Dedication

In loving memory of

Muriel Ottaway, my wonderful mother

1922–2012

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Prologue

1. Exile

2. Secrets and Lies

3. A Shaky Start

4. Escape

5. Broken Promises

6. Betrayal

7. Buckmaster Passes the Buck

8. Coming Home

9. Monumental Errors

10. An Uncomfortable Journey

11. The Deadly Discovery

12. A Bad Decision

13. A Brilliant Actress

14. Torture

15. Didi Vanishes

16. The End of the Line

17. Lost Opportunity

18. The Getaway

19. A Narrow Escape

20. Allies or Enemies?

21. Thoughtless Demands

22. Adventures, Problems and Losses

23. The Ultimate Secret Agent

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Picture Section

What next?

Copyright

About the Publisher

Acknowledgements

A book of this kind could not have been written without the help of many people, and I am very grateful for all the kindnesses shown to me during the writing of Sisters, Secrets and Sacrifice.

I would like to thank Odile Nearne for sharing her memories of her aunts, Didi and Jacqueline Nearne, for allowing me to use her family photos, for sending me copies of family letters and documents, for her patience in answering my questions and for her encouragement in writing the book in the first place. She is justifiably proud of her aunts and did not want the stories of their modesty, bravery and sacrifice to die with them.

I am also very grateful to the following people: Mrs Debbie Alexander, RAF Headquarters Air Command, for the information about Frederick Nearne’s RAF career; Mr and Mrs Murray Anderson, for permission to use the photograph of pilot Murray ‘Andy’ Anderson who flew the Lysander in which Didi went to France at the start of her SOE mission; Ian M. Arrow, HM Coroner for Torbay and South Devon District; Jenny Campbell-Davys, Didi’s friend, for sharing some of her stories about her friend with me; Laurie Davidson for translating numerous French documents and letters for me, and Laurie’s friend Tony for managing to decipher some of the handwriting in letters written during the Second World War; Sharon Davidson, for her legal advice; Iain Douglas of Lisburne Crescent in Torquay; Sue Fox, excellent New York researcher, for her patience in examining files at the United Nations Archive and locating documents and information about Jacqueline Nearne’s career at the organization; Elaine Harrison at Torbay and District Funeral Service; David Haviland for his help and advice; Pat Hobrough of the Torbay and South Devon District Coroner’s office; Paul Jordan at Brighton History Centre; Bob Large, a pilot who flew SOE agents in and out of France with the ‘Moon Squadrons’; Messieurs P. Landais and Jean-Louis Landais, and Jessica Fortin who wrote to me on behalf of Mme S. Landais, all in answer to my queries about Didi’s friend Yvette Landais; Monsieur Hugues Landais, the nephew of Yvette Landais; Monsieur Pierre Landais, Yvette’s brother, for his letters and his kindness in sending me the information about his sister and her photos, and for suggesting other sources of information; Ian Ottaway, for allowing me to use his photo of the Westland Lysander; John Pentreath, Devon County Royal British Legion; Noreen Riols, a former member of the SOE, for her help; Solange Roussier, at the Archives Nationales, Paris; Susan Taylor, at the Mitchell Library, Glasgow; and Captain Rollo Young, the Army officer who helped Didi get back to England after securing her release from American custody at the end of the war.

My thanks also to my agent, Andrew Lownie, without whose help, encouragement and advice I would not have written the book at all; to Anna Valentine at HarperCollins for her enthusiasm, patience and kindness; to Anne Askwith for editing the book; and to my family for their constant support and encouragement, especially Nick, who has always been there for me, more than ever throughout this particularly difficult year.

Prologue

At the end of August 2010, after several weeks of sunshine and fine weather, a strong wind began blowing in from the sea. The hitherto blue sky disappeared to be replaced by low cloud, and the Devon resort of Torquay was subjected to an unseasonable downpour, which continued for several days.

High above the town’s harbour, in a small flat in Lisburne Crescent, an elegant Victorian Grade II listed building, lived an elderly lady, Eileen Nearne. Although 89 years old, Eileen was still quite sprightly and, despite the steep slopes of Torquay’s roads, could often be seen walking into town with her large shopping bags to fetch her groceries. Sometimes when the weather was fine she sat on a bench in the communal gardens in front of the flats, reading a newspaper and occasionally exchanging pleasantries with one or other of her neighbours. But the people who lived in the flats at Lisburne Crescent knew only two things about their neighbour: the first was that she spoke English with a foreign accent and the second, that she loved cats. They knew about her fondness for cats because she had rescued, and looked after, a ginger stray. The little animal was the only thing she ever spoke about to her neighbours and was the reason they called her, when she was out of earshot, Eileen the cat lady.

Although as the rain fell her immediate neighbours remarked to each other that they had not seen the cat lady for a few days, they were not unduly worried, reasoning that she was simply staying indoors to avoid the worst of the weather. But when the sun came out again and Eileen had still not appeared, they began to grow concerned. She had always guarded her privacy closely, so they knew that if one of them were to knock on her door to check that she was all right, she would not answer. They were uncertain what to do. Most of the neighbours thought of Eileen as a rather sad old spinster who never had visitors and did not have any family or friends. But although during the many years that she had lived at Lisburne Crescent no one had ever managed to get close to her or discover anything about her life, she was a harmless old soul and no one liked to think that she might be ill or have had a fall.

September came and Eileen was still in hiding. It was obvious by now that something had happened to her and, having no contact details or name for anyone who might be interested, one of the neighbours called the police. When they arrived they had to break into her small flat and there, on her bedroom floor, they found her body. A doctor was summoned and declared that she had been dead for several days – perhaps even a week. He ordered a post mortem and the pathologist reported to the Torquay coroner that the death was due to natural causes: Eileen had died of a heart attack brought about by heart disease and hardening of the arteries. An inquest was not necessary, so the local funeral home was contacted and preparations were set in motion for a publicly funded funeral.

The police, meanwhile, were sorting through the contents of Eileen’s tiny flat in an effort to find some evidence of family or friends. It was a difficult task. The flat was very small and filled with furniture – far too much for a home of that size. There were also cupboards filled with beautiful but rather old-fashioned dresses, ornaments, books, religious pamphlets, letters and photos. The police did not have time to read more than a few of the letters, which seemed to be old, and found nothing to suggest that she was important to anyone. The neighbours to whom they spoke could only confirm that they were not aware of any family.

Satisfied that they had done their best and that there was nothing to give any clues about her next of kin, the police were on the point of giving up the search when they came across some French coins, old French newspaper cuttings and medals. These included the British 1939–1945 Defence Medal and the War Medal 1939–1945, which were awarded to many people during the Second World War. The police took more notice when they came across the France and Germany Star, which was awarded only to those who had done one or more days’ service in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands or Germany between 6 June 1944 and 8 May 1945 – D-Day and VE Day. They were even more surprised when they discovered an MBE and the French Croix de Guerre. Eileen Nearne in her later years may have been a rather solitary, eccentric figure but in her youth she had clearly done something special. With the clue of the medals, it didn’t take long for them to find out that she had worked for the Special Operations Executive, the secret organization that had sent agents to occupied countries during the Second World War and which had been tasked by Prime Minister Winston Churchill with ‘setting Europe ablaze’.

Her neighbours were flabbergasted. Damian Warren said that he recalled seeing a letter addressed to Eileen Nearne MBE. He said that he had asked Eileen about it and that she had dismissed it as being a mistake.¹ Another of the residents, Iain Douglas, who lived at the opposite end of the crescent, said of her:

She was indeed a very strange lady, and quite reclusive. She would walk around all day with some large bags in tow and I used to wonder if she could only go into her flat at a certain time. I did wonder if she was part vagrant sometimes. She would sit outside waiting for ages. She had long, grey, unkempt hair. She would scurry away from anyone who approached her and on the sole occasion I said hello to her, she looked so shocked and horrified that I never attempted [to] again. It was a huge surprise to us when her past surfaced following her death.²

Yet another neighbour, Steven Cook, declared: ‘We thought she may have been in the French Resistance from rumours and hearsay over the years. I was very surprised at the extent of her heroism. You would never have thought it, as she never spoke of it.’³

Soon the story reached the local and then the national newspapers. Some articles said that she had been a spy; others claimed that she was just like Charlotte Gray, the eponymous heroine of Sebastian Faulks’s novel. Neither claim was true. She had in fact been a wireless operator, sending and receiving messages for the leader of a Resistance circuit in Paris, and so was clearly neither a spy nor anything like the fictional Charlotte Gray. Similar reports were given on national radio and on the television news bulletins, but still no relatives appeared.

John Pentreath, the Royal British Legion’s manager for Devon, was reported as saying: ‘We will certainly be there at her funeral. We will do her as proud as we can … She sounds like a hugely remarkable lady and we are sorry she kept such a low profile, and that we only discovered the details after her death.’⁴

By the time the international newspapers had taken up the story of the death of the courageous old lady, genealogists and probate researchers Fraser & Fraser had begun searching for any heirs. They soon discovered that Eileen was one of four children and that she had never married. Her sister was deceased and had also remained single, but her two brothers, who had both died in their early 50s, had married and each had had a child. The elder brother had had a son who had died in 1975 but the younger of the two brothers had had a daughter, and Fraser & Fraser believed that she was still alive.

One of the company’s researchers managed to find Eileen Nearne’s niece, Odile, in Italy. She had married an Italian and was living in Verona. A telephone call was made to her and she was informed that her aunt had died. Since everyone believed Eileen was alone and unloved, her niece’s reaction to the news was, perhaps, not quite what they had expected: Odile was distraught.

Over the years Odile had regularly come to England with her family to visit Eileen and had last seen her aunt six months before her death. Eileen Nearne was a very important figure in her niece’s life and Odile was devoted to her. She was not only inconsolable when she learnt the details of her lonely death but also horrified to discover that her aunt had been destined to have a pauper’s funeral, with no one to mourn her loss, and quickly made plans to come to England. After her arrival she took over the funeral arrangements and was able to answer many of the questions about her aunt’s life that had been puzzling the people of Torquay and reporters from around the world. And as she answered them, it soon became clear that almost everything that had been believed about Eileen Nearne was incorrect, and the true story of her amazing life, along with that of her elder sister Jacqueline, who was also an SOE agent, began to unfold.

CHAPTER 1
Exile

Eileen Nearne was born at 6 Fulham Road, west London, on 15 March 1921, the youngest of the four children of John and Mariquita Nearne. When her father registered her birth two days later, he gave her name as Eileen Marie. It seems to have been the only time in her life that her middle name was spelt this way, as all other documents refer to her as Eileen Mary – a strange choice, as Mary was also one of her sister’s names. In any case, Eileen was known to all, friends and family alike, as Didi. The name stuck and those who knew her well called her Didi for the rest of her life.

John Francis Nearne, Didi’s father, was the son of a doctor also named John¹ and so, to avoid confusion, was known as Jack. He was a 23-year-old medical student when he married French-born Mariquita Carmen de Plazaola at Marylebone Register Office on 6 November 1913. Mariquita, then 26 years old, was the daughter of Spanish Count Mariano de Plazaola and his French wife, the Marquise of La Roche de Kerandraon.² By the time Jack and Mariquita’s first child, a boy they named Francis, was born on 16 July 1914, the couple had moved from their London address, 70 Margaret Street, Marylebone, to Brighton.

