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

by Charles Glass

  “sold by a French double agent”: British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Knowledge Management Department, FO 950/1299.

  “got out, pretended to be stiff”: BNA, KV 6/29, “Interrogation of J.A.R. Starr, 28th and 30th May, 1945.”

  A bullet pierced: British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Knowledge Management Department, FO 950/1299.

  “I continued to run”: 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.”

  “Bob, contagious illness”: Tribunal Militaire, Testimony of Ernest Vogt, June 19, 1948.

  “I was thrown into a cell”: Ibid.

  “his reserve cover story”: BNA, KV 6/29, “Interrogation of J.A.R. Starr, 28th and 30th May, 1945.”

  “my wounded thigh was beaten”: Ibid.

  “about five feet nine”: Fuller, The Starr Affair, 46.

  time for his comrades to disappear: BNA, HS 9/1406/8: On September 23, 1943, a returning agent informed F-Section: “BOB was arrested one day as he was going by car to DIJON. The car was stopped as it was about to enter the town and BOB was about to enter the town and BOB was taken off by the Gestapo. There was a man with him in the car and it is believed this man denounced him.”

  “He used to come to see STARR”: BNA, KV 6/29, “Interrogation of J.A.R. Starr, 28th and 30th May, 1945.”

  The plane was about to jettison: Archives départementales du Gers, 42 J 18 G, “Dossier: SOE. Actions menées (parachutages),” 1943–1944.

  Maurice Rouneau had been: 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), 79. The book includes the complete text of Maurice Rouneau’s wartime memoir, Quatre ans dans l’ombre (Rennes les Bains: A. Bousquet, 1948).

  a sudden crisis: Ibid., 106.

  “Quick, my old Albert” . . . “I said Albert only”: Ibid., 83–86. Rouneau’s full account of Gaucher’s arrest is missing in other narratives.

  “I gave my hand”: Ibid, 77.

  “Paul Revere ride”: George Starr, IWMSA, Recording 24613, 1978, Reel 17, www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80022295. Starr said he ordered, “Everybody disappear!”

  “cease all activities”: 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.

  “If he’d waited”: Starr, IWMSA, Reel 14.

  Germans arrested a journalist: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 86. The arrested journalist was Roger Banabera.

  Gunzbourg ran into the post office: Anne-Marie Walters, Moondrop to Gascony, foreword by M.R.D. Foot, introduction and notes by David Hewson (1946; rept., Petersfield, UK: Harriman House, 2009), 68. Walters wrote that Gunzbourg had come down the stairs when the Gestapo asked him if he was Albert Cambon, another résistant. He told them he wasn’t and rode off on his bicycle.

  Marie-Louise Lac opened her door: Archives départementales du Gers, 42 AJ 186, Madame Lac, 14, rue Cassaignolles, Vic-Fezensac, “Souvenirs de la Résistance.” Madame Lac gave the date of Gunzbourg’s escape from the Gestapo as May 9, 1943, but all other sources, including Gunzbourg himself, confirmed that he fled his château following Fernand Gaucher’s arrest in August 1943.

  remained in hiding at Madame Lac’s: Ibid.

  “He was interrogated”: Boxshall, “WHEELWRIGHT Circuit.”

  sent a résistant to evacuate: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 92.

  “total hospitality and relative security”: Ibid., 87.

  German security personnel had raided: Ibid., 87–88.

  Vera Atkins reported to: Sarah Helm, A Life in Secrets: The Story of Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of SOE (New York: Little, Brown, 2005), 426.

  “I was willing to do”: Yvonne Cormeau, IWMSA, September 2, 1984, Catalogue number 7369, www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80007171.

  “I did not take it”: Ibid.

  silver powder compact: Yvette Pitt, email to the author, October 18, 2016.

  “I had to slide through the hole”: Cormeau, IWMSA, September 2, 1984.

  “The landing was perfect although”: BNA, HS 6/658.

  a falling canister grazed her leg: Yvette Pitt, email to the author, October 16, 2016.

  “It was the first operation”: Cormeau, IWMSA, September 2, 1984.

  Rouneau recalled, “Hilaire astonished us”: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 53.

  regaling Rouneau with technical details: Ibid., 91.

  his radio operator, Annette: BNA, HS 6/658.

  George arranged to meet her: Starr had requested a male radio operator, preferably one too old to be subject to forced labor in Germany under Vichy’s Service du travail obligatoire (STO) law. Cormeau recalled, “London’s answer was to send him a woman. He must have cursed.” Cormeau, IWMSA, September 2, 1984.

