They Fought Alone: The True Story of the Starr Brothers, British Secret Agents in Nazi-Occupied France

by Charles Glass

  “I go in there”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 2.

  “[t]he use of codes”: Buckmaster, They Fought Alone, 47.

  “He brought his brother”: BNA, HS 9/1407/1.

  His destination was: IWM, File 03/541/1, Folder 09/18/2.

  “the first hour”: BNA, HS 9/1223/4. The villa belonged to a Jewish resident who put his property in Malval’s name to avoid confiscation under Vichy’s anti-Jewish edicts. Malval’s SOE code name was “Antoine.”

  “Churchill was here, there”: Buckmaster, They Fought Alone, 76.

  “He accomplished this mission”: BNA, HS 9/1406/8. “France Combattante,” report on J.A.R. Starr, 1.

  his promotion from second lieutenant: Ibid., “Training Reports.”

  “London let him down”: BNA, KV 6/29, “Interrogation of RAOUL (real name Peter CHURCHILL) dated 21.3.45.”

  S-Phone and a Eureka homing device: “This completely portable ground station, complete with all batteries, is designed in the form of personal equipment to be worn by the operator. Communication is between the ground station and a ship or aircraft.” The War Office, The British Spy Manual: The Authentic Special Operations Executive (SOE) Guide for WWII (repr., London: Aurum Press, 2014), 158.

  followed André Marsac from the shore: Lieutenant Colonel E. G. Boxshall, “WHEELWRIGHT Circuit,” in E. G. Boxshall and M.R.D. Foot, “Chronology of SOE Operations with the Resistance in France During World War II,” December 1960, IWM, 05/76/1.

  “We had at six in the morning”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 3.

  In Cannes, Peter Churchill: M.R.D. Foot, SOE in France: An Account of the Work of the Special Operations Executive in France, 1940–1944 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1966; rept., London: Whitehall History Publishing with Frank Cass, 2004), 187. The resistante who ran the beauty salon was named Marie-Lou Blanc, and her SOE code name was “Suzanne.”

  Churchill explained, “I want her”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 3.

  George told a different story: Ibid.

  “one of these organdy blouses”: Ibid.

  Vichy police had penetrated the circuit: Foot, SOE in France, 189.

  “Lyon was blown sky high”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 3.

  “And we got out of the train”: Ibid.

  “I remember one morning”: Ibid.

  “An Italian officer”: Ibid.

  He gave the list to Marsac: IWM, File 03/54/1, Folder 09/18/2, Colonel M. J. Buckmaster, “André Marsac (END) a member of the CARTE organization lost an attaché case full of lists of names in a train on his way to Paris. This found its way into the hands of the Gestapo in consequence of which massive arrests followed.” See also BNA, HS 6/426, and John Goldsmith, Accidental Agent (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), 49.

  immigrating to the United States: Thomas Rabino, “André Girard,” Dictionnaire historique de la Résistance (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2006), http://dictionnaire.sensagent.leparisien.fr/Andr%c3%a9%20Girard%20(peintre)/fr-fr.

  George left for the remote Gascon: Foot, SOE in France, 189.

  “That’s where it all started”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 3.

  CHAPTER THREE: A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP

  “Hilaire typifies the sort of person”: Maurice Buckmaster, They Fought Alone: The True Story of SOE’s Agents in Wartime France (1958; repr., Biteback Publishing, 2014), 133.

  résistant named Maurice Henri Rouneau: BNA, HS 9/1285/7, “Rouneau alias Albert.”

  Having spied before the war: Letter from Maurice Rouneau to Philippe de Gunzbourg, April 9, 1952, Archives départementales du Gers, 16 J, Folder “Colonel Starr (Hilaire).”

  a “curious contrast” between them: Raymond Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne (Geneva: Editions du Milieu de Monde, 1945), 27.

  George’s “profound gaze: Jeanne et Michèle Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers: Mémoires du 19 mai à la liberation (Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire: Editions Alan Sutton, 2003), 51. The book includes the complete text of Maurice Rouneau’s wartime memoire, Quatre ans dans l’ombre (Rennes les Bains: A. Bousquet, 1948).

  “Henri Sevenet asked me”: Rouneau to Gunzbourg. Rouneau added, “Hilaire, for his part, helped us with his knowledge and furnished us with the materials we needed.”

  “How many times”: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 43.

  “Age 47,” stated an SOE report: BNA, HS 9/1285/7, “Interrogation of Maurice Rouneau (real name),” 14.