With the onset of the First World War in 1914, Jack became a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Mariquita remained at the family home, 32 West Hill Street, a neat Victorian terraced house just a short walk from the beach. It was here that on 27 May 1916, their second child, Jacqueline Françoise Mary Josephine, was born.

After Jack’s military service ended he gave up being a doctor and became a dispensing chemist. The family left the seaside and returned to London, setting up home at 58 Perham Road in Fulham, another Victorian terraced building, and, on 20 January 1920, their second son, Frederick John, was born. The family was completed the following spring with the arrival of Didi. As the baby of the family Didi was rather spoilt and, according to her own account, she was a very naughty child.³

In 1923, with Europe still in turmoil as a result of the war, Jack and Mariquita decided to leave England and move to France. Mariquita’s parents owned several houses and apartments there, and offered the family an apartment in Paris, to which they moved with their young family.

Of all the children Francis, the eldest, was the one who had the most difficulties in adjusting to the move. He was nine years old and had already completed nearly four years of schooling in England. He couldn’t speak French but was sent to a French school in the rue Raynouard, on the right bank of the river Seine, in the hope that he would soon settle down there and learn both his lessons and the language. The school was close to his mother’s birthplace at Auteuil in the capital’s wealthy 16th arrondissement, a pleasant area his mother knew well. But Francis was not happy at school. He found the lessons complicated and difficult and, despite his mother speaking to him in French in an effort to help him, could understand only a few words. It was a good school but Francis did not do at all well and was very disheartened by his lack of progress. A shy, sensitive boy, he found it difficult to make the friends who might have made his assimilation into the French education system a little easier. He had to endure this unhappy situation for a year before his parents took him away. They looked for another school that might suit him better and enrolled him in one in Le Vésinet in the north-west of Paris where, for six months, he received intensive coaching to bring him up to the standard required for a boy of his age. It was an unfortunate start for the poor little lad, and his lack of early success damaged his self-confidence to such an extent that he never really recovered. The feeling of failure was exacerbated when his younger siblings managed to fit in at school with far fewer difficulties than he had had and he was too young to understand that it was because they had been brought to France at an earlier age than he, so their transition to the French way of life was much easier.

Jacqueline, who was seven years old when she arrived in France, had a much more straightforward time at the exclusive Convent of Les Oiseaux at Verneuil to the north-west of Paris, being only a few months behind her French classmates, who didn’t start school until they were six years old. She also found it less of a problem to speak French and quickly settled in to her new life.

The two youngest members of the family, Frederick and Didi, had not attended an English school at all, as neither was old enough, and by the time they went to French schools they were both able to speak the language as well as French children, so they didn’t have to make the adjustments their elder siblings had; their education was completely French, from beginning to end.

Mariquita was determined that all her children should be brought up in the Roman Catholic faith. She herself had been educated at a Catholic convent and she intended that both her daughters should have a similar start in life. Didi enjoyed the rituals of the Catholic Church and at a very early age she found a strong faith in God, which stayed with her all her life. Her mother never had to insist that Didi attend church services, as she went willingly without any prompting. Jacqueline once remarked that Didi was the most religious member of the entire family, although they were all believers.

Didi was never far away from her sister. She hero-worshipped Jacqueline, and wanted to be like her and do whatever she did. It must sometimes have been irritating for Jacqueline to have her little sister trying to tag along wherever she and her friends went, but she was very fond of Didi and didn’t like to turn the little girl away unless she really had to.

After two years in the French capital the family was on the move again, this time to a terraced house that had been given to Mariquita by her parents, 260 boulevard Saint-Beuve on the seafront at Boulogne-sur-Mer. Francis and Frederick attended the Institution Haffreingue, a Catholic school, while Jacqueline was enrolled at the Ursuline convent in the town, where before long Didi joined her. Didi loved her new home. It was the first time she had lived on the coast and the beginning of her lifelong love of the sea.

The house in Boulogne was a happy home and the family felt very comfortable there. Jack Nearne had attempted to learn and improve his French but had had little success. The language didn’t come naturally to him and he was not confident about speaking it. Despite living in France for the rest of his life, he couldn’t ever be described as being fluent in either spoken or written French. This rather hampered his employment prospects but, as he was part of a wealthy family following his marriage to Mariquita, it did not seem to be a major problem. His ineptitude with the language gave his children an advantage, as well as amusing them greatly, because it meant that in order to communicate with their father they had to speak fluent English as well as French, a skill that would serve them all well in their future lives.

Both parents encouraged the children to work hard at school and to read or listen to music when at home. Jacqueline and Didi were avid readers. Jacqueline liked books such as Vanity Fair, Sherlock Holmes stories and The Forsyte Saga. Didi preferred religious books and didn’t like novels at all. They both enjoyed the music of Strauss, Chopin and Beethoven and later, when they were older, that of Glenn Miller, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Jean Sablon.

During the school holidays Jacqueline liked taking part in all kinds of outdoor activities. She loved sport and played for a girls’ hockey team called the Gulls, along with her friends Claire Turl, Marie, Jeanne and Madeleine Louchet, Anne and Marie Louise Cailliez and Nelly Pincedé. She also loved the countryside around Boulogne and cycled to local beauty spots or went for long walks with her friends. When they all got together at the home of one of the group they played cards, told each other jokes and laughed a lot. Jacqueline also liked to knit, and she made lots of colourful socks for herself and her friends.⁴

When she was old enough Didi also played hockey, and she and her friends laughed a lot too. They all enjoyed fooling around, no one more so than Didi, but she also had a serious side. She liked being with other people, but was also able to keep busy and was quite content when she was alone. She was good at art, and liked to paint and make little clay models; and, of course, she had her belief in God.

In 1928 Mariquita’s mother died and left her house in Nice to her daughter. By 1931 the family had packed up their belongings, closed up the house in Boulogne-sur-Mer and moved to Nice, to 60 bis, avenue des Arènes de Cimiez. Situated in the old part of Nice, in the gentle hills behind the coastline, the house was only a short distance from the seafront and the elegant promenade des Anglais, playground of the rich and famous. The family would live there very happily until the Germans invaded France in 1940.

Francis left school in 1930 when he was 16 and went on to a commercial college, where he took a business course and, having passed it, became a representative for a confectionery company. Over the next few years he had a variety of sales jobs that never seemed to last long, so, tiring of sales, he tried working as a barman. Then in 1938, against an increasingly difficult economic backdrop, he lost yet another job and, despite applying for different positions, remained unemployed for the next two years.⁵

Frederick left school just before the start of the war and also found it difficult to obtain work. He considered going back to England to see if it would be any easier to get a job there and was still weighing up his options when the Germans marched into Poland in September 1939. Didi had not even begun to look for work by then, as she had only just left school at the age of 18. She wanted to be a beautician, but with the political unrest that was making itself felt more and more each day, and the ever-present question of what the immediate future might bring, her parents convinced her to stay at home with them until what was happening became clearer. When the war started she gave up the idea, pushing it to the back of her mind in the belief that she would be able pursue her chosen career once the war was over.

Of all the children, Jacqueline was the only one who found a secure job. When she left school she too became a sales representative, working for an office equipment company, and, although based in Nice, she travelled all over the country. In those days such an occupation was considered to be quite an unusual one for a girl but she enjoyed the work, and the travel, which allowed her to see a lot of the countryside. Although she didn’t know it at the time, it would be a foretaste of what was in store for her a few years later.

For the first few months of the war nothing really changed for the Nearne family. The sun was still shining over their home in Nice; Jacqueline was doing well in her job; Francis, who had recently married a young Frenchwoman, Thérèse Poulet, was continuing to look for work; Frederick was thinking about going to England to join the Royal Air Force; and Didi remained at home with her mother and father.

Then, on 10 May 1940, German troops swept into Belgium, Luxembourg and Holland, and all three countries capitulated. Two weeks later Calais and Boulogne were attacked, and the British Expeditionary Force, pinned down by the Germans in the coastal town of Dunkirk, was evacuated, along with several thousand French troops, in what was known as Operation Dynamo. By the middle of June Paris had fallen to the Germans and, on 22 June, the French signed an armistice in the forest of Compiègne, north of Paris, in the same railway carriage in which the Germans had surrendered at the end of the First World War. The threatened war had suddenly become real.

Some months earlier Jacqueline had gone to Boulogne to make sure that the family home on the boulevard Saint-Beuve was secure. The furniture was covered with dust sheets, the curtains drawn, and all the windows and doors locked, but there was little else that she could do to ensure its safety in the event of the German invasion they had all prayed would not take place. Now that had happened, and the family began to wonder what would become of them if enemy troops reached them in the south of France. They didn’t have long to wait for their answer.

Following the French surrender, the country was divided into two parts. The northern part was occupied by the Germans, while the southern sector remained in French hands, with the whole country nominally under the government of Marshal Philippe Pétain, hero of the Battle of Verdun of 1916, who had taken over when Prime Minister Paul Reynaud resigned days before the armistice. Pétain, no longer showing any heroic qualities, based his regime in the city of Vichy, from where he and the puppet administration did nothing for the French people, bowing completely to the will of the Germans. It was an enormous betrayal. Three days after the French surrender Pétain’s betrayal was compounded by the signing of another armistice, this time with Italy, and the formation of a demilitarized zone within France, which included the cities of Nice and Grenoble and which was administered by occupying Italian forces.

Foreign nationals were being forced to move from the coastal areas of France and the Nearne family was no exception. Even French-born Mariquita was regarded as being foreign, as she was married to an Englishman. The Nearnes were given just eight days to pack up and leave their home in Nice and find somewhere else to live.⁶ The edict that forced them to move was known as ‘residence forcée’ – enforced residence in an area, where residents were kept under police surveillance and life was often made very difficult for no apparent reason, other than that they were not French. The seaside house in Boulogne was obviously not an option as a place to relocate to and they doubted that they would be able to return to the Paris apartment even if they had wanted to, because the capital was swarming with Germans. After a hurried discussion, Jack and Mariquita elected to go to the Grenoble area which, although in Italian-occupied France, was where Francis and his wife had settled. Thérèse was expecting the couple’s first baby later that summer and they wanted to remain close for the arrival of their first grandchild.⁷

The family home at avenue des Arènes de Cimiez was leased to a Frenchwoman at an inexpensive rent and the Nearnes left Nice, taking as many of their personal belongings as they could carry to a hotel in Grenoble, where they remained while searching for a new home. Eventually in rue Adolphe Muguet, Saint-Egrève, in the mountains north-west of the city, they found a large, rambling old villa that needed restoring and they were able to purchase it. It was nothing like the comfortable home they had had in Nice, although the views of the mountains were beautiful. But at least they had their own house again and their enforced move meant that they were closer to the newest member of the family, a boy born on 24 August, whom Thérèse and Francis named Jack, after his paternal grandfather.⁸

Gradually the Nearnes managed to introduce some degree of comfort to the draughty old house, but Jack and Mariquita, their two daughters and younger son never really regarded the villa as a home. For them it was just somewhere to stay until the Nazis had been defeated, when they could reclaim the house in Nice and find out what had become of their other home in Boulogne and their Paris apartment.

