Spy Princess (19 page)

After the war, the pilots were shocked to learn of the fate of the three women they had flown that night. They could not believe that the jolly party that had left Tangmere after a hearty supper had all been flown to their deaths.
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Vera Atkins recalled that they had all set out bravely, and the only sign of nervousness she detected was a slightly trembling cigarette in the dark (which could have belonged to any of the three girls).
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But at that moment they were all charged up, waiting for the mission ahead.

Rymills remembered his passengers clearly. He remarked that Cecily Lefort looked like a vicar’s wife whose French ‘did not seem to be all that hot’ and recalled Noor’s green oilskin coat. It was also the time he forgot to switch off his transmitter during the flight. As the Lysanders took off in the clear moonlit sky, Mac remembered that Rymills’ voice could be clearly heard on the next plane as he talked to his passengers.
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The moment they crossed the Channel, Mac heard Rymills say: ‘Now Madame, we are approaching your beautiful country – isn’t it lovely in the moonlight?’ Back came the answer in a soft, accented voice, ‘Yes, I think it is heavenly. What is that town over there?’ Mac remembered thinking that the German listening service, which monitored the airwaves, would have heard the conversation as well. ‘Black mark!’, he thought.

In the tight confines of their Lysander, Noor and Cecily looked out at the country below. The flight to France usually took anything from 2 to 6 hours depending on the distance. Lysanders were the most popular aircraft by which agents were landed in France. RAF 161 Squadron was charged with the Lysander flights and took most of the agents to France during the war. The SOE had two airstrips at their disposal. The main one was the carefully camouflaged special-duties airfield at Tempsford, west of Cambridge. The second was at Tangmere, near Chichester, which was favoured by Lysander pilots as it was closer to the English Channel and they could secure a greater penetration into France from here.

The Lysanders were ideally suited for the dangerous job. The single-engined aircraft moved slowly at around 200mph, half the speed of the German fighter aircraft, which would fly by at double speed and not notice the Lizzy. It could also fly low, hedge-hopping before it landed. The Lysanders flew at a height of 8,000ft. Since it was dangerous to fly them in the daylight when they could easily be seen, they were generally only used on full-moon night drops.
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Initially the planes were painted black, but it was found that they were clearly visible when the sky was bathed in moonlight. So later versions had the top half of the aircraft painted blue and green. Lysanders were also particularly useful because they could land in muddy fields and on the smallest airstrips. To minimise the time the aircraft spent on the ground, the Lysanders were fitted with a small ladder on the side so agents could get in and out in the shortest time possible. Lysanders could carry two passengers easily, three at a pinch and four in a crisis, besides the pilot. If there was a third passenger he sat on the floor. Over 100 sorties were made by Lysanders during the war, setting down as many as 250 passengers and bringing out nearly 450.

Soon it was time to land. The familiar sign of the inverted L and the flashing Morse code guided the pilots to the landing strip. The landing code for the Lysander was a well-rehearsed one. Three torches – looking from the air like an inverted L – would make up the flare path which would guide the plane. Then the Morse code would be flashed, which had to be the special one the pilot was expecting. (If the prearranged Morse wasn’t flashed the pilot’s instructions were to turn around as quickly as he could and leave. In ‘no circumstances’
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was he to land.)

It was a particularly fine moonlit night in the Loir (not Loire) valley when Noor and her colleagues landed. The landing field was north-east of Angers, 5.25 kilometres south of Tierce, not far above the Loir’s junction with the Sarthe and 3.5 km west-north-west of Villeveque.
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The Lysander stopped and Cecily got off. Noor remained on board. It was her duty to pass the luggage down to Cecily, then take and store the luggage from the other passengers who were waiting to return. Only then did she clamber down the short ladder herself. It was a well-rehearsed drill aimed to take as little time as possible.

A double Lysander operation had to take no more than 20 minutes at the very most for both planes to load and unload passengers. Each plane usually took about 3 to 4 minutes, making it very difficult for the Germans to trace or intercept them. But the Germans probably knew about this flight. Noor and her colleagues were met by agent Henri Déricourt, F-section’s air movements officer, who was later confirmed to be a double agent. He had five passengers waiting to be taken back to England. They were three French political figures, Madame Pierre Bloch, Pierre Lejeune and Vic Gerson, and two F-section returning agents – Jack Agazarian and his wife Francine. The returning passengers lost no time in boarding the aircraft, then the Lysander turned around and after a short run-up took off again. The last link with England had now gone. Noor and her colleagues stood alone on enemy territory.

