Churchill's White Rabbit

by Sophie Jackson

  At 4.30 p.m. an SOE car appeared. Forest said his farewells to Barbara and she saw him off, praying his luck would hold out, before slumping back into her flat and noting ‘feeling terrible’ in her diary. For Forest, some of his gloom was alleviated by being back with his team. The car picked up Brossolette, who had dyed his hair salt-and-pepper shades to cover his white streak and had dispensed with his moustache, and then Hutch clambered into the car tinged with a little dose of envy, as he too would have liked to be in the thick of the action.

  The weather looked unpromising as they arrived at Tangmere airfield, causing Forest to wonder if this flight would be as abortive as his first one to France. Flight-Lieutenant Peter Vaughan-Fowler was there to greet them. He was an old friend of Forest’s as he had been the pilot who had picked him up in a Lysander at the conclusion of Operation Seahorse. Jovially he took them to dinner, with no one quite able to shake the feeling that the exercise had a ring of a condemned man’s last supper to it.

  The night was still thick with fog and cloud, but the urgency of the matter convinced the men that the flight should be undertaken. At 11.30 p.m. Forest and Brossolette bundled their luggage into the converted gunner’s cockpit and wedged themselves in after it. Hutch stood on the runway to bid them farewell. Forest, crammed next to Brossolette, hoped the man travelled well, as he doubted this was going to be the easiest of flights.

  Take-off was smooth enough, though the impenetrable fog threatened to force them to land immediately. Vaughan-Fowler was keen however, and had faith in his skills. Undaunted, he flew them over the fields and houses of England and on to the Channel. What came next surprised them all. As they reached the French coast, feeling confident in their camouflage among the clouds, a sudden explosion went off near them.

  Suddenly they were surrounded by explosions. The Germans had somehow noticed their presence in the fog, perhaps radar or sound locators had given them away, but whatever the cause the exploding shells lit up the clouds around them in vibrant pink hues. Vaughan-Fowler knew the enemy had to be firing blind – they were hoping that a lucky shell would hit, he was hoping it would not. He was sufficiently shaken by the explosions to start taking evasive action and Forest clung to his seat as they rocked, soared up, swept down, twisted and turned through the night sky until the anti-aircraft batteries had been left safely behind.

  The cloud finally began to break and below them Vaughan-Fowler glimpsed Poitiers and was glad to tell his passengers that the end was in sight. As the time slowly ticked on to 1.25 a.m. Forest caught a glimpse of three lights on the ground set out by their reception committee. Elated, Vaughan-Fowler exchanged signals to ensure the site was genuine, and then came in for landing.

  Forest noted in his mission diary: ‘Arrival: 01.30hrs. 19th September 1943, at a ground in the region of Angouleme called Serin.’1

  By now Forest was used to the fact that things never went smoothly. The first problem proved to be just getting their luggage out of the plane: it had become firmly trapped under the seats during the flight and it took some pushing and pulling to free it. The reception committee looked on anxiously during the proceedings, they had already taken note of the large consignment of cargo the plane had delivered: a consignment they had not been expecting. They would have to hide it somewhere quickly, a daunting task with so few of them.

  The luggage finally gave up its hold on the plane and Brossolette and Forest turned to their hosts to learn of the new problem. The reception committee had only brought a single car for transporting everybody and with a second Lysander landing and two more agents and numerous packages tumbling out it was obvious that there was not going to be enough space for everyone. This might not have been a problem had the safe house not been 40 miles from the landing site. Hasty discussions took place with the only conclusion being that the cargo would be transported first in the car to a disused house about 15 miles away. Once safely stored the car would return for the agents.

  Gloomily the SOE men resigned themselves to their fate: hiding behind a bush for over an hour in thick fog, their only protection two men with sten guns. Forest first watched the car drive off and then Vaughan-Fowler taking off in his Lysander and heading for home once more. Damp and cold, with fog rolling in and dawn a long way off, Brossolette and Forest huddled in the dark and hoped that this was not a sign of things to come.