By the late autumn of 1940 Frederick, along with so many other young men, had decided that, with no job and the ever-present threat of being sent for forced labour to Germany, he could no longer remain in France and would therefore go to England. It must have been a time of great anxiety for his parents, but they knew better than to try to persuade him to remain with them in Grenoble, believing that Britain would be a safer place for him than German-occupied France. Upon arrival in England he volunteered for the RAF, was sent to the recruits’ centre at RAF Station Uxbridge in Middlesex, and as Aircraftman 2nd Class Frederick John Nearne (1270875) began his service career on 1 November 1940. A month later he was posted to Ford in Sussex and six days later started his training at HQ Number 17 (Training) Group, part of Coastal Command. He remained there for a year before being posted, on 5 January 1942, to the Middle East Command, where he served at the RAF station in Amman, Jordan; the Middle East Torpedo (Training) school; Lydda (now in Israel); and various maintenance and operational training units in the Levant. He eventually returned to England and received his discharge on 23 October 1946.⁹

No longer seen as the well-to-do French family that they had previously appeared to be, the members of the Nearne family who remained in France were now regarded, at least by the authorities, as foreigners – citizens of an enemy state – and had to get on with their lives as best they could. Since they were unable to find any of the domestic help that they had formerly relied upon, Jacqueline and Didi had to help Mariquita run the house. One of their tasks was to collect and chop firewood, which was always in short supply but which they needed both for warmth and as fuel for cooking, and they helped with the shopping, cleaning, washing, ironing and cooking. Neither girl minded having to help with these chores – Didi even began to enjoy cooking – but they both minded very much about the reason they had had to move to the house in the first place.

Although they were British nationals, they had almost no memories of the country of their birth and spoke English with French accents. France was their home and they loved their life there. But as time went by and they saw how Britain was standing alone in the fight against the Germans, they began to think that perhaps they too should be doing something for the war effort. The war had made Jacqueline realize how patriotic she felt towards this small country, even though it was so unfamiliar to her. From that moment she knew that she would not be able to remain in France, subjected to the will of the Nazis and the weak-minded French appeasers who had formed some sort of a collaborative government. Slowly over the next few months, perhaps inspired by her younger brother’s decision to leave home, she came to the conclusion that she too would have to go to England and do something to help Britain fight the Germans, although she didn’t have any idea how she was going to do it. She discussed the situation with Didi, who immediately said that she wanted to go with her. Jacqueline was nervous about this, as Didi was still very young and quite naive. But once Didi had an idea in her head, nothing would stop her. If her sister was going off to fight, then so was she.

Meanwhile time passed slowly. The girls had made friends in Saint-Egrève but there was no possibility of employment for either of them. At an age when they should have had lots to do, they were stuck in their mountain hideaway, bored with their enforced inactivity and frustrated that what should have been the most exciting years of their lives were passing them by. For Didi at least, there was a glimpse of that excitement when she met her first boyfriend.¹⁰ Andy was a pleasant young man, with a cheeky grin that showed off his slightly protruding front teeth. He was smitten by Didi, but although she was fond of him, the excitement of her first romance couldn’t prevent her from thinking about escaping to England.

Jacqueline was eager to leave for England as soon as possible and, as they were both still British citizens, she and Didi contacted the British consulate in Lyons and obtained British passports. Jack and Mariquita, understandably, did not want them to go but knew that, as with Fred, it would be wrong to try to stop them. So at the beginning of 1942, not knowing if they would ever see their daughters again, they reluctantly said goodbye to Jacqueline and Didi and waved them off on a train bound for Marseilles, at the start of what would undoubtedly be a difficult and dangerous journey.

Once there the girls hoped to find a boat to take them out of the country but they were unaware of what conditions were now like outside their own sheltered world. Although both in their 20s – Jacqueline was by then 26 and Didi 21 – they were, after all, convent girls and had had protected lives thus far, being cosseted by their wealthy family. Although Jacqueline had travelled for her work before the war, she had had no experience of how everyday life in France had been affected after the German invasion. Neither girl had realized that because Marseilles was a port there were very rigorous checks, and they were distressed when they were refused permission to continue on their journey and were sent straight back to Grenoble.

Undaunted, they again contacted the British consulate to ask, this time, for advice on the best way to get to Britain, and were told to stay away from the coastline and try to get to Portugal via Spain. Portugal was officially neutral but had strong sympathies for the Allied cause. Spain, also officially neutral, favoured the Axis powers and there were German spies all over the country, but the sisters were sure that they would be able to reach England. The journey would still be dangerous, but they were determined to succeed and knew that they were better prepared than on their first attempt. Although it was a difficult time to be leaving their home and their parents, they had each other and each girl knew that she could rely on her sister completely.

In April they again said goodbye to their parents and this time they reached the Spanish border by train, managed to cross the country without problems and entered Portugal, where they were given transit visas enabling them to travel onwards to another country. Making their way to Lisbon, they went directly to the British consulate there and asked for more help. The consul told them that he would try to find them a ship to take them out of Portugal, so they booked into a small hotel, where they stayed for nearly three weeks, contacting the consulate at regular intervals to see if there was any information for them. Eventually the consul had news and it was good. He told them that he had found a ship that would soon be leaving for Gibraltar and the captain would be willing to take them on board. He gave them the name of the vessel and of the captain, and advised them to contact him as soon as possible.

The sisters immediately hurried down to the docks to meet the man, who was a jovial Englishman. He told them that although he had never carried passengers before he would be willing to take them, and so the arrangement was made. Jacqueline and Didi went back to their hotel, collected their bags and paid the bill. They returned to the ship and found that the captain had moved out of his cabin so that they could share it and have some privacy from the all-male crew on the voyage. When they reached their new quarters they could hardly believe what they found. The captain had filled the cabin with flowers for them and decorated other parts of the vessel with more flowers. It was such a kind gesture and they were very touched by his thoughtfulness. They reached Gibraltar without any problems and, after docking, had only three days to wait before continuing on the next stage of their journey. This time they were bound for Glasgow.

The entire expedition had taken around five weeks and had been very tiring but, in May 1942, as the ship made its way up the west coast of Scotland and into the river Clyde, Jacqueline and Didi were elated to have finally reached Britain. As they presented their passports they saw that some people were being directed to what seemed to be a holding area and discovered that they were refugees who had nowhere to go. Although the girls intended to stay with family friends in London, they were nervous that they too might be regarded as refugees, so they gave the name and address of a distant cousin, Mrs Plunkett of Heaton House, Cheshunt, Hertfordshire,¹¹ thinking that they might stand a better chance of going through the formalities successfully if it was believed that they were going to be living with family. Whether or not they were actually in danger of being classified as refugees is doubtful. But they had had enough of bureaucracy and didn’t want to take any chances, now that they were so close to their destination. They needn’t have worried. Handing back their passports, the official waved them through the barrier and they were free.

The train journey to London took hours and left them feeling exhausted. They eventually arrived and, looking for somewhere to get a drink and something to eat, they came across a Lyons Corner House and decided to order afternoon tea to celebrate reaching the capital. They sat down and looked around them at the other customers. Everything seemed so much better than it had been in France. They even spotted someone eating a piece of cake and could hardly believe their eyes; they had not seen such luxury for a long time. When the waitress came to take their order they asked for tea and then, rather hesitantly, enquired if there was any chocolate cake. The waitress, noticing their foreign accents, stood and glared at them, her hands on her hips, and then snorted in disgust and enquired sarcastically, ‘I suppose you have not heard there is a war on?’¹² They didn’t get their cake that day but, remembering what they had just endured in order to reach the relative freedom of London, they laughed at the waitress’s reaction. Refreshed by cups of tea, they found their way to the home of their family friends, Odile and George, at 97 Darenth Road, Stamford Hill, N16. Now all they had to do was find some war work.

CHAPTER 2
Secrets and Lies

It had not occurred to either sister that they might have problems finding suitable work on arriving in England and as they began to receive rejection after rejection they started to become despondent. Surely there must be something suitable for two intelligent girls who were fluent in English and French?

Jacqueline applied to the Women’s Royal Naval Services – the WRNS – whose advertising slogan at that time was ‘Join the Wrens and free a man for the fleet’ and was called for an interview. She set off with high hopes, but these were dashed when she was told that they needed drivers. Her disappointment was compounded when she was rejected for the post of driver after admitting that she had never driven in the blackout. Didi fared no better. She almost obtained a position as a barrage-balloon operator but was deemed unsuitable for the role. The sisters were beginning to think that they had wasted their time and effort in coming to England. In desperation, they contacted the Ministry of Labour, stressing their language abilities.

Life in England wasn’t all a disappointment. Although Jacqueline and Didi stuck closely together there were times when they went their own ways and met new people. Soon after arriving in London Jacqueline met a young army cadet called Jimmie and they went out together a few times before he was posted. He extracted a promise from her to write to him and said that he would like to see her again when he came back to London on leave. He even told her that he had seen a brooch that he wanted to buy for her.¹ It was flattering, as he was obviously quite keen on her, but soon all thoughts of the new friendship were forgotten when Jacqueline received a letter, sent to Mrs Plunkett’s address in Cheshunt, from a Captain Jepson at the War Office. Dated 5 June 1942, it said:

Dear Miss Nearne,

Your name has been passed to me as that of someone possessing qualifications which may be of value in a phase of the war effort. If you are available for interview I would be glad to see you at the above address at 3.30 p.m. on Thursday 25th June, 1942.

I would be glad if you would let me know whether you can come or not.

Yours truly,

Selwyn Jepson

Captain.

The address that Captain Jepson gave was Room 055a, War Office, SW1. Jacqueline wrote back immediately, saying that she would be pleased to meet him on 25 June. She told Didi about it but asked her not to say anything to anyone else, as the letter was vague enough either to be something very important or to mean nothing at all; she was also beginning to feel embarrassed about her difficulties in obtaining employment. Jacqueline was eager to know what this ‘phase of the war effort’ meant, but she had nearly three weeks to wait until the appointed date and the time passed slowly. Didi was also impatient to receive her own letter inviting her for an interview, which she was convinced would soon arrive. It didn’t and, as the time got closer for Jacqueline’s interview, Didi kept reminding her to ask why she hadn’t been invited too. Jacqueline had to promise her several times that she would make a point of asking before her sister was satisfied.

Thursday, 25 June arrived and Jacqueline, dressed in a smart but understated outfit, left Stamford Hill to travel to the War Office. There she was met by Selwyn Jepson himself and ushered into a small room. Jepson was a quietly spoken man, nothing like how Jacqueline had imagined a military officer would be, and the room, apart from two hard chairs and a small table, was empty. There were no personal touches, no books or manuals, no charts or maps, no telephone or framed photo on a desk. Jacqueline was confused by the surroundings and by now rather worried about the interview, but when Jepson began to speak to her, asking her questions about her previous employment, her family background and her reasons for coming to England, his calm manner put her at her ease. She found herself telling him about her family and what had happened to them after the fall of France, how her brother was already in England in the Royal Air Force and how she desperately wanted to do something that would make a difference in winning the war.

Jepson considered everything she had said and then asked her how she would feel about going back to France. She immediately wondered if it would be as a spy and asked him if that was what he meant. He told her that it would not exactly be as a spy but that it would be in an undercover role and that there were risks involved. He explained that if she were selected – and at that stage this was by no means certain – she would be enrolled in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY), which would give her a cover story for her friends and family, as the work he was suggesting was so secret that she mustn’t tell anyone at all what they had discussed. He advised her to go home and think hard about what he had said, and told her that he would write to her again to let her know whether or not he thought she would be suitable.

