They Fought Alone: The True Story of the Starr Brothers, British Secret Agents in Nazi-Occupied France
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“RODOLPHE [Sevenet] went to pick up”: BNA, HS 9/1407/1, “Notes on Hilaire, 12th July 1943.”
“he had seen at Agen”: BNA, KV 6/18, “Interrogation of Henri Sevenet, 28 May 1943.”
“Before he left”: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 71.
The Pat Escape Line: BNA, HS 9/1328.
Sevenet and Sarrette decided to flee: BNA, HS 9/1346/2.
Pertschuk was living at: Archives départementales du Gers, 42 J 185.
“Lieutenant ‘Denis’ would turn”: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 61. See also BNA, HS 9/288/3: “His mission was to be lieutenant to an Organiser [Pertschuk] in the Toulouse area.”
“decided English (or Canadian) accent”: BNA, HS 9/288/3.
Labayle had worked for PRUNUS: BNA, HS 9/128/7.
Duchalard hid in one: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 68. See also BNA, KV 6/19.
rendezvous at the Café Riche: BNA, HS 9/165/8. There are discrepancies in official accounts of this meeting. Paul Sarrette told SOE that Denise and Starr together met Pertschuk in the café on April 12. Denise stated that she met him on her own.
“PRUNUS’s days were numbered”: Archives départementales du Gers, 42 J 185.
Bloom’s wife had left: Germaine attempted to obtain her husband’s release from Fresnes Prison near Paris and visited him there before he was transported to concentration camps in Germany; Sugarman, “Marcus Bloom,” 191.
“BLOOM and a Spaniard”: BNA, HS 9/166/7, “Interview with M. Colle, 17 July 1945.”
“In BLOOM’s opinion”: Ibid.
“URBAIN [Bloom] was seen shortly”: BNA, HS 9/1223/4.
a cactus plant in the window: Jeanine Morrisse, Là d’où je viens . . . (Portet-sur-Garonne, France: Editions Empreinte, 2007), 16.
Gestapo had discovered Vuillemot’s name: BNA, HS 6/422. The F-Section cable of July 11, 1943, added, “Gestapo at first did not realize importance of affair.”
Although Bardet was a double agent: IWM, Private Papers of Cecile Pearl Cornioley, Documents, 16594.
Buchowski visited a flat: Brooks Richards, Secret Flotillas: The Clandestine Sea Lines to France and French North Africa, 1940–1944 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1996), 225.
“made enquiries of the proprietress”: BNA, HS 9/165/8.
Bloch drew the obvious conclusion: Starr’s report, November 20/21, 1944, BNA, HS 9/1707/1. George claimed that he rather than Bloch went to meet Pertschuk in the café. A report in his SOE file stated: “Meanwhile, HILAIRE on 15th April, went to a pre-arranged rendezvous with EUGENE at TOULOUSE. EUGENE did not turn up and HILAIRE later discovered that he, together with his W/T operator and at least 10 others, had been arrested.” Philippe de Gunzbourg supported the view that Starr had gone to Toulouse to see Pertschuk on April 15 and realized he had been arrested. See Archives de la Haute Garonne, 16 J 58, Fonds Daniel Latapie, Réseau WHEELWRIGHT.
“And when I went in”: Tony Brooks, IWMSA, Reel 16.
large cache of Pertschuk’s papers: BNA, HS 9.1223/4. Hanon added that the Germans had also seized 200,000 francs from Pertschuk. Anne Whiteside, niece of Maurice Pertschuk, doubted that Hanon would have known that Pertschuk’s papers were in the WC. “Another doubt for me is how Hanon knew that the Germans got lots of info from this supposed basket in the WC . . . Hanon is interviewed Nov. 43, 7 months after the arrests, when he might not remember the difference between theory and fact.” Anne Whiteside, email to the author, January 23, 2016.
To notify London: Archives de la Haute Garonne, 16 J 58, Fonds Daniel Latapie, Réseau WHEELWRIGHT.
“Mind your own business”: Jean Overton Fuller, Doubt Agent?: Light on the Secret Agents’ War in France (London: Pan, 1961).
CHAPTER SIX: “IT LITERALLY RAINED CONTAINERS”
We could never have functioned: Maurice Buckmaster, They Fought Alone: The True Story of SOE’s Agents in Wartime France (1958; repr., Biteback Publishing, 2014), 65.
Major Hermann Josef Giskes: Christer Jorgensen, Spying for the Führer: Hitler’s Espionage Machine (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2004), 85–86. Huub Lauwers’s SOE code name was “Ebenezer.”
