On April 20, 1944: Fuller, The Starr Affair, 95.
John saw seven women: Fuller, The German Penetration of SOE, 144.
Harry Rée made the first: 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), 123–24.
“The door of my room”: IWM, J. V. Overton Fuller Collection, Box 8, File 2, letter from John Starr to Jean Overton Fuller, July 17, 1953.
the childhood friend: Before his capture, Southgate had one of the most successful careers in F-Section. See BNA, HS 9/1395/3. F-Section chief Maurice Buckmaster wrote in an internal memo on April 8, 1944: “Out of 120 British officers under my orders in France at the moment he has the most efficient and the most disciplined organisation which has carried out the most daring and fruitful attacks on the German armed forces and on industry turning out products (particularly aircraft parts) for the G.A.F. [German Air Force]. He is in direct command of 6,000 men nearly all of whom he has armed as a result of parachute operations in pursuance of his orders. He is the uncrowned king of five large departments in France.”
“I had the shock of my life”: BNA, HS 9/1395/3, “Report by S/LDR. M. SOUTHGATE.” See also IWM, J. V. Overton Fuller Collection, Box 8, File 2, letter from John Starr to Jean Overton Fuller, July 12, 1953.
“a German speaking fluent French”: BNA, HS 9/1395/3, “Report by S/LDR. M. SOUTHGATE.”
“greeted by a large smile” . . . “American K-rations”: Ibid.
“Bob, we ought to shoot you”: Fuller, The Starr Affair, 98–99.
“was never a single microphone”: IWM, J. V. Overton Fuller Collection, Box 8, File 2, letter from Ernest Vogt to Jean Overton Fuller, August 8, 1954. Vogt added, “The best proof that there was no listening device is that Starr, Madeleine and Faye were able over some weeks to communicate among themselves by Morse signals tapped on the walls of their cells without anyone of us noticing a thing.”
“If I don’t do it”: BNA, HS 9/1395/3, “Report by S/LDR. M. SOUTHGATE.”
“he used to run”: Ibid. Although Southgate recalled hearing John Starr play the accordion, his nephew, Alfred Starr, wrote, “No one in the family could play, though most tried at family gatherings.” Alfred Starr, email to the author, August 22, 2016.
“before he received the full list”: BNA, HS 9/1395/3, “Report by S/LDR. M. SOUTHGATE.” See also BNA, KV 6/29, Testimony of Ernest Vogt, 19 June 1948: “This was only so that KIEFFER and Dr. Goetz were more quickly informed which sentences came through each evening, because all the messages which were given by Radio London were received by a German wireless station and KIEFFER was notified.”
“Are you going to take us”: Fuller, The Starr Affair, 95.
“They asked me numerous questions”: Ibid.
“wireless transmissions between”: Ibid. See also BNA, HS 8/422, “COMMENTS. Squadron Leader SOUTHGATE makes the following comments.”
“The Germans kept adding new circuits”: BNA, KV 6/29, “Interrogation of J.A.R. Starr, 28th and 30th May, 1945.”
number of circuits known to the SD: Fuller, The Starr Affair, 101.
“RECORD OF ACHIEVEMENTS”: Boxshall, “WHEELWRIGHT Circuit.”
“It was the last day of April”: Walters, Moondrop to Gascony, 119.
“Paris was . . . the most dangerous place”: Buckmaster, They Fought Alone, 226.
“How many of my own friends”: Walters, Moondrop to Gascony, 158 [1946 edition].
“that his circuit was”: Buckmaster, They Fought Alone, 134.
“The only trouble was”: BNA, HS 9/53/5.
“In Gascony, WHEELWRIGHT flourished”: 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), 332.
“nothing but the landing”: Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne, 86.
CHAPTER TWELVE: DAS REICH
“In almost every department”: Maurice Buckmaster, They Fought Alone: The True Story of SOE’s Agents in Wartime France (1958; repr., Biteback Publishing, 2014), 239.
“a person of great patience”: Ibid., 133.
George had given up smoking: George Starr, IWMSA, Recording 24613, 1978, Reel 10, www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80022295.
Next came a litany: Leo Marks, Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemakers’s War (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 521. Marks, who undoubtedly had the best sense of humor in all of SOE, wrote, “Despite the competition from air raids, the ugliest sounds in June were the voices of the BBC announcers. They stopped reading ‘Stand by’ messages on the 4th, and began broadcasting ‘Action’ messages on the 5th.”