  The car eventually returned. Nine men, Forest and Brossolette included, and all their personal luggage were bundled into the vehicle. It was going to be a long drive and the old car had seen better days. As they were passing through a quiet village the rear tyre burst, forcing them to stop and change it. The noise aroused the locals, who peered anxiously outside to see what was happening. The men with the sten guns ordered them back indoors. Brossolette and Forest hid in the dense shadows of a barn door, opposite them their two fellow agents hunkered down in a similar doorway. There was no knowing if a German patrol was just around the corner and everyone was on edge. Suddenly Forest saw pale light coming from behind a nearby shutter. Gradually the light grew and an old man gingerly peered through. Hardly thinking, Forest leapt from the shadows brandishing his colt pistol at the witness. The old man hastily slammed his shutters shut and retreated inside. Heart pounding, Forest hoped the man was not a collaborator and, more importantly, that he didn’t have a telephone indoors. The reception was hardly a secret operation anymore and who could know if any of the curious locals would report the night-time activity to the local police or Gestapo the next day.

  The spare wheel proved to be in as good a condition as the rest of the car, and the group were not long back on the road before it became obvious that they had a slow puncture. There was no pump in the car and certainly no means of repairing the other tyre, so everyone had to just pray that the wheel would last out until they reached their destination. It was not a promising start for Forest’s second mission.

  Still, luck was on their side, and the tyre finally ‘passed out’ as Forest put it, just yards from the safe house. The exhausted men descended from the car and entered the house to find a lavish meal spread out for them. The house was long and low, a style of property known locally as a mas. The eleven-strong reception committee were elated at their triumph. As they talked excitedly, it turned out that this was their first Lysander operation and they were thrilled by their success. They talked with the agents eagerly, wanting to know why the Americans seemed so keen for Giraud to take over rather than their chosen de Gaulle. They complained about a lack of supplies and interrogated the men on the lack of publicity being given to the British war effort. By the time it got to 4 p.m. and a young man, Lepointu, was assigned to escort them to Chateauneuf, the British agents felt they had been thoroughly grilled.

  Only a few months later all but two of the eleven would be dead and young Lepointu would have suffered six bullets to his stomach and his arm being blown off.

  They arrived at Chateauneuf at 4.30 p.m., but an early curfew was in place and yet again Forest found himself waiting in the cold with rain dripping through the leaking station roof. It was a long night huddled in coats and trying to block out the autumnal weather. At 1.30 a.m. the train left for Gare d’Austerlitz. There were no seats in the carriage and the passengers stood uncomfortably, some leaning against the walls to try and ease their legs. It was nearly 6 hours of discomfort to their destination and on their arrival all they had to cheer them up was a cup of ersatz coffee.

  The first port of call was the home of Madame Peyronnet, and ensconced securely in the safe house they began making contact with the fractured resistance groups, in particular Sophie and Jacques Bingen. Direct contact was impossible and far too dangerous. SOE had trained their agents to use intermediaries as ‘letterboxes’ for the purpose of sending messages. Brossolette had set up a ‘letterbox’ between himself and Sophie before leaving France after their first mission, while Forest had organised one with a Madame Bosc, a restaurant owner in the rue Richepanse. There were still risks involved in establishi
ng contact and messages had to be securely coded; if the agent was still feeling worried he might take security a step further by using an innocuous courier or ‘cut out’ to deliver the message to the letter box and remove himself from the action in event of discovery.

  Sophie arranged a meeting for the following day at his own safe house. With time to spare, Brossolette and Forest set to work tracking down the various contacts they had made on their last mission and trying to forestall the damage caused by the arrests of Moulin and numerous others.

