Virginia had never heard of it. Quennell explained that it was a Portuguese ore that yielded tungsten. And tungsten was the most valuable strategic war metal. From it, tough, heat-resistant steel and high-speed cutting tools could be manufactured, implements that could increase the production of military equipment ten times over. Steel hardened by tungsten was a vital war commodity. The Germans were the first to use it in their armor plate and for their high-velocity, armor-piercing projectiles.
Virginia was almost afraid to ask him what SOE’s part was in the project. London had told her to be ready to undertake any jobs that Quennell considered appropriate for her. Surely mining wouldn’t be one of them. It wasn’t, of course. The Germans wanted to get wolfram out of Portugal for their use. The Allies wanted to divert it for their use, which at the same time deprived Hitler of it. SOE’s part was to gather intelligence to help with diversions.
This still did not sound like the kind of work Virginia was accustomed to. Nor did the next job Hugh talked about: locating safe houses for SOE’s use in Madrid and the surrounding area. But a week after her arrival, Virginia got the idea that being a wireless operator might bring her the excitement she foresaw lacking in her current assignment. Plus it would be of great use to the agency.
Hugh, however, discouraged that idea, saying they were pretty well covered in the peninsula in that department. But they could use indigenous people, Spaniards who might come in handy for one reason or another. But he cautioned her that she should only approach men who had fought on General Franco’s side in the war. No Republicans, as serious diplomatic complications would ensue if the Spanish government found out SOE was employing men with the wrong sympathies.
Shortly after that discussion, Virginia came up with another idea. What about doing some joint work with the American agents in Spain. Again Hugh vetoed the idea, begging her not to take offense. The Brits preferred to remain independent of the Yanks. The previous week, two of them were arrested for buying foreign currency on the black market for the purpose of passing it on to incoming agents. It was a good idea, Quennell said, but bad execution.
Long before Virginina tried to settle into a new life after fleeing France, General Charles de Gaulle had been forced to do the same thing. The general was a difficult man. Some said it was his extreme shyness that caused him to appear aloof. Others said it was his six-foot-five-inch height that made him ill at ease. Still others proclaimed the forty-nine-year-old general was simply unapproachable. Whatever the cause, his exile in England had been particularly difficult after the fall of France.
When Winston Churchill first met de Gaulle, he asked Major General Sir Louis Spears, who had accompanied de Gaulle out of France, “Why have you brought this lanky, gloomy Brigadier?” Spears said, “Because no one else would come.” There was a gradual warming between Churchill and de Gaulle, particularly in light of their common interests in theater and history. On June 28, 1940, the British officially backed the general as “leader of all the Free French, wherever they are to be found.” They agreed to supply his movement in exchange for his acceptance of their directives.
De Gaulle was resolute on many issues regarding his plans for freeing his country from the Nazi stranglehold. He had an absolute belief in his mission, and his devotion to France was clear. He was convinced that he possessed the qualities necessary for leadership and believed that he alone knew the best course of action to take in fighting for French interests as he saw them. His obstinacy become so well known that a Frenchman living in London during the war remarked that de Gaulle “ought to remember that the enemy is Germany, not the British.”
From the start, de Gaulle did not want to appear as though he were a puppet of the British government, so he created what would become the Bureau Central de Renseignements et d’Action (BCRA). The bureau’s purpose was to organize, direct, and supply the Resistance, but it was the British who carried out the mission. However, the British were expressly forbidden from recruiting any Resistance members into the SOE.
De Gaulle’s relationship with the United States was on far rockier ground than his British one because Roosevelt’s government had officially recognized Vichy France, a move that incensed de Gaulle. Vichy had, after all, branded the general and his Free French supporters as traitors, and had passed down two death sentences with de Gaulle’s name on them.
Then on October 25, 1941, Frenchman Jean Moulin arrived in London and a new chapter in de Gaulle’s Free French movement was begun. Moulin came with detailed information about Resistance groups, lots of them, all over France. These loyal citizens were ready to fight the Germans on all levels, and Moulin believed the next step was to organize them into one unit. De Gaulle and his aides had already infiltrated France with agents with success, and the general believed that such agents, combined with the organized Resistance Moulin was describing, would become the foundation of a France free from the Nazis.
Despite the British work with the Resistance, de Gaulle’s mind-set was still that he alone knew what was best for France. He sent Moulin back as official delegate of the French National Committee to the unoccupied zone. Moulin’s job was to persuade the southern movements to recognize the general and coordinate their work under the Free French authority.
Moulin worked tirelessly to this end. Fie returned to London numerous times with reports on the headway they were making. Then, on June 21, 1943, the Gestapo arrested Moulin in Lyon. Someone in his own Resistance circle had betrayed him. He was taken to the École de Santé Militaire, where the notorious Butcher of Lyon—Klaus Barbie—personally tortured him. So brutal was Barbie’s treatment of him, that after three weeks of abuse, Moulin died, never having divulged a word about his work. Killing Moulin was stupid on Barbie’s part, as he gained nothing. And it was both a shock and an energizer for the Resistance. They had lost a great leader, but they had gained a martyr and symbol of their cause.