“That evening, 306 messages”: Buckmaster, They Fought Alone, 240.
“I didn’t even bother”: Yvonne Cormeau, interview, “Gladiators of World War II—Special Operations Executive,” directed by Charles Messenger (2001; Nubus Martin Productions, 2002), available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=_po7wOf84pc&index=2&list=PLLN3wp0-uPSjrApvf37HcwOVBNwVSdSNU.
“They land at dawn”: Geoffrey Lucy, “George Starr’s Secret War,” Reader’s Digest, June 1978, 181. Lucy interviewed Starr for the article, but he provides no sources for many of the assertions in it. Lucy’s article states that Starr himself went into the hayloft and heard the radio transmission. However, Starr made no such claim to Lucy in the rambling interviews lodged at the Imperial War Museum. Yvonne Cormeau’s IWM interview makes it clear she heard the message, which was more likely for her as radio operator than for Starr as organizer.
“act as Neptune’s trident”: Marks, Between Silk and Cyanide, 520.
Normandy landings “were synchronized”: BNA, WO 219/112, “Special Report (France), No. 10.”
“They came up during the night”: Yvonne Cormeau, IWMSA, September 2, 1984, Catalogue number 7369, www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80007171.
“No arms were supplied”: BNA, HS 9/1407/1, “Lt.-Col. Starr interviewed by Major [R. H.] Angelo on 20–21 September 1944.”
only 2,500 had arms: BNA, WO 219/112, headquarters, Seventh Army, APO 758, July 26, 1944.
“Alone, two men kept their nerve”: Raymond Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne (Geneva: Editions du Milieu du Monde, 1945), 97.
“My role changed completely”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 7.
“The supposed refugee”: Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne, 117.
“Now Hilaire’s organising genius”: Buckmaster, They Fought Alone, 245.
German reliance on their radios: Marks, Between Silk and Cyanide, 519.
“They sent out motorcycle”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 7.
“in spite of seven crack German divisions”: BNA, HS 9/1407/1, “Lt.-Col. Starr, interviewed by Major [R. H.] Angelo on 20–21 September 1944.”
“erudite, intelligent, artistic”: Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne, 120–21. In some documents, Bloch is listed as a lieutenant rather than as captain. Prost appears in different accounts as commandant, captain, and lieutenant. See Archives départementales du Gers, 42 J 134.
Dr. Jean Deyris, who had treated: Archives départementales du Gers, 42 J 134, “Combat de Castelnau sur l’Auvignon,” 1/2/70.
“for feeding not only”: BNA, HS 9/1407/1, “Court of Enquiry re Lt. Col. G.R. STARR (SOE), Feb. 1945.”
“The young men of Condom”: 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), 139.
“assigned to blow the bridges”: Archives départementales du Gers, 42 J 136, “Testimony of Commandant Solal of the Military Justice to Monsieur Vila, 11 May 1945.”
“the tricolor flag was raised”: Archi
ves départementales du Gers, 42 J 134, “Activities of the Castelnau Battalion from 6 June to 3 July 1944.”
“The first job was”: BNA, HS 9/1407/1, “Court of Enquiry re Lt. Col. G.R. STARR (SOE), Feb. 1945.”
“And every man used for this purpose”: Buckmaster, They Fought Alone, 244.
“The supreme battle”: Charles de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, trans. Jonathan Griffin and Richard Howard (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998), 560.
To some, de Gaulle’s speech: Among some former résistants, resentment of de Gaulle outlived the war. Jeanne Robert said to me in 2014, “Nous, nous dépendions de Buckmaster, et non de Monsieur de Gaulle, hein, excusez-moi.” (“Us, we depended on Buckmaster and not on Monsieur de Gaulle, so, excuse me.”)
Théo Lévy raced into Castelnau: Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne, 119.
“always in espadrilles”: Archives départementales du Gers, 42 J 134, “Combat de Castelnau sur l’Auvignon,” 1/2/70.
“it was not up to us”: BNA, HS 9/1407/1, “Court of Enquiry re Lt. Col. G.R. STARR (SOE), Feb. 1945.”
the Spanish Republicans: Ibid.