Englandspiel, “England game”: H. J. Giskes, London Calling North Pole (London: William Kimber, 1953).
“SOE’s most regular penfriend”: Leo Marks, Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemakers’s War (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 143. Giskes ran the Englandspiel for twenty months during which the Germans captured sixty-one SOE agents.
“Goetz, the famous German”: Anthony Brooks, IWMSA, Reel 16. In Holland, Lauwers had cooperated with the Abwehr, believing his deliberate mistakes, including the code for CAUGHT and the omission of his security checks, would convince SOE he was acting under duress. See Marks, Between Silk and Cyanide, 114–22, and Paul Leverkuehn, German Military Intelligence (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1954), 114.
“allowed to disclose”: Marks, Between Silk and Cyanide, 319.
“London refused to believe”: BNA, HS 9/1407/1.
SOE asked Bloom personal questions: BNA, HS 6/422.
“The decoy transmission”: BNA, WO 208/4679, “VOLUNTARY STATEMENT BY PW, ID 1424 Civ Josef Goetz, 26 June 1946.”
John landed without entangling: BNA, KV 6/29, “Interrogation of J.A.R. Starr, 28th and 30th May, 1945.”
Buckmaster regarded Southgate: Buckmaster, They Fought Alone, 174.
“made frequent use”: BNA, HS 9/1395/3, “Interrogation of Hector, 28.10.43.”
the captain “was English”: BNA, KV 6/29, “Interrogation of J.A.R. Starr, 28th and 30th May, 1945.”
Madame Neraud peered out: The Gestapo arrested the Neraud family on September 2, 1943. They were sent to concentration camps in Germany, from which only the daughter, Colette, returned. BNA, KV 6/29, “Report of Mlle. Neraud.” She blamed John Starr for the family’s arrest, because an interrogator read a statement allegedly written by Starr with a description of the house. However, SOE doubted this. If Starr had betrayed the Nerauds in July, the SD was unlikely to have waited until September to apprehend them.
“ISIDORE [Jones] transmitted for many circuits”: Ibid.
“In the case the police”: BNA, HS 9/1406/8.
“I’d arrived with a suitcase”: George Starr, IWMSA, Recording 24613, 1978, Reel 2, www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80022295.
“They [the Gascons] wash their teeth”: Ibid., Reel 9.
“the skin goes all white”: Ibid., Reel 15.
“When it got to Agen”: Ibid., Reel 9.
George’s appointment as Inspecteur: BNA, HS 9/1407/1.
“This was an ideal cover”: Ibid., “Lt.-Col. Starr interviewed by Major [R.H.] Angelo on 20–21 September 1944.” See also 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.
“The position grew so serious”: Boxshall, “WHEELWRIGHT Circuit,” 2.
lured Peter Churchill: 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), 275; Peter Churchill, The Spirit in the Cage (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1954), 242. Churchill wrote, “Roger Bardet was the French double agent who betrayed us in the Resistance . . .” Surviving colleagues accused Roger Bardet, the French double agent called le Boiteaux, the Lame, of betraying Pertschuk as well.
London advised the wireless operator: Boxshall, “JOCKEY Circuit,” 1.
“she always travelled everywhere”: BNA, HS 9/165/8.
“a terrible mess”: Ibid.
George asked Maurice Dupont: George Starr appeared to have doubts about Dupont. An SOE report of 1943 noted, “HILAIRE told sourc
e that YVAN [Dupont] was very sincere, but was too young and talked too much, and should not be sent back into the field.” See BNA, HS 9/1223/4. See also Boxshall, “WHEELWRIGHT Circuit,” 2: “She was accompanied by Sgt. Maurice DUPONT (who in Oct. 1943 as Major DUPONT (Abelard, Yvan) expanded the Troyes circuit . . .).” Dupont had an honorable war record before and after his association with Starr. He would be promoted to captain and receive Britain’s Military Cross and the Croix de Guerre and Médaille de la Résistance Française from France. See Supplement to the London Gazette, HMSO, August 30, 1945, 4372, available at www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/37244/supplement/4372/data.pdf.
“We were at the end”: 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), 43. The book includes the complete text of Maurice Rouneau’s wartime memoir, Quatre ans dans l’ombre (Rennes les Bains: A. Bousquet, 1948).
“guides were excellent”: BNA, HS 9/165/8.
At last, she and Dupont reached: Ibid.
seize George’s report: Archives de la Haute Garonne, 16 J 58, Fonds Daniel Latapie, Réseau WHEELWRIGHT.