With the interview at an end Jacqueline suddenly remembered her promise to Didi, and told Jepson that she had a younger sister who had come to England with her and who was also keen to find useful war work. He thanked her for the information and for attending the interview, and repeated that he would be in touch very soon. Shaking her by the hand, he pointed her towards the exit and was gone.

Jacqueline emerged from the War Office feeling dazed and confused. She was relieved that there was a possibility of employment for her but she hadn’t dreamt that it would be anything like this. Although she had been keen to use her French language skills, she thought the role might possibly have been as an interpreter or a translator. She hadn’t considered going back to France as a secret agent and, after all the problems that she and Didi had had getting out of France, felt that it was ironic that if all went well she would soon be back where she had started.

In the short time that it had taken to attend the interview her entire world had turned upside down. She was elated yet scared, and she couldn’t wait to get home so that she could tell Didi what had happened. But as she walked along the road she suddenly realized that she couldn’t tell Didi, as she had been told that she mustn’t tell anyone. Her mind turned to ways of concealing what she now knew about the job. She knew that, try as she might, it would be almost impossible to fool her sister; they were so close that she felt Didi would know immediately if she lied to her. She didn’t want to lie but neither did she want to disclose what she had been told. She also realized with an uncomfortable jolt that if Didi discovered what the job really was, she too would want to return to France; and, while she was quite prepared to be put in such a perilous position herself, she was horrified by the thought of her young, unworldly sister being subjected to the same danger. Her dilemma occupied her thoughts throughout her journey home.

When she reached Stamford Hill an anxious Didi was waiting for her. Wanting to know everything that had happened, she began firing questions at her sister. Who had interviewed her? What sort of a job was it? Had she been successful? Her final question was the one that Jacqueline had been dreading: was there a possibility that there might be another vacancy that she could fill?

Taking a deep breath, Jacqueline told Didi that she had been interviewed by the man who had written the letter to her, Captain Selwyn Jepson, and that the job was as a driver for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. She said that she would soon hear if her interview had been successful but she thought it had. Jacqueline assured Didi that she had told Jepson about her and he had said that he would contact her if he felt there was also a suitable position for her with the FANY.

Didi was puzzled and slightly disappointed. She was curious to know why Jacqueline had not, it seemed, emphasized her desire to use her language skills. Surely her ability to speak, read and write fluent French could have been used to better advantage than by merely becoming a driver. Knowing her sister so well, she began to suspect that Jacqueline was hiding something from her. Perhaps she wasn’t even going to work for the FANY. Had she just told Didi that to make her believe that it was important war work she would be doing when really it was just a way of making ends meet?

Jacqueline herself could not stop thinking about the interview, and what it would mean to her if she was offered the position and accepted it. Jepson had told her to think very hard about what it involved and advised her not to rush into a decision, but she already knew what she was going to do. Although the role was not what she had imagined and she knew that it would be hazardous, she felt that she would be doing something that was really worthwhile, which was why she had come to England in the first place.

Didi’s suspicion that her sister had been keeping something from her continued to trouble her. Then Jacqueline received the news that the interview had been successful, and within two weeks of her interview had passed a medical and completed the application form to join the FANY. In order to be accepted she needed sponsorship in the form of recommendations by two people; one had to be a woman, and both had to have known her for at least two years. Her sponsors were Lieutenant Prudence Macfie of the FANY and Captain Selwyn Jepson, neither of whom had known Jacqueline for more than two weeks.

When Jacqueline appeared wearing the uniform of the FANY, Didi realized that her main worry hadn’t really been about Jacqueline joining the FANY. It was the driving job that had given her the nagging doubts and she was now sure that it was this that was the lie. She had wondered why the FANY would have picked her sister for a job that any English girl could have done, and she hadn’t been able to understand why even though the WRNS was unwilling to accept a driver who had no experience of the blackout, the FANY didn’t seem to have considered that at all.

Despite Jepson’s instruction not to discuss her interview with anyone, Jacqueline knew that she would have to disclose some details to Didi. So, impressing upon her that she mustn’t tell a single soul, she admitted that she had been selected to work for a new organization called the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the French Section. Enrolling in the FANY was a cover for what she would actually be doing. Didi, of course, wanted to know what that work was, but Jacqueline said that she had already told her too much and really couldn’t tell her anything else.

While she waited to hear when she would be starting her SOE training, Jacqueline kept in touch with her friend Jimmie, mostly by post, as he had been sent on a training course, although they spent a day together in July, after which Jimmie wrote to Jacqueline expressing the hope that ‘you managed to get back safely on Monday and that your sister etc had not telephoned all the Police in order to discover the wandering one’. He later wrote to ask Jacqueline to

tell me more about your life and your thoughts. I am very interested in your life and want to hear all about it, if you will tell me. How do you really like your new life?

It is a pity your location appears to be a closely guarded secret – why I don’t exactly know – yours is certainly the first training centre that has not had a proper address … I hope that you will not forget me now that you are making lots of new friends. The F.A.N.Y.s had the reputation at the beginning of the war of being rather select and snobbish. It never pays to be like that and I hope very much that you won’t get that way – always remember that old friends are the best.²

This letter appears to have been the last one that Jacqueline received from Jimmie. It may, of course, just have been the last one that she kept but, by the time she read it, she had already started her SOE training and she was determined not to let anything interfere with that.

Frustrated that she was still unemployed and beginning to believe that she knew what Jacqueline was going to be doing, Didi was delighted when she too received a letter asking her to attend an interview at the War Office with Captain Jepson, a month after her sister’s.

Jepson was a 43-year-old Army captain. A well-known playwright in peacetime, he was also the author of several books. When he joined the SOE as a recruiting officer in early 1942, he was found to be very good at picking the right sort of person for undercover roles within the organization. Calm and efficient, he managed to put prospective recruits at ease while asking questions that would reveal whether or not the person concerned would be good at the job. A report from the SOE to Military Intelligence placed on his file in March 1942 described him as being ‘far ahead of anyone as [a] talent spotter’³ and he himself said of his role: ‘I was responsible for recruiting women for the work, in the face of a good deal of opposition, I may say, from the powers that be. In my view, women were very much better than men for the work. Women, as you must know, have a far greater capacity for cool and lonely courage than men.’⁴

When Didi attended her interview it didn’t take her long to realize that her suspicions about her sister’s new job were correct and she told Jepson that she wanted to do the same as Jacqueline. He felt that she was, perhaps, a little young to be sent to France as an agent but asked her to tell him about herself. She told him that she had been born in England but had lived in France since she was a baby. She talked about her parents and brothers and sister, and described how she and Jacqueline had escaped from occupied France to come to England and obtain war work. She said that she knew several areas of France quite well, and was fluent in spoken and written French. She also stressed that although she liked people and generally got along well with them, she also liked her own company and was sure that she would be able to work completely alone should the need arise. She simply wanted to do something worthwhile for the war effort.

Jepson could see that Didi, although lively and enthusiastic, had a serious side as well. She was obviously intelligent and sincere, but he was still concerned that she might be too young. Being the baby of the family and having had a convent education, she had obviously led a sheltered life and he worried that she might not stand up to life in occupied France, alone and with no family support. He did, however, feel that there was about her a hint of the cool and lonely courage he was seeking. He told her that the SOE needed to recruit wireless operators who would send and receive messages to and from agents in France. There was also a requirement for decoders to interpret the messages, all of which had been encoded before transmission. He believed that Didi would be effective in either role and asked her which she would prefer.

Although disappointed that she would be staying in England, Didi decided that of the two positions offered, she would rather be a wireless operator and Jepson recruited her as such. She also decided that she would continue to press for a job as an agent whenever an opportunity arose. It had occurred to her when making her decision that the training she would need to be a wireless operator would be more beneficial to her than becoming a decoder, should she manage to persuade Jepson at a later date to send her to France.

Satisfied that she wouldn’t be remaining in England for long, Didi was also enrolled in the FANY, joining what was known as Bingham’s Unit. This unit had been established by a member of the FANY, Phyllis Bingham, at the behest of her friend Major-General Colin Gubbins, Vice-Chief of the SOE Council, because of the necessity for absolute secrecy in the SOE; those who joined Bingham’s Unit were the SOE women selected to serve as wireless operators and decoders in the United Kingdom. One of the sponsors who recommended Didi to the FANY was Mrs Bingham herself. This was done, of course, as with Jacqueline’s sponsors, to keep the paperwork straight and believable, and the undercover roles secret; Mrs Bingham did not know Didi personally and at the time she recommended her to the FANY they had not even met.

Didi then went off to learn how to receive and send Morse code. She proved to be quite a good student and passed the course satisfactorily.⁵ She then settled down to life in the listening station.⁶ Although she had a flair for the work, she found it tedious and longed for the day when she would be able to do something more exciting. With the impatience of youth, Didi began to send in requests to be transferred to the French Section of the SOE so that she could train to become an agent like her sister.

When she had told Jacqueline that she had guessed what her real role with the SOE was to be and that she intended to join her as soon as possible, Jacqueline had responded with a lie, saying that Didi wouldn’t be allowed to go to France until she was 25 years old. Didi was still only 21, and Jacqueline hoped that the war would be over by the time Didi reached this fictional minimum age. But knowing Didi so well, she also knew that the small detail of an age limit would not stop her from asking to be sent overseas. She worried that Didi might discover her lie and, worse still, manage to persuade someone to allow her to go to France, so she asked to see Colonel Maurice Buckmaster, head of the French Section of the SOE.

A meeting was arranged that was also attended by Buckmaster’s assistant, Vera Atkins. Jacqueline explained to them that she was worried that her sister Didi wanted to go to France as an agent and that she had told her she was too young. She asked if there was some way that her lie could be kept up so that when Didi applied she would be told that she was too young. As well as explaining that Didi had led quite a sheltered life, she wanted them to know that Didi was unworldly but very strong-minded, impetuous and stubborn, so they could expect several more requests from her if her first request was denied. It was obvious to Buckmaster and Atkins that Jacqueline was very worried about Didi, and since she was in the middle of the training herself they agreed to go along with the story so that she could concentrate on her work and not worry about her sister.

Just as Jacqueline had predicted, Didi began to put in requests to be transferred as an agent to France. Each time she did so her request was refused. Buckmaster kept his promise to Jacqueline but Didi had no intention of giving up; determined to follow in her sister’s footsteps, she repeated her requests at regular intervals.

Although some individual female agents had been sent to France before, Jacqueline was one of the first to be trained with a group of other women. This group was known as training party 27.OB.6⁷, and Jacqueline’s fellow students were Odette Sansom (code name Lise), Lise de Baissac (Odile) and Mary Herbert (Claudine). It was fairly clear that the whole training programme for this women’s group had been rather rushed and haphazard. Although the men being sent to France were given a strenuous paramilitary course in the wilds of Scotland, these women were simply sent on a parachute course at Ringway near Manchester, and then on a finishing course in the New Forest. There seemed to be a misconception that, as women, they were not in the same danger as the men and that if caught, the Germans would treat them in a better, more gentlemanly way; training them in subjects such as unarmed combat and silent killing would not, therefore, be required. It took the SOE only a short time to realize that it was mistaken, and courses in these skills were soon made available to both male and female agents.