“The Germans tried to impose”: BNA, HS 9/1407/1, “Lt.-Col. Starr interviewed by Major [R. H.] Angelo on 20–21 September 1944.”
railroad workers drained: M.R.D. Foot, S.O.E.: The Special Operations Executive, 1940–1946 (1984; rept., London: Arrow Books, 1993) 232–34.
Das Reich routed the maquisards: Horst Boog, Gerhard Krebs, Detlef Vogel, eds., Germany and the Second World War, vol. VII (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 644.
“Pick a bend in the road”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 7.
“The region (Dordogne-Sud) became”: FNA, 72 AJ 39 I, pièce 8a, “Action d’Hilaire lui-même.”
“wanted to go to Agen”: Ibid.
“For the reestablishment”: Sarah Farmer, Martyred Village: Commemorating the 1944 Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 48.
“After the first two or three”: Walters, Moondrop to Gascony, 169 [1946 edition].
Gunzbourg feared that: FNA, 72 AJ 39 I, pièce 8 a. “Témoignage de M. Philippe de Gunzbourg,” 405. See also Arthur L. Funk, “Churchill, Eisenhower and the French Resistance,” Military Affairs 45, no. 1 (February 1981): 29–35. The United States made three large drops to the Resistance on June 25, July 14, and August 1, 1944.
“CURRENTLY IMPOSSIBLE PREDICT”: FNA, 3 AG 2 562, “Telegrams à ELLIPSE [Eugène Déhelette],” quoted in Benjamin F. Jones, “Freeing France: The Allies, the Résistance, and the JEDBURGHS” (MA thesis, University of Nebraska, 2008), 186–87, www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a488406.pdf.
civilians of Oradour-sur-Glane: Farmer, Martyred Village, 20–24.
“New Zealand pilot”: Walters, Moondrop to Gascony, 140.
“I began to see the change”: Ibid.
sabotage the railroad bridge: Alain Beyneix, Les combats d’Astaffort du 13 juin 1944 (Biarritz, France: Atlantica Editions, 2011), 12.
“The German woman”: Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne, 129.
“this inflexible man”: Ibid.
“Hatred and violence burst through”: Buckmaster, They Fought Alone, 253.
“Germans were shot”: Ibid., 158.
allowed George to accelerate training: Archives départementales du Gers, 42 J 134, “Activities of the Castelnau Battalion from 6 June to 3 July 1944.”
a crash course in Sten and Bren guns: Ibid. Solal recorded Captain Weber’s company of 100 to 140 men; Lieutenant Hornoga’s company of 100 to 140; Lieutenant Herlin’s company of 100; Commandant Camilo’s Spanish company of 150; Lieutenant Lalanne’s 25 to 30 irregulars; and an antitank section under Solal himself.
“the Colonel’s Hollywood Brigade”: George Starr, IWMSA, Reel 16.
Hollywood’s “biggest star”: Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne, 122.
“rough men, bearded”: Ibid., 116.
“The prisoner was literally”: BNA, HS 9/1407/1, “Court of Enquiry re Lt. Col. G.R. STARR (SOE), Feb. 1945.”
150 miliciens ambushed André’s detachment: Walters, Moondrop to Gascony, 146.
Physicians feared the Germans: The hospital had reason to fear German reprisals. The Gers newspaper La Dépêche wrote on October 1, 2013: “Another affair, that of Astaffort, which saw the maquis confronting the Milice and then the Germans on 13 June, was the probable cause of the machine-gunning, two days after, of the victims at Lectoure where the bodies of the victims had been taken by the Red Cross.”
“the only survivor”: Walters, Moondrop to Gascony, 147.
“I couldn’t help tears”: Ibid., 147–48. She also wrote, “It was a painful parade: for the first time in our safe and secure maquis, death had been brought right before our eyes.”
Walters’s relationship with George: Walters’s memoir, Moondrop to Gascony, did not mention that George had seized her pistol and dispatched her to Gunzbourg’s camp. She wrote only that she spent some nights with the Castagnos family at Mamoulens and others in Castelnau. In George’s interviews, he similarly did not refer to the incident. The only record of the encounter was in Maquis de Gascogne by Raymond Escholier, who was in the Gers and knew the participants. His account had Anne-Marie returning late to Castelnau, but her memoir placed her there in time to witness the funeral on June 13. That was within the three days George had allotted her to spend with Gunzbourg.
This upset Walters: Walters, Moondrop to Gascony, 231.