  “I’ve known this lady”: Liane Jones, A Quiet Courage: Women Agents in the French Resistance (New York: Bantam Books, 1990), 181. The author wrote that Starr met Cormeau in the station and said, “Je connais Madame.” [“I know Madame.”] She does not cite a reference.

  “Physically he was small”: Cormeau, IWMSA, September 2, 1984.

  on a long walk: BNA, HS 6/658: In Yvonne Cormeau’s SOE debrief, she said that she and Starr “went out for a ride on bicycles, to discuss arrangements, etc. . . .” The differences between Cormeau’s and Starr’s recollections of minor details in this encounter are reminiscent of the lyrics in “I Remember It Well” from the Lerner and Loewe musical Gigi.

  photograph of his wife: Alfred Starr, email to the author, August 24, 2016.

  “She was given a letter”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 15.

  “what the hell are you doing here?”: Ibid., Reel 17.

  “about this other chap”: Cormeau, IWMSA, September 2, 1984.

  made her first transmissions: Douglas Boyd, Voices from the Dark Years: The Truth About Occupied France, 1940–1945 (Stroud, UK: Sutton Publishing, 2007), 185–86.

  “The owner of this house”: BNA, HS 6/658.

  “nine men were shot”: Boxshall, “WHEELWRIGHT Circuit.”

  “Look, if you are found”: Cormeau, IWMSA, September 2, 1984.

  “Knowing that my husband”: Ibid.

  CHAPTER EIGHT: AVENUE BOCHE

  “In secret wireless work”: Maurice Buckmaster, They Fought Alone: The True Story of SOE’s Agents in Wartime France (1958; repr., London: Biteback Publishing, 2014), 60.

  penitentiary was by then notorious: BNA, KV 6/29, “Interrogation of J.A.R. Starr, 28 and 30th May, 1945” states, “After roughly five weeks in DIJON (i.e., about the end of August 1943) both STARR and MICHEL were taken together by car to FRESNES, where STARR was placed in a cell with three other prisoners, and MICHEL was [placed] in another cell a few doors away.” Michel was one of the code names for Peter Churchill, but there is no record of Churchill being held at Dijon. He had been arrested in Saint-Jorioz and taken to Annecy before Fresnes. Just before John’s arrival at Fresnes, a French prisoner who had endured weeks of torture had hanged herself. She was Berty Albrecht, who helped found the Combat network with her husband, Captain Henri Frenay.

  cellmates were “a Polish officer”: BNA, KV 6/29, “Interrogation of J.A.R. Starr, 28th and 30th May, 1945,” 5. See also Jean Overton Fuller, The Starr Affair (London: Victor Gollancz, 1954), 51. Fuller and some documents spelled the student’s name “Commert,” but official postwar documents use the spelling “Comert.” By 1949, he had become a journalist at France Soir. See Tribunal Militaire, statement of Jean-Claude Comert, November 22, 1949. After the war, Comert married Anne-Marie Walters. The name Argence is spelled Argens in this statement and other documents.

  Germans had penetrated PH
YSICIAN: Jean Overton Fuller, The German Penetration of SOE: France, 1941–1944 (Maidstone, UK: George Mann, 1975), 46. Francis Suttill’s code name was “Prosper.”

  double agent Henri Déricourt: Ibid., 89 and 118. See also Jean Overton Fuller, Déricourt: The Chequered Spy (Norwich, UK: Michael Russell Publishing, 1989).

  Parisians called it “avenue Boche”: Charles Glass, Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation (New York: Penguin Press, 2009), 181 and 245.

  “It was incongruous”: Peter Churchill, The Spirit in the Cage (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1954), 53.

  Vogt’s chief, Sturmbannführer Hans Kieffer: BNA, WO 208/4679, “NOTES ON THE INTERROGATION OF WERNER EMIL RUEHL, BORN ON 5.6.1905 IN MARXLOH, BY SQUADRON OFFICER V.M. ATKINS AT L.D.C. ON 24.10.16.” Ruehl said Kieffer’s three children were “a boy Hans and two girls.” The girls were Hildegarde and Gretel. Kieffer wrote of his duties in France, “Until about January 1943 I was employed in the building of the Ministry of Interior (Sûreté) and afterwards at 84 Avenue Foch, where in addition to Counter Intelligence and Sabotage matters, the execution of radio deception plans with fake messages in particular was among the tasks of my section.” See BNA, WO 235/560, “Statement of Hans Kieffer, 29 November 1946.”

  “square-headed, not tall”: BNA, HS 9/1395/3, “Report by S/LDR. M. SOUTHGATE.”