Jacqueline proved to be a good shot and had no trouble at all with a pistol. But parachuting was another matter. Wearing protective clothing, which included overalls and a large, round, padded hat, the students were attached to ropes as if on an enormous playground swing so that they could become used to the motion of a parachute descent before making an actual jump. This didn’t give Jacqueline any problems, but she was less than enthusiastic about her first parachute jump, which was made from the specially adapted basket of a hot-air balloon. She was frightened by it and felt very insecure, as the basket had a hole, large enough for an adult to pass through, in its base. It was also very quiet, which she and her fellow students found disconcerting. When she finally made a jump from an aircraft she declared it to be much better, even quite exciting, attributing this to the sound of the aircraft’s engines, but parachuting wasn’t something she ever really enjoyed and she wished that there was some other way to get to France so that she didn’t have to use a parachute at all.

It was while undertaking their parachute training that Jacqueline and Lise de Baissac became friends. Lise was 37 years old when she joined the SOE. She had lived in France since the age of 14 but came from a Mauritian family and had been born in Curepipe so, as the island of Mauritius was a British possession, she was British. Like Jacqueline she had escaped from France and, as an intensely loyal British subject, come to England looking for war work. Her brother Claude, two years her junior, had also escaped to England and had preceded her into the SOE, becoming the head of the Scientist circuit in south-west France. Maurice Buckmaster described Claude as being ‘the most difficult of all my officers without any exception’⁸ and it seems that this was a family trait, as Lise herself was thought to be ‘difficult but dedicated’.⁹ But despite this, and their 11-year age difference, Lise and Jacqueline became firm friends. It was a friendship that would last for the rest of their lives.

When they had successfully completed the parachute training the four women went on to the finishing school at Brockenhurst. Hastily set up in January 1941, this was housed in several requisitioned large homes built amongst the trees of the New Forest on the isolated Beaulieu estate of Lord Montagu. The section to which the women were sent was known as STS 31, which comprised two houses, the Rings and the House in the Wood. These facilities soon proved to be too small for the large number of administration staff, lecturers and students, and the students were moved to other buildings in the complex, while a third house was also requisitioned. The chief instructor at this time was 50-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Stanley Woolrych, a First World War veteran, who was soon promoted to commandant of the school, a post he held until the end of the war. Subjects taught included evasion techniques, recognition of German military uniforms, escape techniques in the event of an agent being apprehended by the enemy, coding and decoding of messages, wood craft, living off the land, shooting with a pistol, and security and propaganda warfare. The instructors were a varied bunch and included convicted criminals, a former gamekeeper from the royal estate at Sandringham and a man who would later be disgraced for his spying activities, Kim Philby.

When the course was over, the four women parted company. Lise was the first to leave England, parachuting into France at the end of September 1942 with another agent, a Frenchwoman named Andrée Borrel (Denise). They were the first two female agents to arrive in France this way. Lise went on to Poitiers, where she was tasked with setting up a new circuit to be called Artist, and with finding safe houses for agents. She was known in the area as Irene Brisse. Borrel’s destination was Paris, where she was to be the courier for the Physician circuit and its leader Francis Suttill.

Mary Herbert and Odette Sansom managed to reach France without the use of parachutes but theirs was a difficult and lengthy journey, undertaken at the beginning of November. They were originally due to be taken by flying boat, but their flight was cancelled at the last minute and they were transferred to a submarine for a very uncomfortable trip to Gibraltar, from where they continued their journey by felucca to Port Miou near Cassis, south-east of Marseilles. Mary was to become the courier for Claude de Baissac (David), Lise’s brother, in the Scientist circuit, while Odette headed for Cannes, where she met Peter Churchill (Michel), head of the Spindle circuit. Although it was intended that she would eventually work for a circuit in Auxerre, Churchill persuaded the SOE in London to let him keep Odette with the Spindle circuit as its courier.

Although Jacqueline had done everything that was asked of her on the course to the best of her ability, her final training report, written and signed by Lieutenant Colonel Woolrych on 25 August 1942, said of her:

Mentally slow and not very intelligent. Has a certain amount of determination but is inclined to waver in the face of problems.

A reserved personality and somewhat shy. Little depth of character – in fact, she is a very simple person.

She is lacking in self-confidence, which might be entirely due to inexperience.

She might very well develop after long and careful training, but at present she could not be recommended.¹⁰

After all her good intentions and hard work, it seemed that Jacqueline had failed. She was inconsolable, knowing that she would never have a chance like this again.

CHAPTER 3
A Shaky Start

What Jacqueline did not know, when she learnt of Lieutenant Colonel Woolrych’s damning report, was that the final decision about her suitability as an agent was left to Colonel Buckmaster in his role as head of F Section.

Maurice James Buckmaster, born in 1902, had been too young for military service in the First World War, and by the time the Second World War started he was almost too old. The son of a wealthy businessman, he had been educated at Eton and awarded an exhibition at Oxford to study Classics. He was on the point of taking it up when his father was declared bankrupt and there was no longer any money to spare for a full-time education. Abandoning Oxford, he decided to go instead to France, where he remained for several years, first working as a reporter in Paris for Le Matin and eventually becoming a manager for the Ford Motor Company, promoting the company’s image to French car buyers. He returned to England in 1936 and two years later joined the Army Officers’ Emergency Reserve. He received his call-up papers in the first month of the Second World War, serving with the 50th Division as an intelligence officer. He was soon back in France as part of the British Expeditionary Force and remained there until he was evacuated from Dunkirk during the last few days of Operation Dynamo. When he learnt sometime later that his division was going to be posted to North Africa, he contacted his divisional commander and asked him to intervene on his behalf and obtain a position for him where his knowledge of France, French business practice and the French language would be of use. In the spring of 1941, at the age of 39, he found himself in Baker Street, working as an information officer for the SOE.

In July 1941 Buckmaster was made the temporary head of T Section, looking after the agents operating in Belgium, and later that year was appointed head of F Section, in which position he remained for the rest of the war. His appointment was surprising given that his real forte was public relations, but times were hard and people with his knowledge of France were in short supply. He was not, however, agent material. Although he was not frightened of hard work, his personality was not suited to the life of an agent. Whereas public relations was not a profession in which one kept quiet about what was happening, the work of an agent relied almost entirely on secrecy. In addition, Buckmaster could be short-tempered and irritable at times, was too trusting of people and disliked difficult situations, finding them hard to handle. There were many who believed he was offered the job as F Section head not because he possessed any particular talent for the work but simply because there was no one else.

Buckmaster tackled his new role with gusto, however, and worked very long hours, often going home at the end of a working day and then returning to the office after dinner. Many of those with whom he worked in London and those he sent to France thought of him as an avuncular figure, the guardian of those who faced danger every day in Nazi-occupied territory. They liked him tremendously – one of the staff members at SOE headquarters declared him to be ‘an absolute sweetie’ – and many referred to him affectionately as ‘Buck’.¹ But not everyone shared this opinion. There were those who thought of him as an anti-social, unapproachable man in an ivory tower.² They believed him to be a well-meaning but ineffectual man whose understanding of his agents, and the lives they led in France after the German occupation, was unsound and, in some cases, badly flawed. He could be stubborn and often dismissed the opinions of others, preferring to rely on his own instincts about people and situations. Sometimes these instincts served him well but he made some serious errors of judgement that he failed to acknowledge.

Vera Atkins, who helped Buckmaster, was an intelligence officer who had been with the SOE since April 1941, when she had been employed as a secretary to Major Bourne-Paterson, Head of Planning. She pushed for Buckmaster’s appointment as F Section head when his predecessor was sacked for ineptitude and no one could think of anyone suitable to replace him. At face value it was difficult to see Atkins’s motivation for promoting Buckmaster for this role but there were at least two reasons for her support. Extremely intelligent and capable, much more so than Buckmaster, she would herself have been a highly effective head but, as a woman, would never have been given the chance to show her enormous talent in this role. He, on the other hand, had far less aptitude but was grateful for the support she had given him in obtaining the position he coveted and never forgot that he was in her debt. Having made herself indispensable to him, she was able to exert her influence in many ways that would not have been open to her had she not ensured his appointment.³

However, perhaps the most significant reason for her championing of Buckmaster was that she needed someone on whose loyalty she could rely, as she should not have been working for the SOE at all. The organization’s regulations stated that its London headquarters’ staff should be British by birth. Vera was not British-born; nor did she have British nationality. She was Romanian, having been born in Galatz, Romania, in 1908, the daughter of Max Rosenberg, a German Jew, and his British-born wife, Hilda Atkins. Vera had not even lived in Britain until her arrival with her mother in the autumn of 1937, when she adopted the latter’s maiden name and obtained an Aliens Registration Certificate. After the Allies declared war on Romania in 1941, she was regarded as an enemy alien and, as such, could have been sent to an aliens’ internment camp, but somehow she managed to avoid this indignity. She applied for naturalization the following year but was refused, and she didn’t manage to secure her British nationality until 24 March 1944.⁴ Her success in obtaining the Certificate of Naturalization was due, in no small part, to the lengthy letter supporting her application that was written on her behalf by Maurice Buckmaster. Whilst there was never a suggestion that Vera Atkins was anything but loyal to her adopted homeland, her appointment to the SOE in contravention of its own security regulations, and the support she received from the head of F Section, show a worrying disregard for security in the organization, a situation that became a trend rather than an exception as the war dragged on.

Buckmaster revelled in the power his position gave him and, although he had no knowledge or experience of the training that agents undertook, countermanded the recommendations made by the instructors about prospective agents on several occasions.

When Jacqueline Nearne’s finishing school report arrived on his desk, Buckmaster gave it a cursory glance and then took a pencil and scribbled in the margin, ‘OK. I think her one of the best we have had.’⁵ He gave no further explanation of why he believed her to be so good but it is likely that his decision was based on Jacqueline’s appearance alone, as he hardly knew her. She was a beautiful young woman and Buckmaster admired beauty. He had a particular fascination with bone structure and, in Specially Employed, a book he wrote after the war, said of her: ‘Jacqueline is the sort of girl whom most people would describe as typically Parisian. She has the dark hair and eyes, the slim figure and the delicate bone of that type of Frenchwoman, of whose chic the French themselves are most proud.’ In the same book he waxed lyrical about another recruit, Violette Szabo, who had also been given a less than satisfactory finishing report, declaring her to be ‘really beautiful, dark-haired and olive-skinned, with that kind of porcelain clarity of face and purity of bone that one finds occasionally in the women of the south-west of France’.⁶

Jacqueline had no idea about Buckmaster’s admiration for her ‘delicate bone’; she was just delighted that she had been given a second chance. She promised herself that she would work as hard as she possibly could and prove to everyone that Lieutenant Colonel Woolrych’s comments on her finishing report had been completely wrong.

Preparations now began for her departure for France. She was given a new name, Josette Norville, and told that her cover story would be that she was a sales representative of a pharmaceutical company, Pharmacie Bienfait of Lyons,⁷ travelling extensively around a large area of France in the course of her work. Her cover had similarities to her own life. The new name gave her the same initials as her own and the fake occupation was virtually the same as her real employment had been, although she would be selling different commodities. She had two code names, one of which was Designer. The choice of the other was bizarre: she was to be known as Jacqueline. This was the same name as that adopted by Yvonne Rudellat, one of the first female agents to be sent to France in July 1942. (She too had received a bad training report and, at a time when political correctness would have been regarded as an alien concept, her instructor referred to her as ‘the little old lady’.⁸ She was 45 years old.) Jacqueline’s code name was not only already allocated to someone else but was also her real name, thus rendering it useless as a security measure. Not wanting to make a fuss, she accepted this absurdity without comment, assuming that Buckmaster knew what he was doing. Before long she was introduced to a man called Maurice, for whom she would be working in France as a courier.

