by Ann Kramer
Interviews
Once SOE had spotted potential recruits, they were sent a note or telex inviting them for an interview in London, although they were not told why. Interviews were usually conducted in a bleak room often in the Victoria Hotel in Northumberland Avenue. There was virtually no furniture, just two folding chairs, a naked light bulb and a blackout screen. Selwyn Jepson, who in his civilian life wrote thrillers, was the recruiting officer for F section and carried out literally hundreds of interviews, dressed either in civilian clothes or in uniform – he was a major in the Buffs. He usually started the first interview in English then, being bilingual himself, switched to French; any recruit who at this point had difficulty in speaking French was usually politely asked to leave.
Jepson was an extremely skilled interviewer and excellent judge of character; he was particularly skilled at spotting just the right agent. He said himself that he could assess the suitability of a candidate within thirty seconds and rarely made a mistake. The first interview was usually fairly low-key; Jepson would already know a great deal about the woman in front of him and his aim was to establish character and motive: he needed to know that the woman in front of him was not reckless, running away from personal problems or acting from an obsessive need for revenge. A good agent needed to be loyal, cool and capable of taking initiative, but not impulsive or reckless. Courage, prudence and the ability to plan in advance and take initiative were desirable character traits; recklessness and impulsiveness were not. It was vital to find the right person: agents in the field would be under constant strain and danger; it was essential to ensure that agents would not put themselves or their circuit at unnecessary risk.
If the first interview was satisfactory, a second interview was arranged. In the meantime SOE ran security checks through MI5 to ensure the candidate’s loyalty and discover whether there were any security risks. During the second interview, Jepson opened up much more about the type of work involved, looking to establish whether the candidate was interested in working closer to the enemy, that is in France, and whether she would be prepared to undertake subversive activities, which would put her life at risk, although still without exactly spelling out what the task would be. Some women guessed: Odette Sansom for instance realized what the nature of the work would be during her second interview and volunteered immediately. At this point Jepson also probed into family commitments. Several women had children but nevertheless were keen to volunteer, and Jepson needed to know what arrangements would be made. Children were not the only concern: Noor Inayat Khan, for instance, was very close to her mother, and was extremely anxious about how she would handle the separation.
Jepson also emphasized the drawbacks and dangers of the work and the strong possibility of not returning. At that time it was estimated that the chances of an agent surviving were considered to be about 50/50. At the end of the war, it was discovered that of the 470 agents that F section sent into the field, 118 failed to return, 117 of them having been killed, so the odds of being killed were one in four. Jepson also stressed the difficulties of a covert role in Nazi-occupied territory; not only was the country swarming with Gestapo and police but also agents would have no contact with their family and friends, they could never tell anyone what they were doing, there were no holidays and no financial reward, just normal service pay. Jepson suggested that the candidate should go away and think about what was involved before making a final decision. He stressed that no matter what the decision, the interview had to remain absolutely secret; the candidate could not mention it to anyone – neither family nor friends. The prospective agent had to make up her mind completely alone and independently.
Finally there was a third interview at which candidates made their final decision, although, as in the case of Odette Sansom, a third interview was not always necessary. At this stage most candidates volunteered; very few refused. They had to sign the Official Secrets Act and were told they would need to join the FANY.
Training
Once recruited, potential agents were sent on what was a very intensive training course at one of SOE’s Special Training Schools (STS). Women and men trained together. According to M.R.D. Foot, the official historian of the SOE in France, training could be compared to a ‘set of sieves, each one with a closer mesh than the one before’, and was designed to weed out unsuitable candidates.
Training began with a two to three week course in one of the country houses requisitioned by SOE for this purpose. One of the best known was Wanborough Manor, near Guildford. Initial training included plenty of physical fitness work with cross-country runs and other exercises, basic map-reading skills and some weapons training, using pistols and sub-machine guns. Recruits who got through the initial training went on to a far more gruelling three or four weeks paramilitary training at Arisaig, a remote area on the west coast of Scotland, where they learned how to strip, reassemble, load, fire and maintain a variety of weapons. These included Colts and Sten guns and agents were taught to fire using a so-called double tap system, pointing the gun, tucking the firing arm into the hip, always firing two shots They also learned unarmed combat and silent killing – creeping up silently behind someone and killing the person with a knife. Agents were taught sabotage techniques, practising demolition and the use of explosives, blowing up locomotives and rolling stock, provided by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway. They learned how to set an ambush and how to storm a house. Sabotage was one of SOE’s main aims: it played an important role in France ahead of the Normandy landings in 1944.