“Reluctantly, Maggie [Maguy] finished”: Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne, 124.
“A rather violent discussion”: Ibid.
they “became comrades”: Ibid., 131.
“swore by all the Gods”: BNA, HS 9/1407/1, “Court of Enquiry re Lt. Col. G.R. STARR (SOE), Feb. 1945.” See also BNA, WO 219/112, in which SHAEF acknowledged, “The French have seen [German] troops which committed these atrocities taken prisoner, at times put to work, quite happily chewing gum and eating sweets, while little or no attention has been paid to the atrocities committed.”
“Imprison us where you like”: Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne, 132. He wrote, “These last, having demanded by reason of their status as soldiers not to be held with traitors, were incarcerated in a room beside the infirmary in the Command Post and the Miliciens in the church.”
beside Dr. Deyris’s infirmary: Archives départementales du Gers, 42 J 136, “Testimony of Commandant Solal of the Military Justice to Monsieur Vila, 11 May 1945. ” Solal wrote that on June 17 the Spanish unit captured the eight Germans, who were on their way to requisition gasoline.
Wehrmacht had lost control of the roads: Ibid.
“He had become famous”: Walters, Moondrop to Gascony, 169 [1946 edition].
“God is with you”: Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne, 132–36.
“the traitors turned to the wall”: Walters, Moondrop to Gascony, 170 [1946 edition].
“this betrayal was exposed”: Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne, 149.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE BATTLE OF CASTELNAU
“Our job was”: Maurice Buckmaster, They Fought Alone: The True Story of SOE’s Agents in Wartime France (1958; repr., London: Biteback Publishing, 2014), 95.
“WE THANK YOU”: Leo Marks, Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemakers’s War (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 522.
“SORRY TO SEE”: 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), 307; and Jean Overton Fuller, The German Penetration of SOE: France, 1941–1944 (Maidstone, UK: George Mann, 1975), 145. Leo Marks, M.R.D. Foot, and Jean Overton Fuller date the exchange of telegrams as June 6, 1944. Josef Placke and Ernest Vogt stated that it took place in July. Josef Placke recalled that Dr. Goetz sent the message, which said, “
WE THANK YOU FOR ALL THE ARMS YOU HAVE SENT US SIGNED GESTAPO.” Vogt wrote about the incident, “It is true that Dr. Goetz sent in July 1944 a message to Buckmaster thanking him for everything he sent us and the information that it was we who had sent the transmissions. . . . In sending that message Goetz hoped to provoke confusion in London and not knowing any longer which line to trust. He received the response from Buck: ‘You have lost your nerve.’” IWM, J. V. Overton Fuller Collection, Box 8, File 2, letters, Ernest Vogt to Jean Overton Fuller, October 10, 1954, and November 2, 1957.
“Is this to make sure”: Jean Overton Fuller, Conversations with a Captor (West Sussex, UK: Fuller d’Arch Smith, 1973), 36.
“We’ve razed London”: Jean Overton Fuller, The Starr Affair (London: Victor Gollancz, 1954), 103.
“I got so fed up”: BNA, HS 9/1395/3, “Report by S/Ldr. M. Southgate.”
Camilo’s Spaniards ambushed: Archives départementales du Gers, 42 J 136, “Testimony of Commandant Solal of the Military Justice to Monsieur Vila, 11 May 1945.”
“orders that the German prisoners”: BNA, HS 9/1407/1, “Court of Enquiry re Lt. Col. G.R. STARR (SOE), Feb. 1945.” Starr added, “I thought it would be bad luck for any fighting man to be bumped off by his own people.”
assemble the village women: 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), 149–50.
“first great battle of Armagnac”: Raymond Escholier, Maquis de Gascogne (Geneva: Editions du Milieu du Monde, 1945), 147.
more than 1,500 SS troops: Archives Municipales de Toulouse, 85 Z 6, “Historique de l’Organisation.” (See blue notebook, 86.)
“Some [units] of the Das Reich”: Archives départementales du Gers, 42 J 134, “LA RESISTANCE A CASTELNAU SUR L’AUVIGNON: Recits et renseignements recueillis par M. HOUTH.”
“took his revenge”: 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), 100. The book includes the complete text of Maurice Rouneau’s wartime memoir, Quatre ans dans l’ombre (Rennes les Bains: A. Bousquet, 1948), 100.
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