Maurice Southgate (Hector) was born in Paris. It was said that his British parents had spent their honeymoon in the French capital and had liked it so much that they decided to stay, although they and their son remained British citizens. Southgate grew up in France and, like Jacqueline, spoke the language fluently without a trace of an English accent. Three years older than his new courier, he was married to a Frenchwoman, Marie Josette Lecolier – known as Josette – and, until coming to England to join the Royal Air Force, had lived in Paris, where he ran his own successful business, designing and manufacturing furniture. When he arrived in England his main desire was to become a pilot, but the Air Ministry declared him to be too old and had other ideas for his employment. Because of his language skills he, now Sergeant Southgate, was sent back to France as an interpreter for the RAF members of the British Expeditionary Force. He was still in France when, at the beginning of June 1940, Operation Dynamo ended its mission to rescue the BEF from the clutches of the Germans and Operation Ariel, a mopping-up exercise and the follow-on to Operation Dynamo, began.

Southgate, along with several thousand troops and British civilians, boarded HMT Lancastria, one of the ships at anchor in the Charpentier Roads, around 10 nautical miles from St Nazaire, on 17 June. Brought out from St Nazaire in smaller boats, the passengers were desperate to get away from the advancing German troops and back to Britain, but the master of the Lancastria, Captain Rudolph Sharp, wanted to sail across the Channel in convoy with the other ships. While they waited for these to be boarded, the Lancastria took on more and more passengers herself. Originally built to carry 2,200 people, by the time she was ready to sail on that June day she was seriously overloaded. Estimates of the actual passenger numbers varied from 4,000 to 9,000, with many being forced to travel in the ship’s holds, well below the waterline.

Just before 4 p.m. that afternoon several German bombers – Junkers 88s – appeared overhead and dropped bombs on the waiting ships. The Lancastria was hit four times and within 20 minutes she sank. Of all the thousands who had wearily climbed on board that day, there were only 2,477 survivors. Maurice Southgate was one of them. He spent hours trying to keep afloat in water that was covered with wreckage, dismembered bodies and burning fuel oil. Eventually he was rescued and, exhausted, was brought to England, landing at the Cornish port of Falmouth two days after his ordeal. He recorded what had happened to him in a diary:

I disembarked in Falmouth 19th June 1940, covered in a blanket and shoeless. I was taken by ambulance to a nearby camp, where I was able to take a shower and lose my watch. Then came a coach journey, a magnificent trip in the English countryside, to Plymouth RAF Station where I met with several of my squadron companions in the Sergeant’s mess. I was met with open arms, cries and lots of beer.

Next morning, in ill-fitting uniform, I left for London and arrived at my parents on the evening of 20th June 1940, my birthday. Both parents crying, as they had no news for several days, whilst the evacuation was taking place. I was listed missing and have had a lot of trouble establishing my credentials at the finance department of the ministry.⁹

The sinking of HMT Lancastria was, and remains to this day, the worst ever British maritime disaster. The total number of lives lost in the debacle was more than the combined number of deaths in both the Titanic and the Lusitania, yet the full circumstances of the tragedy were never properly reported, as Prime Minister Churchill was concerned that it was one catastrophe too many for the British public to bear and ordered a ban on the reporting of the ship’s demise. The news was eventually broken in America, with a few subsequent reports in British newspapers several weeks later.

Despite his narrow escape from death, Southgate was anxious to return to France as soon as he could. By now resigned to the fact that he would never become an RAF pilot, he was determined to do something to help defeat the Nazis, but it took him nearly two more years before he was able to join the SOE. Once he had been identified as a possible agent, however, things began to move fast. He was given an RAF commission and attended training courses, from which he emerged with glowing reports.

When he and Jacqueline Nearne were introduced to each other in the early autumn of 1942 it was the beginning of what would become a close and highly efficient working relationship. The pair had a huge task in front of them. They would be building a circuit that stretched from Châteauroux, capital of the département of Indre in central France, to Tarbes in the south-western département of Hautes-Pyrénées, only 100 kilometres away from the Spanish border. Their circuit, named Stationer, would cover almost half the entire area of France and for a time Jacqueline would be its only courier.

With their departure for France imminent, Jacqueline and Southgate were given clothes made in the French style and bearing French labels. Jacqueline had two suits, two blouses and skirts, two pairs of pyjamas and two pairs of shoes. The pyjamas were almost useless after the first wash, as the material was of a very inferior quality and they shrank badly. But since this was all that was available in France at that time, it was what the agents had to have. Jacqueline was given a few days’ leave and used the time to say goodbye to Didi.

Undaunted by the lack of a positive response to her pleas to be sent to France, Didi had continued to press for a transfer. Still unaware of the pact her sister had made with Maurice Buckmaster and Vera Atkins, when she met Jacqueline she cheerfully relayed the details of her latest application to Jacqueline and, in turn, received the news that her sister was leaving her. Although she had known that their parting would eventually come, it still gave her a jolt to know that Jacqueline would soon be gone. The girls had been together for all Didi’s life and now they would be in different countries, but they would always be close to each other in spirit and both looked forward to the time when they would be together again; Didi hoped it would be in France while Jacqueline fervently prayed that it would be in England. She was still frightened for her sister but had done everything she could to ensure she remained at her listening station in relative safety for the rest of the war.

Back at SOE headquarters Jacqueline was told that she and Maurice Southgate would be leaving at the end of October, and was instructed to be ready. Two days before departure Buckmaster came to see them both and gave Jacqueline a necklace and a watch, as well as 100,000 French francs. It was his habit to give female agents some item of jewellery, not only as a parting gift but, believing that they might be able to sell it, as a source of money should they find themselves without funds. Jacqueline was touched by this thoughtfulness and felt that Buckmaster was someone she could trust, declaring him to be ‘sympathetic and very capable’.¹⁰

She and Southgate were taken to the aerodrome in Bedfordshire from where they would be leaving and, on the appointed day, boarded a Royal Air Force Halifax and took off for France. Arriving over the dropping zone, the pilot saw no lights from the reception committee and so the pair were returned to England. Eight days later there was a new moon and another flight was organized, but as the plane approached the dropping zone a thick fog swirled up and covered all sight of the ground. Again they were forced to return to England. It is likely that they returned home after this abortive trip, as the next attempt to reach France, their third, was not made until 30 December, with the same result. Jacqueline was beginning to believe that she would never get to France. This belief became more entrenched when, on the fourth attempt, the aircraft developed a technical problem before it had even left the runway and the flight was cancelled.

Eventually on the evening of 25 January, three months after their first attempt, Jacqueline and Southgate boarded another Halifax of 161 Squadron and were flown by Flight Lieutenant Prior to a dropping zone near the small town of Brioude in the Haute-Loire département of the Auvergne. This time everything went as planned and they made a blind drop on the landing ground. Although most drops were made to reception committees, some were not and these were known as blind drops. It was usually preferable for agents to be received by other agents, who could help them bury their parachutes and quickly take them away from the landing ground to ensure that if there were German patrols around they wouldn’t find them. The reception committees often took arriving agents on to a safe house, where they could rest before making their own way to the circuits they were joining. Sometimes, however, it was not practical to provide a reception committee, and it is possible that after the many problems that Southgate and Jacqueline had had in reaching France it was thought best to let them drop blind in case there were any more problems and the reception committee wasted more time in waiting for agents who didn’t arrive. Since both Southgate and Jacqueline had lived for most of their lives in France they should, in theory, have had fewer difficulties in coping with a blind drop than agents who were unused to the country.

Jacqueline jumped first and landed safely, quickly collecting up her billowing parachute in order to bury it as soon as possible and hide all traces of her arrival. As she stood up, she saw in the dim light of the French countryside the figure of a man holding a gun, which was pointed at her. On either side of the man were more figures. Jacqueline said later that she ‘felt it was very unfair to be caught so quickly’¹¹ and that she didn’t know what to do. She walked back and forth for a moment, trying to gather her thoughts, and then heard a male voice whispering her name. She suddenly realized that the man with the gun was Southgate and that in the dark he had been unable to identify her. His companions turned out to be tree stumps.

Filled with relief that they were not about to be arrested, they quickly buried their parachutes and gathered up their bags to walk to the station in Brioude, from where they intended to take a train to Clermont-Ferrand. Although they had not been in any danger, they were both shaken by the experience, and when they came across a woman on a bike along the road, Southgate asked her for directions to the station in English. Jacqueline was horrified but quickly retrieved the situation by asking the woman the same question in French. As she did so the look of bewilderment on the woman’s face vanished, and Jacqueline realized that she had not understood what was being said to her and obviously thought that they were Germans.

They made their way to the station, a walk of nearly 32 kilometres, through the night. It should not have been so far, but in the dark they became lost and found themselves going round in circles for a time. After the encounter with the cyclist they preferred to find their own way to the station rather than ask for any more directions. On arrival, they took the first train leaving for Clermont-Ferrand. As they sank on to their seats, a German soldier came into the carriage and sat down opposite them. Jacqueline had a feeling of revulsion at having to share the carriage with him, and one of fear that he was there at all; to her it seemed as if her heart had jumped into her mouth, but she quickly recovered and opened the French newspaper that she had bought at the station and began to read it. Southgate did the same and the journey passed with no more drama.

For security reasons the details of contacts in France were given to only one person, and it was Jacqueline who had the information about where they would be able to find accommodation in Clermont-Ferrand. Leaving Southgate at a café near the station, she went to the address she had been given. A boy answered her knock on the door and she told him, ‘Je suis la fiancée d’André’ (I am André’s fiancée). The boy called back into the apartment, ‘A woman wants to speak to you,’ and André Vasseur, who was in reality George Jones (Lime) and who was known to Jacqueline from the SOE office in London, appeared. He was the wireless operator for the Headmaster circuit and would be one of those who would transmit messages for Stationer until its own wireless operator was sent from London.

The apartment at which Jacqueline had arrived, 37 rue Blatin, was the home of a family called Nerault and the boy who had answered the door was Jean Nerault. Jacqueline was welcomed into the family’s home, where she explained that she had left her circuit chief at the station and that they needed somewhere to stay for a while. She was told that they could stay there, so she went to find Southgate. He was relieved to see her, as although she hadn’t been gone for very long, it had felt like a lifetime to him and he was beginning to think that something had happened to her.¹² She assured him that she was fine, although she couldn’t get used to seeing so many Germans in the streets. During the time she had been on her training courses and afterwards waiting to reach France she had had an idea of how it would be to be back in her homeland, but the reality was nothing like she had imagined. France had changed after the German invasion and she hated it, as it made her realize that she had placed herself in a very dangerous position. She also knew, though, that whatever she now felt, she would just have to cope with it: there could be no going back.