Those who completed paramilitary training went on to the third stage, staying in a number of country houses around Beaulieu Manor in the New Forest, often known to SOE as the ‘finishing school’. Here agents were prepared for the actual business of how to survive in Nazi-occupied territory: they were given detailed information not just about German army and Gestapo uniforms and ranks but also about the different policing systems: in Vichy France, for example, there were fifteen separate police forces – agents being sent to France needed to know every detail of titles and uniforms. They were given advice on how to cope with sudden police checks: agents who had returned from France provided first-hand accounts of what it felt like to have identity papers gone through. A key piece of advice was never to volunteer any more information than asked for. Lodged in The National Archives is a training manual from Beaulieu (KV 4/172) that spells out in detail what agents had to learn for survival in the field. They had to avoid being conspicuous at all costs: this meant studying local customs and regulations in minute detail – not just knowing about curfews, identity papers, ration cards and travel restrictions but also smaller everyday details such as leaving their knives and forks beside a plate after eating, not putting them by the side of the plate, which was an English habit; drinking soup from the tip of the spoon, rather than from the side; not tucking a handkerchief into a sleeve – again a very English habit; and removing tobacco stains from their fingers because the French did not smoke Virginia tobacco. In fact agents were advised to give up smoking because tobacco was scarce in France but there is no record of how many did. Interviewed after the war, Yvonne Cormeau remembered:
‘They gave us some ideas about living and operating in France but they said, “You’ve got to judge. When you’re on the spot things might change. All we can tell you is there may be certain days of the week when you can’t have certain drinks or foods in certain cafes, so don’t ask. Just try and look out and see what is on the menu and advertised for those days. Please don’t do too much dying of your hair or have very noticeable make-up or things like that because you’ll fall foul at some time or other. Try and dress as they do locally as much as possible. If you’re going to live in the country, don’t have manicure”.’
Attention to detail was essential. Interestingly, when Yvonne Cormeau left for France in 1943, she left her engagement and wedding ring behind in England. About three months after arriving in France, a ‘very observant woman’ asked her if she were
married because there was a shiny line on her finger, where the ring had been.
Instructors at Beaulieu taught agents how to live their cover, described in the training manual as ‘the life lived and the activities patently indulged in by an Agent to conceal his subversive activities’. Each agent was given a cover story; some of these wove in true facts. Noor Inayat Khan’s back-story for instance included the fact that she had studied child psychology at the Sorbonne, which she had. Agents were told never to improvise or change their cover, to practise their false signatures and in effect to become their cover, living and working within their false identities, not an easy task. They also learned ‘tradecraft’, classic espionage techniques such as how to use passwords when making contact with other agents or sympathizers, how to drop messages off at given points without attracting attention, how to carry out surveillance, how to spot and lose someone who was trailing them, and how to set up and arrange safety checks. They were given advice on how to set up networks in the field and recruit local agents, what to look for, and how to approach them, and how to recruit and work with local Resistance fighters.
Interrogation too was also covered: the training manual described various types of interrogation with particular emphasis on interrogation by the Gestapo and giving advice on the types of questions that would be used and how to have an alternative cover story for an emergency. They covered some of the more brutal interrogation techniques and, to add reality, from time to time in the middle of the night, trainee agents would be woken up brutally, dragged from their rooms and put in front of men in Gestapo uniforms, made to stand or hold a chair above their heads and interrogated for hours on end, their cover stories challenged and tested. After some hours trainees were released and it became clear that the ‘interrogators’ were acting a part. Some of the agents found the process quite amusing but others found it only too realistic. Noor Inayat Khan, for instance, found her role-play interrogation very frightening. All agents were told that if captured, they were expected to hold out under torture for forty-eight hours so that members of their circuit still at large could get to places of safety, change passwords, and destroy any incriminating evidence.
During the final stage of training, agents were sent to Ringway airport near Manchester, where they learned how to parachute out of a plane, which in itself could be very nerve-wracking. Finally, agents were given a mock ‘mission’ to carry out, which could run over several days. Students were sent off with a given task, perhaps to steal weapons or place explosives; built into the ‘mission’ might be police or other checks, the need to contact people and pass on information, and to find accommodation. The aim was to give a flavour of being in occupied territory. Noor Inayat Khan was given a ninety-six-hour mission which involved going to Bristol, making contact with and recruiting ‘agents’, setting up a safe ‘letter box’ and hiring a flat. The cover story she created was that she was going to Bristol as a woman writer collecting experiences of the Blitz from children for a BBC programme.