The Spanish summer slid by with Virginia still doing what she characterized as “a waste of time and money.” She hadn’t been able to get any definitive information about HECKLER. She held out hope that all was well, but she feared the worst. And she hated not being able to do anything about it. In September she laid her cards on the table in a letter to Buckmaster:
I’ve given it a good four months. Anyhow, I always did want to go back to France, and now I have had the luck to find two of my very own boys here and send them on to you.
In an amazing story of survival, two Frenchmen Virginia had worked with in the Lyon area, Lieutenant Marcel Leccia and Lieutenant Elisée Albert Allard, had escaped from a prison camp in Kaiserslautern, Germany They returned to France and crossed the Pyrénées when the Germans invaded the unoccupied zone. The SOE was alerted of their arrival in Madrid and they were reunited with Virginia.
Her letter continued:
They want me to go back with them because we worked together before and our teamwork is good. Besides, we have a lot of contacts that—well they will explain it to you. I suggest that I go back as their radio, or else as aider and abetter, as before. I can learn the radio quickly enough in spite of skeptics in some quarters.
When I came out here I thought that I would be able to help F section people, but I don’t and can’t. I am not doing a job. I am simply living pleasantly and wasting time. It isn’t worthwhile and after all, my neck is my own, and if I’m willing to get a crick in it because there is a war on, I do think … Well, anyhow, I put it up to you. I think I can do a job for you along with my two boys. They think I can too and I trust that you will let us try, because we are all three very much in earnest about this bloody war.
My best regards to you and the office and to Mrs. Colonel B.—I was pleased to hear that—and I hope she gets some of the lemons I asked the boys to drape themselves in upon departure.
It wasn’t long before a response arrived from Buckmaster on October 6. In it, he referred to Virginia using a code name he’d come up with on the spot.
&
nbsp; Dearest Doodles,
What a wonder you are! I knew you could learn radio in no time; I know the boys would love to have you in the field; I know all about all the things you could do, and it is only because I honestly believe that the Gestapo would also know it in about a fortnight that I say no, dearest Doodles, no. You are really too well-known in the country and it would be wishful thinking believing that you could escape detention for more than a few days.
You do realise, don’t you, that what was previously a picnic, comparatively speaking, is now real war, and that the Gestapo are pulling in everything they can? You will object, I know, that it is your own neck—I agree, but we all know that it is not only your own neck, it is the necks of all with whom you come into contact because the Bosch is good at patiently following trails, and sooner or later he will unravel the whole skein if he has a chance. We do not want to give him even half a chance by sending in anyone as remarkable as yourself at the moment.
Now that I have got the above off my chest, and I am sure you will realise that I am right “au fond,” let me make what I hope is a constructive proposal to you. I know your heart is in F Section, and I know that F Section has missed you greatly. If you are feeling that you are not pulling your weight where you are, why not come back to London and join us as a briefing officer for the boys? Your duties would [be]:
To meet them when they come back from the field, to hear what they have to say, to analyse it, and to see that they get their questions answered.
To see that they are properly looked after from the point of view of material things—i.e. clothes, equipment, etc. In other words, see that the clothing and equipment officers of F Section produce the jobs in time and correctly.
To brief the new boys with the fruits of what you have yourself learned and what you have picked up from the latest arrivals.
This, I know, sounds like a sit-down job of the same type as you are doing now, but it has this possible, repeat possible, advantage. If and when officers from here go into the field round about D-day, you will be in the right place to start from. I obviously can make no promises as to this at the moment, but it is a possibility.
This was not the response Virginia wanted to hear. As far as she was concerned, the really important work needed to be done before D-Day, and who knew when it would even occur anyway. She did not want to be sitting in some silly office in London, doing what anyone else could do, when she knew her talents could make a difference in the field. But before she could go back to France, she had to return to London. She agreed with Buckmaster that her current identity would be a problem, but who was to say that the reflection she looked at in the mirror was the only one she might have.
During her SOE training, Virginia and the rest of the recruits had been warned that those who were willing to work undercover should not do so with the hope of receiving accolades. Any agent should understand that drawing notice to oneself threatened to defeat the purpose of the elaborate cover stories they had developed. Virginia liked the anonymity, in fact she preferred it to overt attention. But all of that seemed to be overlooked shortly after she returned to London in November of 1943.
Britain’s King George VI had approved a list of individuals to be honored with the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Virginia’s name was on that list in the Member division. The MBE, as it was known, had been created by the king’s father, George V, in 1917 to honor the thousands of people who served in numerous noncombatant capacities during the First World War. It was awarded “for service in the field, or before the enemy, or for services to the Empire,” and it was one of the few orders that included women or noncitizens of the British Commonwealth.