CHAPTER 4
Escape

Since the area to be covered by the Stationer circuit, from central France to the far south, was vast, nearly half of the entire country, Southgate and Jacqueline’s remit to unite the various groups in this area into efficient fighting forces, so that they would be ready when the longed-for Allied invasion of western Europe eventually began, presented a challenge. It was rather unrealistic, therefore, to have sent a new circuit leader on his first mission with an equally inexperienced courier and no wireless operator, and expect them to work miracles. Yet London could not have picked a better pair for the task.

Southgate had passed his training courses with flying colours and was highly thought of by F Section. He in turn had full confidence in his courier and was not to be disappointed when they began to work together in earnest. He was soon reporting, ‘Jacqueline is grand, and is rendering great service to my organisation and to England. I could not have done half what I have without her.’¹ But although they got along very well and were soon beginning to achieve a lot of what they had come to France to do, Southgate regarded Jacqueline as a bit of an enigma. She was pleasant, polite, always did her job to the best of her ability and had a good sense of humour, but he felt that there was more to her than met the eye and that behind her pleasant façade was a woman who did not want to give away too much of her real self.

During their first few weeks in France Jacqueline and Southgate travelled tirelessly all over the large area that constituted the Stationer circuit, meeting when possible about three times each week to bring each other up to date with their progress. They soon began to establish some order among the disparate groups of resisters, and arranged training and supplies for them. Part of Jacqueline’s work as a courier was to take and fetch messages from the other groups. Before Stationer received its own wireless operator, she also had to take messages to a wireless operator of another circuit to be sent. This was a security risk for both her and the Stationer circuit as a whole, but it was nearly three months before the news reached them that the arrival of their own wireless operator was imminent.

Then, in mid-April, Amédée Maingard (Samuel) parachuted from an RAF Halifax on to a dropping zone 6 kilometres from Tarbes. Southgate met him and the two men made their way to Châteauroux, where Maingard, a Mauritian, made his base at a safe house organized for him by Jacqueline. He and Jacqueline began to meet regularly, usually at least three times a week, and his arrival made a huge difference to the efficiency of the circuit and lessened the security risk to Jacqueline, as she now only had to pass messages to one person. She always carried the messages by hand and was prepared to either destroy them or swallow them if there was any danger of her being caught. She sometimes had to carry what she referred to as ‘compromising objects’ in her bag:

If I feared an inspection at a station exit I would call a porter and get him to take my bags to the left luggage where I would collect them later. If my cases had been opened I always had enough time to disappear.

Sometimes the Germans helped me as I got off a train and gallantly carried my luggage. That helped me get through the checks without any problems.²

Southgate’s cover story for his role in the circuit was that he was an inspector and engineer for a company manufacturing gasogene,³ the gas substitute used for powering cars in France during the war. This gave him a good reason for all the travelling he undertook and sometimes gained him access to factories, which allowed him to assess the practicalities of sabotage. As a security precaution he always carried literature about his supposed employer and could speak with some authority about gasogene. Jacqueline’s cover as a saleswoman for a pharmaceutical company⁴ also gave her a very plausible reason for being on the move and, since the story was so close to her actual employment before leaving France to come to England, she too had few problems in maintaining the deception. But despite this the work was very dangerous.

Because of the distances she travelled, Jacqueline sometimes had to stay in hotels. This was not as easy as she had imagined. Not only did she have to avoid German soldiers without overtly appearing to do so; she also had to be on the lookout for those in plain clothes and for checks carried out by the Milice, the Vichy French volunteer paramilitary organization whose members subscribed to the abhorrent Nazi ethos. Although in her previous career she had been used to staying in hotels, she had done so as a legitimate sales representative, with genuine papers. Those she had carried when she first arrived, although excellent, were fake and one of her first tasks had been to obtain French-made documents. The day after she received her new cards she had to use them when the hotel in which she was staying in Châteauroux was subjected to a police raid.

She was washing her underwear in the basin in her room when there was a knock at the door. Believing it to be an expected visit from a member of the Resistance, Jacqueline hurriedly opened the door to be confronted by a plain-clothes policeman. Genuinely dismayed about being caught with her wet undergarments still in her hand, she began to blush and stammer her apologies for coming to the door in such a state. The young policeman was also flustered, and their mutual confusion diffused the situation. He asked for her papers, she produced them, and he gave them a cursory look before handing them back and fleeing in embarrassment.

Later that evening there was another raid and this time Jacqueline was prepared. When the knock on her door came she opened the door but pretended to have been asleep and, rubbing her eyes and yawning, asked what the policeman wanted. He mentioned Southgate, using the name under which he was known in the area – M. Philippe. Jacqueline yawned some more, and tried to look drowsy and confused. Her acting fooled him and, seeing that he would get no sensible answers from her in that state, he apologized for disturbing her and went away. She didn’t get much sleep that night. The police knew Southgate’s alias and that he was somehow linked to her. She couldn’t understand who could have told them and knew that she had to get away as quickly as possible. Not wanting to attract attention in the hotel by leaving in the middle of the night, and afraid that, if she did take that chance, the police might be keeping a watch outside, she decided to stay until the morning. As soon as it was light she took her small bag and checked out of the hotel. Later she learnt from a member of the Resistance group in the area that the police had returned just after she left, no doubt hoping to question her again when she was wide awake.

The incident proved to Jacqueline that it was not safe to stay in hotels too often and thereafter she tried to avoid them as much as possible, preferring tried and tested safe houses. But sometimes there was no other choice. On another occasion she was again disturbed twice, by two different police officers knocking at her door. She did not panic; she just showed her papers and answered their questions, and later she discovered that they hadn’t been interested in her at all. There had been a robbery in the area and every hotel room was being checked in the hope of finding the thieves.

When not taking a chance by staying in a hotel Jacqueline frequently slept during her long train journeys. More often she could only cat nap, and spent much of her time knitting socks for herself and her colleagues. On the rare occasions when she had to stay in Paris, she used her own family home there. The apartment that had belonged to her grandparents and in which the Nearne family had lived when they first came to France was empty, so Jacqueline made it available as a safe house for Southgate and other agents, although, ever cautious, she stipulated that it was not to be used very frequently. An empty apartment that had different people coming and going regularly was bound to arouse suspicion, and she wanted to avoid the possibility of it being the target of a raid.

Jacqueline’s frequent trips away from her base in Clermont-Ferrand gave her an opportunity to contact her brother Francis. He had remained in the Grenoble area, living with his wife, Thérèse, and son, Jack, at the Villa Picard in Saint Egrève, a few kilometres from the city. When, in May 1943, he heard from Jacqueline that she was back in France and would like to meet up with him, he jumped at the chance. Francis knew only that both his sisters had gone to England to look for a way to help the Allies, but when he and Jacqueline met she swore him to secrecy and told him something of what her work in France entailed. She described how difficult it was for her entire group because of the vastness of the area they covered and asked him if he would be willing to undertake ad hoc courier missions for the circuit.

Francis was still a rather nervous young man. He believed that the difficulties he had faced after arriving in France as a child, and the fact that the education he had received had been rather poor, had resulted in him being unable to secure a good job that would allow him to look after his wife and child properly. Because of his nervous disposition he had been unable to hold down any job for very long but had been getting along quite well in his last position as a salesman for a stationery company, Maison Marassi, until it had closed soon after the start of the war because the manager was Jewish. Francis, like the rest of his family, had remained British and, as a foreigner, had also been made to live in a residence forcée, but he had been allowed to go into Grenoble every day, where the company for which he had worked was located. The closure of the business had created problems for him, as he had barely been able to support himself and his family on the meagre wages he had received, even with the help of 2,600 francs that he received from the Swiss consulate in Lyons,⁵ and without the wages, his life and the lives of his wife and child had had to change drastically. He was also acutely aware that he was the only one of the four siblings not to be doing anything for the war effort. He decided that the time had come for him to join the fight against the Nazis and agreed to Jacqueline’s proposal. She reassured him that if he did become a courier he would be looked after and that she would be the one to allocate the work he undertook. She would be his contact in the circuit and would arrange all the meetings that he had with members of the group so that no one would have to know his true identity, nor he theirs, and the safety of his family would not be compromised.

Because of Maurice Southgate’s complete confidence and trust in Jacqueline he had no problem with her brother becoming a part-time courier for the Stationer circuit. So Francis was given the name Jacques Perrier, was issued with a fake French identity card and began his new work. Using the code name Jacques, he passed messages between members of the circuit, carried equipment for wireless operators of the sub-circuits all over the area when they moved to new addresses, and collected explosives which he delivered to the saboteurs in the group for their attacks on factories and railway yards. He worked mainly in the southern part of the country, in the area between Grenoble, Vichy and Clermont-Ferrand, and usually travelled by train. Sometimes he took Thérèse and Jack with him, having observed that families were far less likely to be caught up in police raids on trains than adults travelling alone. It was not difficult work but it was extremely dangerous, and Francis was always very careful about covering his tracks. In case of police raids, when he had a parcel to carry he would put it in an overhead rack and then stand in the corridor of the train or take a seat in another compartment so that should a raid take place he could walk away from the offending package. When it came to leaving a station building, he would deposit his baggage in the corner of the buffet or ticket hall and then check what controls there were at the exit gate. If there was no control, he would return to his luggage and bring it through the gate; if there was even a hint of a check being made at the station exit, his plan was to leave the package where he had deposited it and walk through the gate empty handed. He was fortunate in never having to do this and attributed it to sheer good luck, as he had often seen these checks taking place before becoming a courier himself.⁶

Francis was only once the subject of an investigation while working for the Stationer circuit. This was on a train when the German authorities came through the carriages asking passengers for their papers. Francis had both British and French identity cards, and carried a letter of safe conduct that identified him as a foreigner living in France. It was this he showed the Germans and that made them suspicious, and when the train pulled into the station at Lyons they handed Francis over to the French police. He had been able to hide his forged French card from the Germans by placing it in between the pages of the newspaper he had been reading, and he managed to retrieve it and hand it over to the policeman. Francis believed it to be an excellent forgery and it obviously was, as the French officer could find no fault with it and immediately released him.

Jacqueline had made arrangements for her brother to stay with the Nerault family at 37 rue Blatin in Clermont-Ferrand that evening. The Neraults’ home was a large apartment in an elegant building five storeys high, with shuttered windows and fancy wrought-iron balconies, close to a busy crossroads. She herself had lived there for some months after her arrival from England. She had told him that she would meet his train and take him to rue Blatin herself, so after his release he went back to the station and hopped on another train for Clermont-Ferrand. He had no more problems during the journey and Jacqueline was waiting for him at the station. As they always were with agents seeking refuge, the Neraults were very welcoming and gave Francis a comfortable bed and a feeling of security at being in a family home once more.