The landing field had to be cleared as quickly as possible. Henri Déricourt and his assistant, Rémy Clément, had bicycles waiting for the arriving agents. Skepper and Cecily Lefort travelled south together, Diana Rowden headed for her address south-east of Dijon, near the Jura mountains. Noor hastily buried her pistol in the field, as she was not normally allowed to carry a pistol since it could incriminate her if she was searched. She got on her bike and rode in the direction of the nearest railway station, Angers. She had to head for Paris, the most dangerous area of all. Rémy Clément would travel separately and meet her at the station but the two of them would travel in different compartments as a precaution.

Noor had memorised her instructions from London. She was to go to 40 rue Erlanger, Paris 16e (8th floor opposite the lift door) to the house of Emile Henri Garry. Her password was ‘
Je viens de la part de votre ami Antoine pour des nouvelles au sujet de la Société en Bâtiment
’ (I have come on behalf of your friend Antoine for news on the building society), to which the reply would be ‘
L’affaire est en cours
’
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(The business is in hand).

Noor’s instructions were to work as a wireless operator in the region of Le Mans. Her circuit would be Cinema, a sub-circuit of the famous Prosper circuit headed by Francis Suttill. Born in 1910 in Lille, the barrister Suttill was the son of an English father and a French mother. He spoke good French, and was an idealist with good leadership qualities. His job was to create an active circuit in and around Paris. On the night of 1/2 October 1942, Suttill (code name Prosper) had been parachuted in near Vendôme. He was preceded by his courier, the formidable Andrée Borrel (code name Denise), a young French girl, who had been parachuted in close to Paris on 24/25 September to prepare the way for him. A month later his wireless operator, Gilbert Norman (code name Archambaud) parachuted in near Tours. Suttill’s Prosper circuit now consisted of himself as the organiser, Andrée Borrel as his courier, and his radio operator Gilbert Norman. The circuit expanded so rapidly that soon another radio operator, Jack Agazarian (code name Marcel), was parachuted to help him and landed in the Seine valley. Agazarian’s wife Francine (code name Marguerite) acted as his courier. Suttill’s extended circuit also included Jean Amps (code name Tomas), who became his lieutenant.

Suttill’s first contact had been Germaine Tambour (code name Annette) who, along with her sister Madeleine, worked for the Carte circuit, which was notoriously insecure. Germaine introduced him to many people, including Professor Alfred Balachowsky
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(code name Serge) of the College of Agriculture in Grignon, who became head of the Versailles/Grignon region, and Armel Guerne (code name Gaspard), who would also become Suttill’s lieutenant. Suttill was very dependent on Andrée Borrel, who had worked with the French Resistance before leaving for England to be trained by F-section and then returning to serve in France. She was a daring woman who travelled everywhere with Suttill, posing as his sister, to help him find his way around in the initial months. Suttill soon developed many contacts with the French Left and the circuit expanded rapidly, creating many sub-circuits. Contact with the Tambour sisters, however, endangered Suttill from the start.

Working closely with the Prosper circuit was the skilled F-section agent France Antelme (code name Renaud), who had been sent on a special mission to arrange money and food supplies for the Allied Expeditionary Force before the invasion of the mainland and to send back intelligence about the morale and organisational capabilities of the French. An important part of Antelme’s brief was also to get in touch with non-or anti-Gaullist resistance groups and see if they could be of any importance. All the Prosper circuits and sub-circuits contacted Antelme for funds. It was he who had recruited Henri Garry to help Prosper and set up the sub-circuit Cinema, or Phono, to which Noor had to report.
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Antelme would work with the Prosper and Cinema circuits and later with Noor.

Garry was a Frenchman who had not been trained by F-section in England. He had been given the circuit name Cinema by Suttill because of his resemblance to the actor Gary Cooper (F-section, not amused at this joke, later changed the circuit name to Phono). Garry was working for Prosper in the Eure-et-Loire and the Sarthe departments south-west of Paris, with headquarters at Le Mans. Noor had been sent to work as his much-needed radio operator.