  Rouneau’s girlfriend, an attractive: Jeanne Robert was born on August 11, 1914. FNA, File 16 J 58, “Dossier de Gunzbourg, Philippe, Liquidateur du Réseau Hilaire.”

  “So I went in”: Author’s interview with Jeanne Robert, EHPAD, 240 chemin du Port d’Hourtin, 33140 Cadaujac, France, January 22, 2014. (Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes from Jeanne Robert are from this interview.)

  “I was hunted”: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 169.

  She stopped in Castétis: Ibid.

  The teachers’ residence: George Starr, IWMSA, Recording 24613, 1978, Reel 2, www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80022295.

  Villagers called her Madame Delattre: FNA, File 16 J 58, “Dossier de Gunzbourg, Philippe.”

  The preeminent patriot: Yvonne Cormeau, IWMSA, September 2, 1984, Catalogue number 7369, www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80007171. Unless indicated, other statements from Yvonne Cormeau are from this comprehensive interview. The Larribeau children were Simone, Arnaud, Paul, Yves, and René.

  Rouneau took “most of his meals”: Report by Captain Steward, February 3, 1945, BNA, HS 9/1285/7.

  A group of noncommissioned officers: Alain Geay and Jeanne Robert, “Association les Amis du Réseau VICTOIRE—Réseau S.O.E. Hilaire-Buckmaster,” www.7juin44.fr/spip.php?article85&lang=fr. Also author’s interview with Alain Geay in Castelnau-sur-l’Auvignon, January 24, 2014.

  “the soul of that clandestine military action”: Archives départementales du Gers, 42 J 134, “La Résistance à Castelnau sur l’Auvignon.”

  “My house, my buildings”: Ibid.

  “Jumped with both feet”: Ibid.

  Alsatian refugee Maurice Jacob: Ibid.

  (Sergeant) Fernand Gaucher: “Témoignage de M. Philippe de Gunzbourg,” FNA, 72 AJ 39 I.

  “Among ourselves, we say”: Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers (Ware, UK: Wordsworth Editions, 1993), 187.

  CHAPTER FOUR: “I WAS A HUMAN BEING”

  “Hilaire built up his series”: Maurice Buckmaster, They Fought Alone: The True Story of SOE’s Agents in Wartime France (1958; repr., London: Biteback Publishing, 2014), 126.

  “I feel good here”: Author’s interview with Jeanne Robert, January 22, 2014. Starr told the Imperial War Museum interviewer that he lived with Robert in the school. Maurice Rouneau, however, wrote in his memoir that Starr slept at Mayor Larribeau’s house and used Jeanne Robert’s as his restaurant. (See Jeanne and Michèle Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers: Mémoires du 19 mai à la liberation [Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire: Editions Alan Sutton, 2003], 47. The book includes the complete text of Maurice Rouneau’s wartime memoir, Quatre ans dans l’ombre [Rennes les Bains: A. Bousquet, 1948].) This contradicted what he wrote to Philippe de Gunzbourg on April 9, 1952, “And Hilaire found Castelnau-sur-l’Auvignon much more secure than Agen, so much that he asked me if he could stay. It was then that he moved into the house with my wife [Jeanne Robert].” Robert was not then his wife; FNA, 16 J, Folder: “Résistants de la 1ère heure.”

  “No one was more unobtrusive”: Raymond Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne (Geneva: Editions du Milieu du Monde, 1945), 31.

  “We’d go to bed like”: George Starr, IWMSA, Recording 24613, 1978, Reel 4, www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80022295.

  “He was a man who”: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 51.

  “If somebody’s used to”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 4.

/>   They called him Gaston: When I visited Castelnau-sur-l’Auvignon in 2014, people there referred to Starr with affection as “Tonton.”

  “I had deliberately given”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 4.

  “In this little village”: BNA, HS 9/1285/7.

  “I never locked anything”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 17.

  “All these eight people”: Ibid.

  The team comprised George: Author’s interview with Jeanne Robert, January 22, 2014.

  “set on the table”: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 44.

  “all of a sudden, at one o’clock”: Ibid.

  an air-raid siren: Archives départementales du Gers, 42 J 134, “La Résistance à Castelnau sur l’Auvignon.”

  “That was the first disappointment”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 2.

  The fault was not his: S-Phone malfunctions were rare. See BNA, HS 8/422, 5.

  “Hilaire went out slowly”: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 45–46.

  “the population as a whole”: BNA, HS 9/1407/1, “Lt.-Col. Starr interviewed by Major [R. H.] Angelo on 20–21 September 1944.”

  “That put an end to”: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 47.