By September he was gaining confidence in his ability and felt that he was, at last, doing something worthwhile – something of which he could be proud; he felt better about himself than he had done for a long while. After having completed another successful mission late one afternoon he was looking forward to meeting up with Jacqueline the following evening. When he went to bed, he slept very well. So well, in fact, that it was ten o’clock the next morning before a loud noise woke him. When he realized what it was, he was terrified but he managed to slip noiselessly out of his bed, creep across the floor and lock the bedroom door. The sound that had interrupted his slumber was of a Gestapo raid. If caught, he knew he would not be able to escape.⁷

On the other side of his bedroom door he could hear several loud voices barking out orders in German. Doors were banging, and drawers and cupboards were being opened, followed by the sound of things being flung on the floor. In between the strident, guttural tones of the Germans were the quieter voices of his hosts. He didn’t understand the Germans and couldn’t hear what the Neraults were saying, but he knew he had to get out immediately. But how? He couldn’t think how to do it without giving away his presence in the apartment. He dressed quickly and put what few belongings he had into his small bag, all the while trying to calm himself and consider what would be his best course of action. The room had a window but there was no way he could make his escape through it. He quickly had to admit to himself that the only way he would survive would be by going through the apartment’s front door and out into the street below. It was a terrifying thought but he had no other choice. So, hardly daring to breathe, he waited until he sensed that the Germans had moved into another room across the hall. Then he carefully turned the key in the lock of his bedroom door and, pushing it open a fraction, peered into the hallway. It was empty. Before his courage failed him, he crept across the floor, opened the outer front door, and made his way down the stairs as quickly and quietly as he could, praying that he wouldn’t meet any Germans on the stairway or outside on the street. He reached the courtyard at the back of the apartment block, and then cautiously made his way through the arch and into the street, only pausing for breath when he was well away from the building.

He had never been so frightened in his entire life and couldn’t stop shaking. Over and over again he thought about the kind family who had offered hospitality to so many people without a thought for their own safety, in the knowledge that they could soon be taken away by their German captors and might never be seen again. He wondered if the Neraults’ teenage daughter, Colette, had been at home at the time, or the couple’s small son, Jean. Thoughts of the boy made him shake anew, for he realized that if he had been caught the Germans might have arrested his wife, Thérèse, and two-year-old son, Jack, as well. He loved them both dearly but didn’t think that he would be able to withstand German interrogation or torture, and suffered agonies thinking that his actions could have condemned them.

Then he remembered that he was supposed to meet his sister at the apartment that evening and he began to panic once more. He didn’t know where she was and couldn’t warn her not to come. In fact, in his panic, he couldn’t think of anyone that he could contact to tell what had happened. Finally, he resolved to return to rue Blatin and wait for Jacqueline to arrive so that he could warn her.

Retracing his steps, Francis eventually found himself outside the apartment building again. He watched it from a discreet distance, and from the comings and goings of other residents concluded that the Gestapo had left. By nightfall he had steeled himself enough to enter the building and search the flat to see if anything important had been left behind. He found nothing except the wreckage of the family’s home and belongings, and hoped that they had managed to destroy anything incriminating before the Gestapo had broken into the apartment. He met the concierge and had a few words with her. She confirmed that there had been five Gestapo men in the raiding party, and that M. and Mme Nerault and their daughter had all been at home and had been arrested and taken away. She did not know where they were being kept or what had happened to the boy.

Francis left and again positioned himself outside so as to be able to see Jacqueline before she entered the building. Twelve hours after the raid had begun he was horrified to see the Germans arrive yet again and go back into the apartment. They remained there for four agonizing hours while Francis kept watch for his sister’s arrival.⁸ She didn’t turn up and by the time the Germans left again at two o’clock the next morning he realized that she must have found out about the raid. Exhausted, he hid in an outhouse, where he remained for the rest of the night. In the morning, having had a little rest and feeling slightly calmer, he managed to contact Jacqueline.

CHAPTER 5
Broken Promises

With the terror of the Gestapo raid haunting him, Francis began once more to suffer badly from his nerves. The self-confidence that had been growing with every mission he had successfully completed vanished and he shrank inside himself all over again. Then came the news via Maria, the concierge of the Nerault family’s apartment block, that she had received a letter, written in German supposedly by a family friend, to say that M. Nerault was in Germany, and that he was well and able to receive food parcels. Soon afterwards a card arrived from Mme Nerault and Colette, also saying that they were in a camp in Germany but giving no actual location. Whether or not these were genuinely from the family was unknown, but Maria chose to believe that they were and consoled herself with the thought that at least they had not been shot. This proved to be of no comfort to Francis, who still tortured himself with thoughts of what had happened to them, and what might have happened to his wife and son if he too had been caught. He was sure that Thérèse and Jack would have been targeted because his wife knew about his undercover role.

Despite Jacqueline’s best efforts she could not help her brother. He was so tense and worried that he couldn’t function effectively and, much as he wanted to, was no longer able to undertake any courier missions. Jacqueline was so concerned that she enlisted the help of Maurice Southgate. He was sympathetic towards Francis and did not want to lose his services as, until this setback, he had been a most reliable and trustworthy courier. He contacted Baker Street with a request that Francis be sent to London for training and to enable him to receive some medical help for his bad nerves. He stressed that he was sure that, given the right treatment, Francis would regain his self-confidence and be able to resume his courier work. Then he, Jacqueline and Francis waited to hear what London would decide.

Back in England, Didi was unaware of her siblings’ problems and was delighted with the news she received in the autumn of 1943. After her countless attempts to persuade her bosses to release her from her listening station, she was told at last that she was going to be sent for training as an agent. Buckmaster had broken his promise to Jacqueline and decided to send Didi to France where, he hoped, she would be as effective in the field as her sister.

Quite why he had chosen this moment to release Didi from her mundane work is not recorded. Jacqueline had made it quite clear to both him and Vera Atkins that she was strongly opposed to Didi going to France; and she, after all, knew her sister better than anyone. She had stressed her sister’s naivety, and her lack of experience in many aspects of life. She had never doubted Didi’s courage, but she felt that she had perhaps looked at the role of an agent through rose-coloured glasses and that when faced with the reality of the situation, she might find herself out of her depth – and by then it would be too late.

The pragmatic view might be that here was a young woman, fluent in French and English, completely used to the French way of life and eager to return to her homeland to do her bit. Was it not ridiculous for Buckmaster to waste this valuable resource simply because of a promise made to the girl’s sister? Perhaps so, but if Jacqueline was right and her sister wasn’t up to the task, Buckmaster would have to answer not only for his deception but also his own bad judgement. With Jacqueline preoccupied by her own heavy workload and her concern for the welfare of Francis, he perhaps hoped to have Didi well into her training course before her sister got wind of what was happening back in England.

The whole situation was becoming a tangled web of deceit, as Didi was still not aware that her sister had extracted the promise from Buckmaster to keep her in England; nor did she know that the age restriction that Jacqueline had told her about was a lie. She was just very excited that she would soon be in France, like her sister, and was impatient to start the training course.

Before long she was released from Bingham’s Unit and transferred to the SOE French section of the FANY. Having already learnt Morse code and worked in the listening station it was felt that all she now needed was a finishing course, and for this she was sent to a house called the Drokes on the Beaulieu estate in the New Forest, in a party numbered 27.OB.¹ Unlike the finishing courses for couriers, this one, for wireless operators, not only concentrated on the security aspects of the role but also allowed time for the students to study and practise the technicalities of transmitting and receiving messages every day, to ensure that the transmissions were sent swiftly and efficiently and that the messages being received could be quickly understood. Speed was of the essence for a wireless operator.

A new syllabus had come into being a month before Didi’s course began. It was not extensive but it highlighted one or two things that might not have occurred to a novice wireless operator. It said of a wireless operator, for example, that ‘Other agents should not go to his residence or place of operation. It is even better if they do not contact him direct.’ Since most people crave the company of others, especially when they are feeling frightened or stressed, it would seem natural to seek out other agents who would understand the pressures of the job, but it would be unsafe for all concerned. The syllabus went on to decree that a wireless operator ‘Should live with friends as key-taps [are] audible’. This, of course, made a difficult task even trickier. On the one hand the agent was rightly being told that he or she should not have much contact at all with other members of the circuit and on the other that they should live with friends to reduce the risk of the tapping of Morse code being heard by strangers. Where they were supposed to find these friends if they were not to have much contact with their colleagues appears not to have been considered. It was certainly dangerous to assume that friends from outside the Resistance groups, even if they had been known to the operator for many years, could be relied upon in dangerous situations. The Germans had ways of turning the most patriotic French citizens into collaborators, and the most devoted friends into enemies. They only had to threaten the friend or his family with torture or a horrible death to make the friendship untenable. Like many ideas that look good on paper, in practice it didn’t work, and many wireless operators found themselves living solitary and boring existences while in France.

The part of the syllabus that told each operator about their own specific plan to which he or she must adhere was also flawed. This plan, or ‘sked’, as it was known, meant that even if there were an urgent message to be sent, the operator could only transmit it at one of two scheduled times each day. For London this made sense. It ensured that Baker Street could keep a check on its agents and, when messages were sent hurriedly and sometimes came through garbled, it enabled those decoding the transmission to sort out what was actually being said by applying their own knowledge of who it was that had sent it and what the general situation in the circuit concerned had been. On the downside the regular broadcast and reception times gave the enemy, who used fairly sophisticated direction-finding equipment, the knowledge of when to expect an operator to be transmitting. This made it far easier for them to locate the place from which the broadcast was being sent. To circumvent this danger, agents were told to ‘constantly move set and/or aerial’. This again seemed sensible until one realized quite how difficult it was to find a safe house from which to transmit. Having several places was an almost unheard of luxury. Didi, who worked hard on her course, was yet to discover the anomalies of the security training she was receiving.

Having completed the course at the end of January 1944, she was confident that she had done her very best. She felt that she had benefited from the training and she had enjoyed the company of her fellow students. She knew that her ability with Morse code was good, and she was in no doubt that her final report would be fine and that she would soon be leaving for her new life in France. She wondered what part of the country she would be sent to, with whom she would be working and what her new life would be like. But when Colonel Buckmaster received her final report, he was not pleased by what it said.

The report, dated 26 January 1944, was written by 36-year-old Major John H. Wedgwood (the great-great-great-grandson of Josiah Wedgwood, the master potter), who said:

She is not very intelligent or practical and is lacking in shrewdness and cunning. She has a bad memory, is inaccurate and scatterbrained. She seems keen but her work was handicapped by lack of the power to concentrate.

In character she is very ‘feminine’ and immature; she seems to lack all experience of the world and would probably be easily influenced by others.

She is lively and amusing and has considerable charm and social gifts. She talks a lot and is anxious to draw attention to herself, but was generally liked by the other students.

It is doubtful whether this student is suitable for employment in any capacity on account of her lack of experience.

Had any of Didi’s friends been able to read this report, they would have been puzzled. It was simply not a true reflection of the caring friend they knew and loved. Her family would not have recognized what had been written about Didi either. Jacqueline thought of her sister as being the odd one out in the family but not because she was frivolous, attention seeking or unintelligent: quite the opposite. She was sometimes playful and light-hearted but she also had a serious side, she was very intelligent and her whole life was directed by her religious beliefs. The report was so scornful that it was difficult not to think that Major Wedgwood either had a personal dislike of Didi or perhaps had mistaken her for someone else, as unlikely as that seemed. A second reading of the offending document, however, would have revealed that he understood some aspects of her character. He, like Jacqueline and Captain Jepson, who had conducted Didi’s initial interview for the SOE, had recognized her immaturity and her inexperience; those close to her would also have acknowledged that she was lively and amusing. But not only was Wedgwood completely off the mark when he said that she was anxious to draw attention to herself but his opinion that Didi would probably be easily influenced by others was just that – an opinion – and had no real basis in fact. Perhaps the only person who would have been able to influence Didi to any extent was her sister and, despite being in France, Jacqueline would not be working with her.

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