At every stage of the training, instructors wrote reports on the agents’ progress and achievements, noting their particular strengths and weaknesses. These and a final overall report were sent to Maurice Buckmaster, who shared them with Vera Atkins, and then used them to assess the agents’ readiness and decide which women should be sent into occupied France and in what role. As time went on, and the demand for agents to be sent into France in advance of the Allied invasion increased, training became more urgent and more rushed.
Coding and communication
Wireless was the main means of communication between agents in the field and SOE headquarters in London. Agents who returned to England often carried information and personal messages from other agents but wireless was the lifeline and the link between agents and SOE. All messages sent and received had to be in code. It was through coded messages that information was sent about the state of a circuit, about supplies being dropped in, where and when agents would be arriving or leaving, and so on. All agents learned basic coding but those who were to be sent into France as wireless operators had to go through specialist and very demanding training, even those who had already learned wireless operation in the WAAF.
The role of the wireless operator was absolutely crucial to the success of SOE operations and it was generally agreed to be the most dangerous role in the circuit. Wireless operators had to transmit and receive all their messages in code; they had to be able to translate messages into agreed codes, then transmit them by Morse code at a speed of about twenty-two words a minute. As well as transmitting the message, they also had to include special pre-arranged safety checks proving that they were genuine. These could be deliberate spelling mistakes or special words, agreed with London in advance. There were two types of security checks: ‘bluff’ checks, which could be revealed under torture and ‘true’ checks, which should never be revealed. The true checks were particularly important: if they were not included in a message, the probability was that the wireless operator had been captured. An agent’s and indeed a circuit’s safety could depend on coded clues within the messages being understood by the London HQ and any warnings about whether the agents were being watched or had been arrested were vital pieces of information: ignoring these warnings could have – and indeed did have – disastrous consequences. Agents developed their own individual style of transmitting, known in the jargon as their ‘fist’; it was a type of Morse fingerprinting, and those who received the messages, usually FANYs working at the listening station at Grendon, soon came to recognize individual agents’ transmissions. This itself could be a security check: if messages started coming in that were apparently from a known agent but not in his or her ‘fist’, it could mean that the agent had been arrested and German wireless operators were using the agent’s wireless.
At different times, wireless operators used different code methods – Playfair, double transposition and the one-time pad, which was the most successful. Most agents used a poem as the basis for their coding system with each agent having his or her individual poem. It could be a poem that the agent knew well, or one that was written specifically for them. Agents who needed to improve their coding skills were sent to Leo Marks, the young, brilliant and somewhat idiosyncratic code-master of SOE. He was the son of Benjamin Marks, owner of the famous bookshop at 84 Charing Cross Road, immortalized in Helen Hanff’s book of the same name. Marks never forgot how vulnerable agents were in the field, and did all in his power to improve coding systems, initiating the use of silk for carrying codes – as agents used various letters they could be cut off and destroyed, and the use of a one-time pad. He also encouraged the use of original poems rather than overworked poems, which he argued Germans listening in could break quickly because they were too familiar. Marks himself wrote many of the poems that agents used.
As well as learning how to code, wireless operators needed to know about atmospherics, wavelengths and jamming as well how to handle and hide their bulky equipment, which could weigh as much as 30lbs, and how to place and handle the aerial, which itself could be 70 feet long. Sometimes W/T operators had assistance but, given the dangers of the work, they often spent long periods on their own. It could be a lonely role.
A favourite spy
MOST SOE WOMEN agents were sent directly into France. Some were sent elsewhere, among them Krystyna Skarbek, better known as Christine Granville, the name she adopted when she worked for SOE. Christine Granville was an extraordinary and courageous woman. According to journalist Murray Davies of the Mirror Group, she was ‘the first Bond girl’, the prototype for Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale; apparently Winston Churchill described her as his ‘favourite spy’. According to her SOE personal records held in The National Archives in London, the SOE considered her to be a ‘person of remarkable courage and intelligence’. It is hardly surprising: Christine Granville may have been the prototype for a Bond girl but her real life exploits were far more extraordinary and thrilling than any fiction.
Christin
e Granville was born Krystyna Skarbek in or near Warsaw, Poland in 1908; her personal file gives her birth date as 1915 but subsequent researches have uncovered documents listing the earlier date. Her family was wealthy – her father, who claimed the title of count, was a bank official – and she enjoyed a privileged upbringing. She was a stunningly good-looking young woman, with a great love of adventure. She made an early, unsuccessful, marriage, but remarried in 1938, this time to Jerzy Gizycki, a diplomat who also enjoyed adventure. The two of them went to live in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, when Gizycki was made Polish consul there.