Virginia declined the customary audience with the king, given the fact that she was, and intended to be again, an undercover agent. Rather, she received the prestigious medal in private at SOE headquarters, and then wasted no time in meeting with Buckmaster to take him up on his offer of a position in F Section.
But Virginia extracted a promise from him: he was to allow her to take wireless training. She would do it around whatever work schedule Buckmaster set for her. She maintained that the biggest mistake they were making in France was not seeing to it that all agents were trained in wireless. By only sending one operator for every six or eight or dozen agents, the operations were being hamstrung. The operator wasn’t able to keep up with the workload, she told Buckmaster, which made him more liable to be picked up, which in turn left entire circuits without any contact with HQ. If there was a chance that she could go back to France, she wanted to make sure she could play any role.
Buckmaster, enthused at having Virginia working for F Section again, had no complaints about her request for wireless training, and the next phase of her SOE career began. She had one more request of him. Could he gather any information about her friends in Lyon? He came back to her a week later with the news she feared. He had it on good authority that the Gestapo had rounded up a good many of her Resistance contacts in Lyon.
The news sickened Virginia. The wonderful French patriots she had recruited were so brave, so dedicated. And they were strong, too. She refused to believe that the entire group had perished. In thinking over the events of her last months in Lyon, she was convinced that Abbé Ackuin had been up to no good. She should have had him followed all the way back to Paris and found out exactly what he was doing. And she should have taken care to protect the circuit before leaving in such haste. But hindsight, as they said, was twenty-twenty. She had to look forward to the new possibilities in front of her.
Not long after beginning work at Baker Street, Virginia heard about a relatively new American organization, the Office of Strategic Services, set up at Grosvenor Square, not far from the American Embassy. The word she got from a friend was that the organization’s head man, a charismatic former army colonel by the name of William Donovan, happened to be in town, staying at the fashionable Claridge’s Hotel on Brook Street. Virginia’s friend had all the details about the OSS.
Franklin Roosevelt first met William Joseph Donovan when they opposed one another in the 1928 New York gubernatorial election. Despite the fact that Roosevelt won the election, a lifelong friendship developed between the two men.
Donovan was a stocky Irishman with piercing blue eyes. A whir of activity, he had been the commander of the sixty-ninth “Fighting Irish” regiment of New York in the First World War. His fearless charges earned him the nickname “Wild Bill.” In one such attack against an overwhelming number of Germans, he reportedly shouted to his troops, “What’s the matter? You want to live forever?” He was the only individual from that war to receive the Distinguished Service Medal, the Distinguished Service Cross, and the Congressional Medal of Honor, miraculously surviving the war to receive them all personally. After his service, he became a successful and wealthy New York lawyer, and a dabbler in Republican politics.
Shortly after the French signed their armistice with Germany in the summer of 1940, President Roosevelt sent his friend Donovan to London to determine how the Brits would stand up against German attacks. While he was there, Donovan developed a relationship with the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI-6. When Donovan returned to Washington, it was with two messages for the president. First, he believed Britain would hold her own against the Nazis, provided the United States supplied additional resources. Second, he strongly suggested that America develop an organization to control foreign intelligence and covert operations.
Putting Donovan’s suggestion into action, Roosevelt launched the Coordinator of Information (COI) on July 11, 1941. Donovan, then fifty-eight, would be at its helm. All was not smooth sailing, however. America’s existing intelligence agencies, including the FBI and Army Intelligence, thought the COI was a waste of time and resources. And they objected to this upstart agency’s encroachment into their domains. But Donovan was never deterred. In the words of one OSS staff psychologist, “Wild Bill” possessed �
�the power to visualize an oak when he saw an acorn. … For him the day was never sufficient unto itself; it was always teeming with seeds of a boundless future. … Every completed project bred a host of new ones.”
A year after the inception of COI, on June 13, 1942, a reorganization occurred. The propaganda division became part of the newly created Office of War Information. The rest of the agency remained under Donovan’s control and became known as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). According to President Roosevelt, its purpose was to take “all measures … to enforce our will upon the enemy by means other than military action, as may be applied in support of actual or planned military operations; or in furtherance of the war effort; unorthodox warfare, guerrilla activities behind enemy lines; contact with resistance groups; subversion, sabotage, and unorthodox or ‘black’ psychological warfare.”
With a direct line to the president, Donovan procured large amounts of money for OSS, most of it undocumented through proper governmental channels and hidden in various budget appropriations. Roosevelt reportedly told Donovan, “If I’m going to trust you with the secrets of the country, I can trust you with the money, too.”
Initially, Donovan manned the OSS with people from his circle of friends and acquaintances—Ivy league graduates and other wealthy individuals with well-known names like Mellon, Morgan, Vanderbilt, and du Pont. He recruited actors and writers and even a major league baseball player. This cast of characters quickly earned the OSS nicknames from its detractors, names like “Oh, So Secret,” “Oh, So Silly,” and “Oh, So Social.”
The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy Page 20