“the loss of her papers in Spain”: BNA, HS 9/1407/1, “Danielle Wood, May 24th, 1943.”
frontier guards in Bausen: Ibid. The border guards were carabineros of Spain’s Real Cuerpo de Carabineros de Costas y Fronteras, who sent the report to the Guardia Civil in Lerida. The records do not indicate what happenend to it afterward.
Franco was a friend of Abwehr chief: Léon Papeleux, L’Admiral Canaris entre Franco et Hitler: Le rôle de Canaris dan les relations germane-espagnoles, 1915–1944 (Tournai, Belgium: Casterman, 1977), 134–40.
Dupont, who was reunited with Bloch: Boxshall, “WHEELWRIGHT Circuit,” 2: “She was accompanied by Sgt. Maurice DUPONT. . . . They reached England on 21 May 1943, but unfortunately the report had been confiscated in Spain.”
furious to be kept waiting: BNA, HS 9/1407/1. The report stated, “DANIELLE [Bloch] met RODOLPHE at Gibraltar . . . RODOLPHE was not working with HILAIRE, and will explain himself, why.” See also BNA, HS 9/1346/2.
journey took twenty days: BNA, HS 9/165/8.
“He needs someone”: Ibid.
“Apparently his position is”: Ibid.
“would like his Mother”: Ibid.
He evaded German surveillance: Jean Overton Fuller, The Starr Affair (London: Victor Gollancz, 1954), 36–39. John Starr assisted the author in the writing of the book from its inception through correction of galleys. Fuller wrote (194), “We have been careful to include in this book only what Starr is sure of.” See also John Starr’s letter to Fuller, April 4, 1954: “I sent the galley proof back to Gollancz some time ago.” IWM, J. V. Overton Fuller Collection, Box 8, File 2.
George Starr sent London: BNA, HS 9/1407/1.
“there was no mistaking me”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 3.
“He was a very brave man”: Archives de la Haute Garonne, Fondes Daniel Latapie, 16 J 58.
“a leaf out of the communists’ book”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 2.
His seven-member cells: BNA, HS 9/1407/1.
subprefect of Bergerac provided: Archives de la Haute Garonne, Fondes Daniel Latapie, 16 J 58, and Archives Municipales de Toulouse, 82 Z 6. George liaised with Loupias through Philippe de Gunzbourg and met him “only two or three times, not in his command post which was in Condom, but at a hardware store in Condom.” See Maurice Loupias, dit Bergerac, Messages personnels (np: Amicale Bergeret Résistance, Dordogne-Sud, 1999), 85. Loupias wrote, “The password was, ‘Je viens de chercher les trois pipes Rops.’ [“I have come in search of three Rops pipes.”] That phrase opened the door to a comfortable apartment, where Colonel Hilaire received us.”
“The English colonel”: Archives departementales du Gers, 42 AJ 186.
Rabinovitch emerged from hiding: BNA, HS 9/1223/4. One SOE report on Rabinovitch stated, “In April 1943, as the result of the arrest of his organizer and several others, Rabinovitch was left in a position of the utmost peril. He nevertheless carried on, and endeavoured to gather together the remaining healthy elements of the organisation.” The same file added, “A tireless worker, Rabinovitch sent nearly 200 messages from the field, a feat involving long hours of operating almost daily under difficult and dangerous conditions. He showed courage of a very high order and the greatest disregard for his own personal safety. He never shirked responsibility, and was frequently called upon at great risk to himself to assist other circuits whose communications had broken down.”
“After the RAOUL [Peter Churchill] affair”: BNA, HS 9/1407/1, “Notes on Hilaire, 12th July 1943.” The report added, “Arnaud [Rabinovitch] is now on his way out with another member of that circuit, GERVAIS [Victor Hazan], and will be able to give full details on the HILAIRE set up, as he and Gervais passed through Hilaire’s headquarters on the night of 21/22 June. Also, Hilaire at present keeps in touch with us through BERNE, and by that means let us know that he now has 28 teams ready for action on JOUR ‘J.’”
Despite brutal torture: Yvette Pitt, email to the author, October 18, 2016: “I can confirm that GRS [George Reginald Starr] never liked Odette, after the war even saying (to me) that she had not really had her toenails pulled out.”
“embryo of the arsenal”: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 59.
“war matériel had arrived”: Ibid., 60.
“We had a German section”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 8.
Escholier imagined George’s thoughts: Raymond Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne (Geneva: Editions du Milieu du Monde, 1945), 39.