  Forest turned to Jose Dupuis to help him, relying on her judgement to pick out two new agents de liaison and a further two safe houses for him. Dupuis was as efficient as she was patriotic. She swiftly arranged for Madame Peyronnet’s daughter, Poucette, to act as a messenger. Despite being only 16, the girl was eager and reliable and could carry correspondence innocently on her bicycle. Poucette went on to recruit another girl, Suni Sandoe, whose name is well remembered by resistance scholars. Two women volunteered their services: Madame Denise Martin, the wife of a solicitor, and Nicole Bauer, who became Forest’s secretary and was nicknamed Maud. Maud recruited Jacqueline Devaux as a messenger cyclist and the last member of the team was a Canadian, Diana Provost, who volunteered her flat as a meeting place. Forest had formed a secure little réseau with people who he not only trusted, but who were deeply loyal to him. Every one of them risked torture and death at the hands of the Gestapo should their work be exposed.

  On 21 September Brossolette and Forest arrived for their first pre-arranged meeting with Sophie at the rue de la Pompe. From the first moments they were alarmed by the pathetic lack of security and Sophie’s merry over-confidence: his secretariat was in the same building and it was obvious that he had given little thought to the risks of being watched or followed (it had been remarked during Sophie’s training in Britain that: ‘Outwardly he is the complete man of the world; nevertheless it is possible that he might not prove very practical when faced with a difficult situation.’)2 Appalled, the men arranged a second meeting for the following day when Jacques Bingen, referred to in official papers as Baudet, could be present as well. Between them they endeavoured to give the two SOE men a favourable picture of their work. Forest later reported:

  From them we got what appeared to be a very rosy picture of the situation, the gist of their story being ‘everybody is happy, the movement relations with us are very cordial, there is no friction among them and everybody is very nice and pally’. In addition we were informed by them that we [Brossolette and Forest] had greatly exaggerated the dangers of clandestine work and that since they had been here there had been no signs of any possible trouble.3

  Forest could hardly keep his temper with the two men. They had been lucky but nothing more, and when he probed them further they were so out of touch with the true resistance situation that it was no wonder they had failed to rouse German suspicion – they were not worth the effort!

  Horrified, the two SOE men knew they had to act fast to repair the damage. Forest had heard that a third man, Paul Marchal, codenamed Massena, had arrived in France on 14 September to act as the head of the secret army and it was imperative that they get in touch with him. Sophie and Baudet were pressed to arrange the meeting and reluctantly they agreed. It was quite obvious that they resented the presence of the two agents from Britain who they felt were treading on their toes. They had, after all, been running the resistance quite successfully, in their opinion, since Moulin’s arrest, and didn’t need any assistance. Frustrated by their impassable arrogance the SOE men began laying down ground rules. Sophie or Baudet would contact Massena and arrange the meeting, then they would contact Brossolette at the Peyronnet safe house. Nothing was to be written down and they would send a reliable and security-conscious messenger who would arrive punctually at 5 p.m. on a daily basis.

  Should the messenger fail to arrive and contact be lost, the SOE men would appear at the rue de Sèze at 10 a.m., entering from the rue Tronchet end, while Sophie would come in from the boulevard de la Madeleine. It was a back-up plan in case things went wrong, but Sophie seemed unimpressed. Brossolette and Forest left the meeting with a deep sense of foreboding. Forest turned to his companion and said: ‘This quietness has lulled our friends to sleep, but I have a feeling that there is going to be a terrific storm any minute.’

  Brossolette agreed miserably. As they crossed the street an agent working for Sophie and Baudet passed them. Nard was the last person they wanted to meet and it said little for Sophie’s security that Nard was arriving at the same meeting place barely moments after the SOE men had left. Brossolette had already criticised the resistance leaders for retaining Nard when he should have been sent back to London long ago as it was known he was ‘blown’ to the Germans and hardly secure. Their concerns were scoffed at. Now Nard stopped to say hello. Angrily, Brossolette brushed him off: one of the primary rules of clandestine work was not to recognise any fellow agents out in the street. Comrades should be treated as strangers unless a specific meeting had been arranged. Forest was equally furious, Nard was a dangerous man, and with his identity known to the Germans any person he recognised could come under instant suspicion as being a resistance member. More than one innocent person had fallen into the hands of the Gestapo because they had recognised an old friend who was a ‘blown’ agent. The pair hurried home, their worst fears and those of London now confirmed.