  John “had the sense”: BNA, KV 6/29, Testimony of Ernest Vogt, June 19, 1948.

  “He made it appear”: Fuller, The Starr Affair, 54n.

  another prisoner, Major Gilbert Norman: Fuller, The German Penetration of SOE, 46.

  Norman believed Suttill had given: Francis J. Suttill, Shadows in the Fog: The True Story of Major Suttill and the Prosper French Resistance Network (Stroud, UK: The History Press, 2014).

  “there was a leak”: BNA, KV 6/29, “Interrogation of J.A.R. Starr, 28th and 30th May, 1945.”

  brought him to Vogt: There is a discrepancy between Starr’s statement to SOE in BNA, KV 6/29 and his account to Jean Overton Fuller for her authorized biography of him, The Starr Affair, about whether Vogt and Kieffer showed him the map on his first or second day at avenue Foch.

  suspicion that the SD had a mole: Fuller, The Starr Affair, 55.

  “He likes the way”: Ibid., 56.

  “decided to comply”: BNA, KV 6/29, “Interrogation of J.A.R. Starr, 28th and 30th May, 1945.”

  a few years later, he claimed: Fuller, The Starr Affair, 56.

  “to glean a lot of information”: BNA, KV 6/29, “Interrogation of J.A.R. Starr, 28th and 30th May, 1945.”

  “That’s what’s waiting”: Tribunal Militaire, statement of Jean-Claude Comert, November 22, 1949.

  on the second floor: The European and British method of numbering floors makes the ground floor zero, or rez de chaussée, making the first floor the American second floor.

  “BOB was given various”: BNA, KV 6/29, Testimony of Ernest Vogt, June 19, 1948.

  “The charts consisted of”: BNA, HS 9/1395/3, “Interrogation of S/Ldr Maurice Southgate @ HECTOR, 13 June 1945.”

  “Sometimes, he would be taken”: BNA, KV 6/29, “Interrogation of J.A.R. Starr, 28th and 30th May, 1945.”

  “Prisoners were better fed”: BNA, HS 9/1395/3, “Interrogation of S/Ldr Maurice Southgate @ HECTOR, 13 June 1945.”

  “I was amazed at H.Q. GESTAPO”: BNA, HS 8/422, “COMMENTS. Squadron Leader SOUTHGATE makes the following comments.”

  The coffee, tea: Paul Leverkuehn, German Military Intelligence (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1954), 115.

  John came to know: Jean Overton Fuller, Madeleine: The Story of Noor Inayat Khan (London: Victor Gollancz, 1952), 147. Fuller wrote, “The guards were mainly Rumanians and Russians (prisoners of war) and could hardly speak a word of German, let alone French or English. It was very difficult, even for the Germans, to make them understand anything, and the staff were always anxious lest a mistake should occur because the guards had not been able to follow their instructions.”

  “dark, dirty and very vulgar”: BNA, HS 9/1395/3, “Interrogation of S/Ldr Maurice Southgate @ HECTOR, 13 June 1945.”

  mistress of . . . Master Sergeant Karl Haug: BNA, KV 6/29, “NOTE OF INTERVIEW IN FRESNES PRISON WITH ROSE-MARIE HOLWEDTS, nee CORDONNIER.” See also BNA, WO 311/933, “Affidavit, Captain Starr, 4 October 1945.”

  “When I came back”: BNA, WO 208/4679, “VOLUNTARY STATEMENT BY PW, ID 1424 Civ Josef Goetz, 26 June 1946.”

  “Dr. Goetz was furious”: IWM, J. V. Overton Fuller Collection, Box 8, File 2, letter, Ernest Vogt to Jean Overton Fuller, September 12, 1954.

  “You have forgotten”: Fuller, The German Penetration of SOE, 58. See also IWM, J. V. Overton Fuller Collection.

  “When STARR arrived”: BNA, KV 6/29, “Interrogation of J.A.R. Starr, 28th and 30th May, 1945.”

  CHAPTER NINE: WORD OF HONOR

  “Our men were lonely”: Maurice Buckmaster, They Fought Alone: The True Story of SOE’s Agents in Wartime France (1958; repr., Biteback Publishing, 2014), 136.

  “Thanks to the patriotism”: 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), 92. The book includes the complete text of Maurice Rouneau’s wartime memoir, Quatre ans dans l’ombre (Rennes les Bains: A. Bousquet, 1948).

  He and Robert risked: Ibid., 95.

  “You never knew which man”: Yvonne Cormeau, IWMSA, September 2, 1984, Catalogue number 7369, www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80007171.