The three members of the Prosper circuit lived in Paris but they used as their base the École Nationale d’Agriculture at Grignon, the famous agriculture college to the north-west of Versailles. Another circuit that worked closely with Prosper was Satirist, headed by the 29-year-old sculptor Octave Simon, who had been active in the Resistance. Simon had been enlisted by Antelme and had gone on to set up a reception committee with some local farmers, their sons and the gamekeeper. Antelme also introduced him to Arthur de Montalambert, a count, who was prepared to have arms drops on his estates. Dutilleul, stationmaster at Le Mans, was drawn into the circuit and the three of them worked from the Le Mans region where they often coordinated arms drops for Suttill.

Another sub-circuit of Prosper was Juggler, headed by Jean Worms (code name Robin) who had also been with the Resistance. His assistants were Jacques Weil and Gaston Cohen (Justin) who was their wireless operator. They organised sabotage groups around Chalons and had had a few successes with derailments. Also in the Sarthe was the sub-circuit Butler headed by François Bouguennec (code name Max) with Marcel Rousset (code name Leopold) as his wireless operator and Marcel Fox (code name Ernest) as his courier. Another circuit that worked with Prosper was Chestnut, consisting of three racing drivers: Charles Grover Williams, Robert Benoist and Jean-Pierre Wimille. Benoist, a world motor racing champion in the late 1920s, was the director of Bugatti in Paris. He owned a large country estate in Auffargis and organised receptions in the nearby grounds in the Forêt de Rambouillet. Robert Benoist had access to a truck from Bugatti and permission to drive at night, which was helpful for carrying the arms which were then hidden on his country estate. Their wives helped with the receptions. Their radio operator was Robert Dowlen (code name Achille) who transmitted from a large house near Pontoise.

Other circuits working with Prosper included Privet, a sub-circuit in the Angers area with Ernest Wilkison (Alexandre) as organiser, a group in the Oise(West)/ Eure(East) area organised by George Darling of Gisors, a group in the Orne area organised by Jean Michel Cauchi (Paul) of Falaise, a group in the Indre-et-Loire area run by Pierre Culioli (Adolph) and Yvonne Rudellat (Jaqueline) as courier, and a group in the Seine/Seine-et-Oise organised by Armel Guerne (Gaspard). Farrier, run by Henri Déricourt and his courier Julienne Aisner, and Scientist, run by Claude de Baissac (David) from the Bordeaux region also worked closely with Prosper.

By June 1943, when Noor arrived, the Prosper circuit and its sub-circuits had become one of the largest and most powerful forces around Paris extending as far as Le Mans, Orleans and Beauvais. Prosper had organised the sabotage of the Chaingy power station in March 1943 by which the power lines from Eguzon, Chevilly, Epines and Fortes were immobilised. It had also been responsible for the destruction of 1,000 litres of petrol and for successful attacks on enemy goods trains on the Orleans–Paris line. In April 1943, Suttill and his group had carried out 63 acts of sabotage: derailing trains, killing 43 Germans and wounding 110.
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By June 1943 the circuit covered 12 departments, had 33 dropping grounds and had received 254 containers of stores.
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They received 190 containers in June alone and further attacks were on the cards.
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It was at this time, when the Prosper circuit was at its peak, that Noor was asked to join the sub-circuit Cinema. Once she had established contact with Cinema, she had to send a post-box address back to Baker Street where she could be contacted personally if her wireless contact failed. She had to also send the SOE the address of a cachette (safe house). If she was in difficulty she would have to go to the cachette and advise London of the circumstances by coded letter or card. She would then be contacted in her cachette with a view to getting her out.

Before Noor left England she had been given detailed instructions about making contact with London if she ran into difficulties. If owing to unforeseen circumstances her circuit – Cinema – disappeared, she would have to advise London immediately and await further orders.
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She had to send headquarters the address of her cachette by code using Playfair.
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If she could not use her radio for some reason she was to send a postcard to Lisbon with the word ‘un’ or ‘une’ in the text. She had to mention her name – Madeleine – somewhere in the text and refer to Madeleine as if she was in Portugal and not in France. The signature on the postcard should preferably be from someone who lived in the cachette. The postcard would be addressed to Senor Luis Alberto Peres, Rua da Libereade 220/20, Oporto.