  There was mild anxiety in the Peyronnet household as 5 p.m. came and went with no sign of a messenger from Sophie. Forest settled into a chair, his mind working over the possibilities. The worst was that the courier had been caught en route, but as long as Sophie had followed the strict precautions Brossolette had insisted on, that shouldn’t prove a problem for them, though it was a shame for the messenger who might be at that moment suffering at the hands of the Gestapo. Forest hoped the answer was far simpler. It had been made clear that should the courier be delayed he should postpone his arrival until the next day at 5 p.m. It was routine security and it seemed that this was the most likely option, but with Sophie and Baudet in charge nothing was simple.

  At 10 p.m. there was a knock on the door of the building in which Peyronnet had her apartment. The doors were locked after 8 p.m. and the concierge went to answer the summons with apprehension. On the doorstep was a man who wanted to come in, and when the concierge asked who he was visiting he gave the name Mr Shelley. This puzzled the concierge who did not know of any resident of that name, her two newest arrivals were called Mr Thierry and Mr Boutet and were refugees from Nantes staying with Madame Peyronnet. But the man was insistent adding that he had been told Mr Shelley was staying in an apartment on the third floor.

  Naturally suspicious, the concierge let him in, but insisted on accompanying him to the third floor. There, at Madame Peyronnet’s door, she knocked and was greeted by a startled Forest. The agent de liaison handed over his note, satisfied that he had made contact with Mr Shelley as he had been told and apologising for being late. He had been delayed, but instead of following security precautions he had decided to press on.

  Forest looked warily at the curious concierge as he took an envelope neatly inscribed for ‘Mr Shelley’ from the messenger. There was no use pretending that the woman could have failed to understand that Thierry was Shelley. Peyronnet was at the door now taking in the scene. Thankfully the concierge was deeply loyal to her third-floor tenants and promised not to pass on what she had heard. The little scene over, the messenger was sent away and the concierge returned to her station.

  Forest showed the envelope angrily to Brossolette, it had crossed his mind that it had been mislabelled out of spite for the arrival of the two SOE men. Opening it he discovered a typewritten letter listing names and full addresses of meeting locations along with dates and times. Had it been intercepted the Germans would have hardly believed their luck. Not only would Forest and Brossolette have been arrested but several other people would have been exposed – the damage could have been enormous.


  On 24 September Forest met with an old resistance friend, Michel Pichard, codenamed Oyster, with some relief. Oyster was reliable and secure, though the news he shared with Forest was bleak. He completely agreed with the damaging impression Forest had formed of the new resistance leaders and added his own disagreeable information on Sophie’s office and network. Then he added a further blow. Paul Marchal, Massena, had missed several appointments the previous day and, to all intents and purposes, appeared to have disappeared from the face of the earth.

  Forest was shaken. He knew Massena, having met him in England and formed the opinion before he was sent to the field that he was not a good choice for the role and would be lucky to survive ten days. Now it seemed he had been entirely right: Massena had only managed nine days. Still it was another shock and as Forest and Brossolette headed for another meeting with Sophie and Baudet they were uncomfortably aware of the storm blowing up around them.

  Sophie and Baudet also reported that Massena had failed to appear for arranged meetings, but were not particularly disturbed by it. Considering their own security precautions, that was hardly surprising. Sophie shrugged and expected that Massena had been delayed. Brossolette furiously went over the incident of the late-night visit of the messenger with the written message and made it plain yet again that it was direly important that couriers should be on time and carry no papers. The two resistance leaders agreed but were far from moved by his fury.

  Returning to the Peyronnets’ apartment, the SOE men were faced with the very real possibility that everything they had worked for was falling apart. Brossolette complained about Moulin and his insistence on being so indispensable. Forest felt more inclined to criticise the choices made in London over his replacements.