  “I shook the hand warmly”: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 99. The mayor of Castelnau-sur-l’Auvignon, Maurice Boisou, told me in January 2014 about Captain Pagès: “He worked for [Maurice] Papon, but when he saw that it was beginning to turn into a massacre and that they were making people disappear, Pagès asked to be posted outside the occupied zone, a zone that was forbidden because it was forbidden to us; and he was deployed to the gendarmerie brigade in Condom and there he went into the Resistance and met Gaston [George Starr].” Maurice Papon, general secretary of the Gironde Prefecture under Vichy, was responsible for the arrest of more than fifteen hundred Jewish men, women, and children, who were sent to the death camp at Auschwitz. Papon, who survived the war under the fiction that he had supported the Resistance, became police chief in Paris in 1958 and detained thousands of Algerians and oversaw the murder of at least two hundred of them.

  “I know now what calumnies”: Ibid, 100.

  “the security section reported”: 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.

  “ordinary work of finding”: Cormeau, IWMSA, September 2, 1984.

  George broke into Labayle’s office: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 101.

  “without his presence of mind”: Archives Départementales du Gers, 42 AJ 186.

  “you had to go through the snow”: Cormeau, IWMSA, September 2, 1984.

  turned the matériel over: Robert, Le Réseau Victoire dans le Gers, 105. For the Milice, see Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 298.

  “worse than the Gestapo”: Cormeau, IWMSA, September 2, 1984.

  “It was amusing to hear”: Ibid.

  “A true patriot”: BNA, HS 9/1407/1.

  “During his subsequent interrogation”: Boxshall, “WHEELWRIGHT Circuit.”

  “As regards this man”: Ibid.

  “tall man of maybe forty”: Peter Churchill, The Spirit in the Cage (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1954), 53.

  “They’re a very well-known couple”: Jean Overton Fuller, The Starr Affair (London: Victor Gollancz, 1954), 59.

  “freed the Russian guard”: Jean Overton Fuller, Conversati
ons with a Captor (West Sussex, UK: Fuller d’Arch Smith, 1973), 26–27.

  “I suggested to Kieffer”: Ibid., 27.

  On the brothers’ arrival: BNA, HS 9/1096/8 and HS 9/1097/1. In January 1944, the SD transferred the brothers to Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany.

  “he would never become an agent”: BNA, KV 6/29, Testimony of Ernest Vogt, June 19, 1948.

  Kieffer let him go: BNA, HS 9/836/5, “A Report About Captain John Starr (by Kieffer).” Kieffer testified, “I myself established that during his interrogation he had not broken his word of honour which he had given, as was originally believed, since at this time he had given it only for a quite specific case (namely transport to his flat in Paris to fetch his painting equipment).”

  “Dr. Goetz obtained the help”: Ibid.

  “this wireless traffic”: Ibid.

  flown Khan with Diana Rowden: BNA, HS 9/836/5.

  “We were pursuing her”: BNA, HS 9/836/5, “Translation of the Voluntary Statement Made by the Commandant of the Paris Gestapo, Hans Kieffer.”

  “It was, naturally, of the greatest interest”: BNA, HS 9/836/5, “VOLUNTARY STATEMENT OF CIVILIAN INTERNEE LD 1424 (formerly St. Ustuf.) Josef Goetz.” Goetz also said, “I first learnt of the existence of MADELEINE [Khan] at the beginning of July 1943, at the time of ARCHAMBAUD’s [Gilbert Norman’s] arrest. We then had a personal description of her and knew she was a W.T. operator of the reseau PROSPER [Francis Suttill].”

  in return she would hand over: Jean Overton Fuller, Madeleine: The Story of Noor Inayat Khan (London: Victor Gollancz, 1952), 145. This Frenchwoman’s use of names known only to the SD and F-Section convinced Vogt that she could deliver. A subsequent interview with Vogt stated that the women, who was called Renée, took him to the place “where Madeleine was staying, and showed him her radio-set and the drawer in which she kept a complete set of all the back messages exchanged between herself and London since she arrived in the field.” See Jean Overton Fuller, The German Penetration of SOE: France, 1941–1944 (Maidstone, UK: George Mann, 1975), 109. Fuller added, “A colleague had asked her [Khan] to destroy these, but she insisted her instructions from London were to preserve them. Miss [Vera] Atkins has asked me to make plain that the instructions were, on the contrary, to destroy them; nevertheless Professor [M.R.D.] Foot found instructions to another radio operator to be ‘extremely careful with the filing of your messages.’ Apparently, this was intended to mean only that they should be given sequential numbering.”