak of war, Violette married a French Foreign Legionnaire named Etienne Szabo, and by the time she walked into Vera's room at Orchard Court, she was, at twenty-three, a war widow with a baby. Violette's instructors said she was “mature” in certain ways “but in others very childish.” Vera was impressed.
“You have probably not met this young woman who is a new and fairly promising trainee,” Vera wrote to the SOE finance department. “Mrs. Szabo has a one-year-old child and is very anxious to know, at once, what pension arrangements would be made for her in the event of her going to the field. Provision for her child is such a primary consideration to her that I am sure she feels unsettled about her training and future until this question has been dealt with … I wish we could give more precise assurance to our women agents with children.” A note on Violettes file from a FANY officer read: “This girl has a young baby. I wonder if she fully realises what she is doing.”
Sorting out the affairs of women agents such as Violette was now taking up much of Vera's attention, but if she didn't do it, nobody else would. Suddenly there was so little time. In March alone six women were infiltrated into France to work for F Section circuits, the highest number in any month so far. Vera had guided each through training and preparation and seen each of them depart. In April six more women were dropped or landed in France, including Violette, who landed by parachute with her organiser on April 5, with the cover story that she was Corinne Reine Le Roy (taking her French mother's maiden name), a commercial secretary. Her mission was to find out if a suspect subcircuit had indeed been penetrated. After ascertaining beyond doubt that it was blown, Violette flew back to England three weeks later.
As D-Day became imminent, doubts arose again in the signals room about certain F Section wireless operators, and by the end of April senior staff officers felt such concerns could no longer be ignored. Gerry Morel and Major Bourne-Paterson had analysed back traffic, and together they told Buckmaster precisely how far they thought the penetration had spread. Nora was captured—of that Morel was now certain. Anyone who flew to her circuit must have landed directly in German hands. Many other connecting circuits must have been contaminated, and Marcel Rousset was one of several further wireless operators who had clearly been in enemy hands for some time. Also now suspect
, said Morel, was the Archdeacon circuit set up by Pickersgill and Macalister.
The implications for Buckmaster were unthinkable. Just as he was about to realise Colonel Gubbins's command by getting a maximum number of agents into the field ahead of D-Day, he was being told by his two most senior lieutenants that several of his most valued circuits had been penetrated.
It was not until the following month that Buckmaster finally accepted some of the evidence of penetration. Even then, in a memorandum on the matter to his superior officer, he pleaded that since the collapse of Prosper “there had been no reason to believe that Nurse was captured.” He failed to mention the many earlier warnings. And against the typed letters of her call sign Nurse, Buckmaster wrote carefully, in his own handwriting, Nora's official name, “Princess Inayat Khan.”
Buckmaster still rejected Morel's conclusion that Archdeacon was also blown. Morel, fearing that Pickersgill and Macalister's subcircuits had contact with other groups dangerously close to areas where the landings might take place, was determined to convince Buckmaster before it was too late. The fear was that Germans, posing as SOE agents and fully armed by SOE, might now be taking up positions near the landing beaches in the guise of French resistance fighters. By now senior figures in MI5 knew of these dangers and were urgently voicing precisely these concerns.
Morel's recourse was to test Archdeacon's integrity conclusively by speaking with Pickersgill in person by means of an “S phone,” a directional microwave transceiver that allowed air-to-ground communication. On May 8 the contact was arranged, and flying overhead at an agreed location, he began to ask Pickersgill questions. The person on the ground spoke English with a heavy guttural accent, Morel reported. It was not Pickersgill. Buckmaster, however, was still not convinced, maintaining that the voice must have been distorted by “atmospheric conditions,” and he ordered that drops to Pickersgill and Macalister should continue even now.
On the evening of June 5, 1944, as the first vessels of the D-Day invasion fleet were almost in sight of the French shore, hundreds of SOE action messages were broadcast to circuits, and within hours messages came back to the signals room in Baker Street from wireless operators reporting that sabotage operations had begun. Overnight Tony Brooks, organiser of the Pimento circuit, had seen to it that all railway lines between Toulouse and Montauban in the southwest were cut. Francis Cammaerts of the Jockey circuit had been equally efficient in the Marseilles area.
Pearl Witherington, who had taken over from her organiser, Maurice Southgate (Hector), after his capture by the Gestapo, had taken charge of a thousand resistance fighters who were cutting railway lines throughout the Indre region in west-central France.
On June 6, amid the chaotic surge of messages about resistance activity now pouring in from the field, came a stream of peculiar messages from the agents identified by Gerry Morel as definitely captured. On that day Marcel Rousset's call sign came up on the board. The message tapped off by the teleprinter was soon in the hands of Buckmaster and Vera. “Many thanks large deliveries arms and ammunition have greatly appreciated good tips concerning intentions and plans.” The sender signed off “Geheime Staatspolizei”—the Gestapo.
Soon afterwards the call sign for Pickersgill's radio operator, Macalis-ter, came up. This message thanked London for the stores that had recently been delivered, stating that unfortunately “certain of the agents had had to be shot” but that others had proved more willing to do what the Germans asked them to do. Again the signature was that of the Gestapo.
Buckmaster, apparently disoriented by the Gestapo's macabre little game, spent some time composing jovial responses, such as: “Sorry to see your patience is exhausted and your nerves not so good as ours.”