  Sergeant Pierre Wallerand, was leaving France: Rouneau wrote that Wallerand was among the first soldiers to land in Normandy on June 6, 1944, when he was killed in action, ibid., 48.

  “who said he was a refugee”: Ibid.

  “they became full Resistance”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 14.

  Some hid their weapons: Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne, 49.

  “Then you protect your people”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 4.

  “I never wrote anything”: Ibid., Reel 16.

  “No paper. No pen.”: Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne, 31.

  “There was a very strict code”: BNA, HS 9/1407/1.

  Sergeant Maurice Dupont: BNA, HS 9/460/1.

  deputy, Paul Sarrette: Documents supplied to the author by Paul McCue, www.paulmccuebooks.com/capt-paul-sarrette. See also BNA, KV 6/18 and HS 9/1346/2.

  “The school had become”: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 49.

  Gaucher’s more imaginative spots: Ibid., 56.

  George did not use dead letters: BNA, HS 9/1407/1.

  Having fled the Nazi anti-Jewish regime: BNA, HS 9/1407/1. An SOE report noted: “All family in France, except one uncle in U.S.A.”

  Denise Bloch’s beauty: BNA, HS 9/165/8.

  A telegram she had sent: Denise Bloch admitted to her F-Section interrogator that she “had sent a cable to her mother addressed to the office at 2 Rue St. Helene [SOE safe house, which police had penetrated], in which she had said she was arriving [in Lyon] on Tuesday”; ibid.

  “Sevenet not impressed”: Ibid.

  “After discussing the matter”: BNA, HS 9/1364/2.

  “But DUPONT was stopped”: Ibid.

  “I installed her”: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 171.

  “they don’t eat vegetables”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 9.

  “An experienced woman”: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 171.

  “SARRETTE says that”: BNA, KV 6/18. See also BNA, HS 9/165/8: F-Section’s interrogation report on Denise Bloch states that neither Sevenet nor Sarrette “appears to have had much use for her.”

  “DENISE disliked both ‘RODOLPHE’”: Ibid.

  “He has plenty of guts”: BNA, HS 9/166/7. See also Martin Sugarman, “Marcus Bloom: A Jewish Hero of SOE,” Jewish Historical Studies 39 (2004): 186. Some reports stated that Eugène/Pertschuk and Bloom, while on their SOE course in England, had agreed to meet at the house of Odette Larocque when they got to Toulouse. See BNA, HS 9/1223/4, “Interrogation of Catalpha [Rabinovitch],” October 1, 1943. Adolphe Rabinovitch claimed that the divorced Madame Larocque was Pertschuk’s girlfriend. That meeting, if it took place, delayed Bloom’s planned rendezvous with Brooks and posed the danger of connecting Brooks’s PIMENTO with Pertschuk’s PRUNUS circuit. To Brooks, these were unpardonable breaches of security. See Anthony Brooks, IWMSA, Catalogue number 16568, Reel 16.

  “I don’t need a wireless operator”: Brooks, IWMSA, Reel 16. SOE files on George Starr’s activities in 1943 stated that Pertschuk “agreed to help by allowing Bloom to transmit for George also” in March. Maurice Rouneau recalled that the connection had begun in January, which is when Brooks said they met at the Trouffe de Quercy restaurant. George made no mention of the meeting in postwar debriefs or interviews. See Lieutenant Colonel E. G. Boxshall, “WHEELWRIGHT Circuit,” in E. G. Boxshall and M.R.D. Foot, “Chronology of SOE Operations with the Resistance in France During World War II,” December 1960, IWM, London, 05/76/1, and Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 56. According to SOE official historian M.R.D. Foot, Bloom appeared in Toulouse for his first meeting with Brooks wearing a bright check jacket, smoking a pipe, and greeting Brooks in English: “’Ow’re you, mate?” Foot may have heard the story from Brooks, although his version differs slightly from Brooks’s own to the Imperial War Museum. See M.R.D. Foot, SOE in France: An Account of the Work of the Special Operations Executive, 1940–1944 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1966; rept., London: Whitehall History Publishing with Frank Cass, 2004), 274. However, Brooks’s recollection years after the events may not have accorded with the facts. Pertschuk did not know Odette Larocque before he arrived in France, according to Anne Whiteside, Pertschuk’s niece, in an email to the author, November 7, 2016.

  “Starr recruited, mainly in Condom”: “Réseau WHEELWRIGHT,” Archives départementales du Gers, 42 J 186.

  Denise Bloch described him: BNA, HS/9/165/8.

  Pertschuk found Gunzbourg: “Lady Berlin—obituary,” Telegraph, August 26, 2014, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11056990/Lady-Berlin-obituary.html. See also FNA, 72 AJ 39 I, pièce 8a.