I refuse to be complicit”: Ibid., 45.
“the men from Flanders”: Ibid., 50. Parisot succeeded the Armagnac Battalion’s first commander, car mechanic Louis Dales, when the latter died in a motorcycle accident in September 1943.
first consignment to Parisot’s: Ibid., 65.
Lévy brought Parisot to meet George: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 16.
Lévy vanished rather than risk: Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne, 66.
“two men with the same idea”: In 2014, the mayor of Castelnau-sur-l’Auvignon, Maurice Boison, said, “The provider was Gaston [Starr], the soldier was Parisot.”
“Freedom of thought”: Jean-Louis Colonna Cesari, Ruhe, Le silence des âmes (np: The Book Edition, nd), 72, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=P0rckWhdIOgC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=twopage&q=edition&f=false.
“The abbé was a jovial old boy”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 6.
hiding tons of SOE weaponry: Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne, 53. Escholier wrote that Abbé Talès “transformed his church into an arsenal. . . .”
Abbé Boë’s loyalty was: David Hewson, introduction and notes to Anne-Marie Walters, Moondrop to Gascony, foreword by M.R.D. Foot (1946; rept., Petersfield, UK: Harriman House, 2009), 261. In his notes, Hewson wrote: “Abbé Boë took up his post as curé of Blaziert, near Castelnau-sur-l’Auvignon, in 1932. A professor of theology, former priest of the Vatican, a poly-glot and water-diviner, he was well known throughout the Gers . . . Boë joined the Resistance after the total occupation of France and subsequently became a recruiting agent and courier for the maquis at Castelnau.”
“the classic poilu”: Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne, 95.
“He tore about the countryside”: Walters, Moondrop to Gascony, 170 [1946 edition].
“so badly compromised”: BNA, HS 9/1223/4.
“All means of communications”: BNA, HS 9/1407/1.
Duchalard, who had complained: BNA, KV 6/19, “INTERROGATION OF DENIS, 4.10.43.”
Duchalard spent a third of the 100,000: Ibid.
Duchalard “not remain long”: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 72.
“In the middle of 1943”: Buckmaster, They Fought Alone, 225.
“troops, machines for transporting
light tanks”: FNA, 72 AJ 39 I, pièce 8a, “Témoignage de M. Philippe de Gunzbourg, Liquidations du Réseau Hilaire, 21 avril 1947.”
Allied headquarters “decided not to use”: Ibid.
acquired a second master: Buckmaster, They Fought Alone, 225.
“28 teams for railway destruction”: Boxshall, “WHEELWRIGHT Circuit.”
Its area of operations: BNA, HS 9/1407/1, “Court of Enquiry re Lt. Col. G.R. STARR (SOE), Feb. 1945.”
CHAPTER SEVEN: ARRESTS AND ARRIVALS
“War is no exact science”: Maurice Buckmaster, They Fought Alone: The True Story of SOE’s Agents in Wartime France (1958; repr., London: Biteback Publishing, 2014), 72.
“I should have been suspicious”: Henri Raymond, “Experiences of an SOE Agent in France, alias César (Harry Rée),” in Michael Elliot Bateman, ed., The Fourth Dimension of Warfare: Volume I: Intelligence, Subversion, Resistance (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1970), 117–18.
“told BOB [John Starr] that he had grounds”: BNA, KV 6/29, “Interrogation of CESAR @ STOCKBROKER, dated 24.7.44.”
“rather too much facility”: Ibid., “Interrogation of J.A.R. Starr, 28th and 30th May, 1945.”
two other female agents: These were Noor Inayat Khan and Cecily Lefort. Khan, code name “Madeleine,” went to Paris as the PROSPER circuit’s radio operator. SOE assigned Lefort, code name “Alice,” to the Drôme as courier for DONKEYMAN organizer Francis Cammaerts.
sabotage operation “near DIJON”: BNA, KV 6/29, “Interrogation of J.A.R. Starr, 28th and 30th May, 1945.”
“Operation Husky was”: Lieutenant Colonel Jon M. Swanson, “Operation Husky, the Campaign in Sicily: A Case Study” (USAWC Military Studies Program Paper, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA, 1992), ii.
Schutzstaffel (SS) troops ordered them: Jean Overton Fuller, The Starr Affair (London: Victor Gollancz, 1954), 39.
“MARTIN had given me away”: BNA, KV 6/29, “Rough Report by Capt. J.A.R. STARR, dictated to C.S.M Goddard at Stn. XXVIII commencing 9 May 1945.”