Vera, however, was impatient to be at the airfields where the next dispatch of SOE agents was about to begin, along with a wave of SAS men now being parachuted behind the lines as the invasion got under way. On June 7 she said goodbye to Violette Szabo, who was being parachuted into France for a second time to play her part in keeping advancing German Panzer divisions from reaching the Normandy beaches.
“Did Vera ever question whether it was right to send out Violette—a woman with a baby?” I asked Nancy Roberts when I met her again.
“I think Vera admired strong women,” she said. “She was not a feminist in the modern way, but she always stood up for women and believed in their abilities. I saw her take the younger girls into her office and sit down with them as they wrote letters to their parents, which she would post for them when they had gone. I think it made it easier for some to leave, knowing that their families would get their very own handwritten letters.”
“What would they write?”
“Oh, just something vague and general: ‘All is well. Keeping busy' Vera was good at thinking of things like that.”
“Which of the agents was she closest to?”
“She certainly admired Nora tremendously. Everyone loved Nora. And there was no doubt that Violette held a fascination for Vera. All of them did, you know. They were intriguing. I thought so too. We all did.”
What did she mean by intriguing?
“Just that they were fascinating creatures. To be prepared to do what it was they went to do.”
Nancy considered a moment and then revealed: “I have never said this before, but I think that Vera was sometimes jealous of me. I think she was jealous of me over Violette. Vera guarded the women agents very closely. And she was jealous that it was me who took Violette to the field and not her. Vera was only able to come down later to take over, after the flight had been delayed.”
How had it come about that Vera didn't go with Violette at first? I asked.
“It was very close to D-Day, and Vera had many responsibilities. I think she just was elsewhere. So I was asked to drive up to Tempsford with Violette.” Nancy described how they arrived at Hasell's Hall, the country house where the departing agents were attended to by FANY women. Violette had to wait for three days as the first two attempts to fly her out were aborted because of poor weather, but she remained calm throughout. “The first two attempts I had to take her out and get her ready in the hangar and make sure she had everything and say goodbye, and then it didn't happen. And then we just had to wait. I will never forget it. Ever. Where we were, it was beautifully sunny and there was Violette sitting on the lawn with this young Polish man who was going too. They were laughing and chatting, and Violette was playing a gramophone record over and over and over again. I can still hear it: ‘I want to buy a paper doll I can call my own.'
“I can see her now. She was wearing a pretty summery dress with blue and white flowers and shoes she said she had bought in Paris, and she had a rose in her hair. I can still hear that damn song going round and round in my head.”
“Did she talk about what she was going to do?”
“No, not at all. She just chatted to that Polish boy about film stars. I was overawed by it more than anything. I was so young, and here was this other young woman and a mother going to do this. Why was this young woman who was so attractive going to do this? She had so many advantages. I was intrigued by what made them brave enough to do it, when I knew I never could.
“And she slept at night like a baby,” said Nancy, who explained that escorting officers even shared a room with departing agents, should they suddenly need support or help of any sort during their last night. I slept in the bed next to her. But she never wanted anything. She slept through the night without stirring.”
On the third day Vera appeared to take over, said Nancy, and so it was Vera who spent the last night and day with Violette, while Nancy was sent back to London. “Vera always wanted to do it all herself. I knew that. To be there when they left was the most exhilarating thing. This was what we were all there for after all—to send these brave people off— particularly with a girl like Violette.”
“Why?”
“Well, she was really very pretty. She was an entrancing creature, to men and women alike. Ev
eryone had wanted to see Violette off; she had bewitched the whole of Baker Street.”
“Why do you say that Vera was jealous of you over this?”
“I just know she was. Because of the way she never spoke about it. Because of the way she behaved. She never mentioned that anyone had been with Violette during those last days except her.”
Nancy appeared uncomfortable.
“And because Violette was very attractive,” she added.
“Are you saying that Vera was attracted to Violette?”
Nancy considered.
“Was Vera attracted to you, Nancy?”
It was evidently a question she had considered before.
“I never felt that Vera was attracted to me in that way. She never made a pass at me in that way, but in those days nobody would. But I do know that she admired me greatly. She had a very manly brain. I don't know if that made her in any way bisexual. I think, like me, she was just intrigued by these young women. She was always very protective of them. You see, she didn't want anyone else to know about the agents. She saw the care of them as her personal role. And that was why she saw it as her personal role to go and look for them later. And then they tried to stop her.”
“Who tried to stop her? Was it Buckmaster?”
“No, it was higher up they tried to stop her.”
“Why?”
“Because she was a woman.”
“You mean, because they thought she wasn't capable as a woman?”
“Because they didn't think she had the authority to do such a thing. And because she was doing these things they knew they ought to be doing but had not thought of doing themselves. They just thought if they waited the agents would all turn up.”
When I asked if Buckmaster would have gone to trace the missing, Nancy said he did not have the strength, and she paused again, thinking back. “I was in the office when the news of Oradour-sur-Glane came in,” she said. On June 10, 1944, just after D-Day, in the tiny French village of Oradour-sur-Glane, SS troops murdered 642 people, including 190 schoolchildren. The attack was in reprisal for resistance attacks on German troops moving towards the Normandy beachhead.
Sarah Helm Page 9