  “He regarded two groups”: FNA, 72 AJ 39 I, pièce 8a.

  Gunzbourg “was a Frenchman”: Maurice Loupias, dit Bergerac, Messages personnels (np: Amicale Bergeret Résistance, Dordogne-Sud, 1999), 83.

  They lived in hiding: FNA, 72 AJ 39 I, pièce 8a.

  “established contacts, housed agents”: Archives départementales du Gers, 42 AJ 186.

  Marie-Louise Lac, though, concealed: Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne, 35.

  build that his SOE file called “solid”: BNA, HS 9/1223/4.

  Rabinovitch’s friends called him Alec: Archives de la Haute Garonne, 16 J 58, Fondes Daniel Latapie, Réseau WHEELWRIGHT.

  Rabinovitch repaired Bloom’s radio: “L’Organisation Aliée: Le SOE,” http://sdonac32.pagesperso-orange.fr/1944.htm.

  George and Bloch took turns: BNA, KV 6/18 and HS 9/165/8.

  Morrisse bicycled twenty miles: Jeanine Morrisse, Là d’où je viens . . . (Portet-sur-Garonne, France: Editions Empreinte, 2007), 15–16. See also www.ladepeche.fr/article/2011/10/02/1181636-niquou-combattante-de-l-ombre.html.

  The strain on George emerged: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 15.

  “one of the biggest bloody smugglers”: Ibid., Reel 16.

  some of the messages she relayed: Pilar Starr, IWMSA, Catalogue number 24614, www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80022296.

  “A superior Armagnac”: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 51.

  Robert urged George: Jeanne Robert told me in 2014 that she pleaded with Mayor Larribeau, “I don’t dare leave him, but I’m tired.” She said that the mayor convinced Starr that it was time for bed, and he followed her home.

  “the agent never lost”: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 51.

  “I decided to ring the bloody church bells”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 4.

  CHAPTER FIVE: A CURSED DAY

  “You had to use your head”: Maurice Buckmaster, They Fought Alone: The True Story of SOE’s Agents in Wartime France (1958; repr., London: Biteback P
ublishing, 2014), 135.

  “The elimination of German”: Leon V. Sigal, Fighting to a Finish: The Politics of War Termination in the United States and Japan, 1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 91.

  George’s reception committee hid the matériel: George Starr, IWMSA, Recording 24613, 1978, Reel 4, www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80022295.

  Bloom proved ingenious: Martin Sugarman, “Marcus Bloom: A Jewish Hero of SOE,” Jewish Historical Studies 39 (2004): 188.

  He helped to receive 35 tons: BNA, HS 9/166/7.

  “He assisted in many acts”: Ibid.

  “The place was spotted”: Philippe de Gunzbourg, Souvenirs du sud-ouest, privately printed reminiscence (provided to the author by David Hewson), 7.

  “Nous, officers RAF”: M.R.D. Foot, SOE in France: An Account of the Works of British Special Operations Executive in France, 1940–1944 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1966; rept., London: Whitehall History Publishing with Frank Cass, 2004), 92.

  his daughter, Maguy, had already scouted: Archives départementales du Gers, 16 J, “Annexe au formulaire modele 3.”

  guide the two men to Spain: Jeanne and Michèle Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers: Mémoires du 19 mai à la liberation (Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire: Editions Alan Sutton, 2003), 60–61. The book includes the complete text of Maurice Rouneau’s wartime memoir, Quatre ans dans l’ombre (Rennes les Bains: A. Bousquet, 1948). For transportation, Merchez recommended a businessman in Sainte-Livrade named Ordy, who promised Rouneau, “In two days, I will take the two men within four kilometers of the Spanish border.”

  “at the Café Regina”: Ibid., 56.

  a résistant from the lower Pyrenees: Ibid., 57–58. See also FNA, 72 AJ 40 III, pièce 2a. The résistant’s name was Albert Ascaso.

  “They want to do great things”: Ibid., 57.

  semiautomatic German Mauser: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 15.

  “some fat Boche officers”: Robert, Le Reseau Victoire dans le Gers, 59.

  George installed Eureka homing devices: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 16.

  RAF Halifaxes made two more deliveries: Lieutenant Colonel E. G. Boxshall, “WHEELWRIGHT Circuit,” in E. G. Boxshall and M.R.D. Foot, “Chronology of SOE Operations with the Resistance in France During World War II,” December 1960, IWM, London, 05/76/1. See also FNA, 72 AJ 39 I, pièce 8a.