Read Spy Princess Online

Authors: Shrabani Basu

Spy Princess (34 page)

APPENDIX II
Agents and Resistance members who worked with Noor and the Prosper Circuit

Though the tangled web of the SOE circuits often overlapped, it is beyond the scope of this book to cover the stories of the other agents. However, here is a brief look at the fate of the agents and Resistance workers who were linked to Noor and the Prosper circuit and who we have described in the previous chapters. Most were killed in concentration camps. Only a few lucky survivors lived to tell their stories.

Francis Suttill
– killed at Sachsenhausen

Gilbert Norman
– executed in Mauthausen, 6 September 1944

Andrée Borrel
– executed at Natzweiler

Jack Agazarian
– killed by firing squad at Flossenburg

France Antelme
– executed at Gross Rosen

Henri Garry
– executed at Buchenwald, September 1944

Marguerite Garry
– sent to Ravensbruck, returned 1945

Charles Vaudevire
– executed at Buchenwald

Viennot
– sent to Mauthausen, returned in 1945

Paul Arrighi
– sent to Mauthausen, returned in 1945

Robert Gieules
– deported to Germany, survived the war

Arthur de Montalambert
– executed at Mauthausen

Octave Simon
– executed at Gross Rosen

William Savy
– reached England safely, survived the war

Germaine Aigrain
– returned from prison, survived the war

Raymond Andres
– died in Avenue Foch in a mine accident after the Gestapo had left in August 1944

Armel Guerne
– escaped while being transported to Germany, survived the war

Alfred Balachowsky
– deported to Buchenwald, returned in 1945

Eugène Vanderwynckt
(Head of Grignon Agricultural College) – executed in Germany

Marius Maillard
(gardener at Grignon) – killed at Dora

Robert Benoist
– executed at Buchenwald

Charles Grover Williams
– died at Sachsenhausen

John Macalister
– executed at Buchenwald

Frank Pickersgill
– executed at Buchenwald

Henri Frager
– hung by a meat hook at Buchenwald

Madeleine Damerment
– executed at Dachau

Yolande Beekman
– executed at Dachau

Diana Rowden
– executed at Natzweiler

Eliane Plewman
– executed at Dachau

Sonia Olschanezky
– executed at Natzweiler

Vera Leigh
– executed at Natzweiler

Cecily Lefort
– died at Ravensbruck

John Starr
– escaped from Mauthausen

Leon Faye
– executed at Sonnenburg

Brian Stonehouse
– returned from Dachau

Gustave Biéler
– executed at Flossenburg

Yvonne Rudellat
– died in Belsen

Jean Worms
– executed at Flossenburg

Julienne Aisner
(Déricourt’s courier) – returned to London 5/6 April 1944

Henri Déricourt
– returned to London 8/9 February 1944

APPENDIX III
Chronology

Date

Events in Noor’s life

Events in Europe

Events in India

1 January 1914

Birth of Noor

Unrest in Russia

May 1914

Inayat Khan leaves Moscow

Tension in Europe

28 July 1914

First World War begins

August 1914

Inayat Khan moves to London

January 1915

Europe at war

Gandhi returns to India from South Africa

13 April 1919

Jallianwala Bagh massacre

28 June 1919

Treaty of Versailles signed

Spring 1920

Inayat Khan moves back to France

Gandhi begins Satyagraha resistance campaign

5 February 1927

Inayat Khan dies

April 1930

Gandhi goes on Salt March

April 1931

Noor joins École Normale de Musique

Autumn 1931

Gandhi attends Second Round Table Conference in London

30 January 1933

Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany

11-12 March 1938

The Reich annexes Austria in the Anschluss

9/10 November 1938

Noor publishing stories in
Le Figaro

Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass, when German Jews were attacked by the Nazis)

15 March 1939

Germany invades Czechoslovakia

Summer 1939

Noor’s
Twenty Jataka Tales
published

Germany and Italy announce formal alliance; Germany and USSR sign non-aggression pact

1 September 1939

Germany invades Poland

3 September 1939

Britain, New Zealand, Australia and France declare war on Germany

10 May 1940

Winston Churchill forms coalition government in Britain. Germany begins aggression against Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg

28 May 1940

Belgium surrenders to Germany

5 June 1940

Noor and family leave Paris

9 June 1940

Norway surrenders

17 June 1940

Pétain declares Armistice; De Gaulle leaves for Britain

18 June 1940

Noor wants to help

De Gaulle broadcasts war effort from London rallying Free French

28 June 1940

British government recognises De Gaulle as leader of Free French

10 July 1940

Battle of Britain begins

16 July 1940

SOE is born

19 November 1940

Noor enlists in WAAF

2 March 1941

Germany attacks Bulgaria

6 April 1941

Germany attacks Yugoslavia and Greece

5/6 May 1941

First SOE agent George Bégué drops into France

Summer 1941

Subhas Bose begins recruiting Indian prisoners of war in Germany to join his Indian National Army in the fight for independence from the British. Meets Ribbentrop

7 December 1941

Japan attacks Pearl Harbor

8 December 1941

USA, Britain declare war on Japan

14 June 1942

Noor’s ‘The Fairy and the Hare’ broadcast on BBC Children’s Hour

8 August 1942

Congress leaders launch Quit India movement

28 August 1942

Noor attends RAF interview for Commission

All top Indian leaders in jail

November 1942

Noor attends interview for SOE

Prosper circuit building up in Paris

February 1943

Noor signs Official Secrets Act

Bose’s movements watched closely by SIS and IPI (Indian Political Intelligence) at Bletchley. His submarine journey monitored by British intelligence

Gandhi begins three-week fast against British violence against demonstrators. On 8 February Bose sails in a submarine organised by the Germans to reach Japan

February 1943

Bengal famine caused bydiversion of food to feed troops leads to three millions dead over three years (1942-4)

16/17 June 1943

Noor flown in by Lysander

21 June 1943

Cullioli, Rudellat, Macalister and Pickersgill arrested

23 June 1943

Norman, Borrel arrested

24 June 1943

Suttill arrested

1 July 1943

Worms and Guerne arrested, Grignon staff arrested

2 July 1943

Prof. Balachowsky arrested

19 July 1943

Antelme leaves

22/23 July 1943

Bodington and Agazarian return to Paris

30 July 1943

Agazarian arrested

31 July 1943

Robert Dowlen arrested

2 August 1943

Maurice Benoist, Grover Williams arrested

16/17 August 1943

Bodington returns to London

19/20 August 1943

Robert Benoist returns to London

7 September 1943

Rousset arrested

29 September 1943

Gieules arrested

13 October 1943

Noor arrested

26 November 1943

Noor sent to Pforzheim

29 February 1944

Antelme, Madeleine Damerment and Lionel Lee arrested

6 June 1944

Normandy Invasions

6 July 1944

Diana Rowden, Sonia Olschanezky, Andrée Borrel, Vera Leigh executed at Natzweiler camp

17 August 1944

Gestapo move out of Avenue Foch. Last trainload of Jews leaves France for Auschwitz

26 August 1944

De Gaulle heads parade from Arc de Triomphe to Notre Dame

13 September 1944

Noor, Eliane Plewman, Madeleine Damerment, Yolande Beekman executed at Dachau

26 January 1945

Soviet troops enter Auschwitz

29 April 1945

Dachau liberated

8 May 1945

VE Day. Germans surrender

Subhas Bose’s Indian National Army surrenders in Rangoon

15 August 1945

VJ Day. Japan surrenders after bombs on Hiroshima (6 Aug) and Nagasaki (8 Aug)

18 August 1945

Subhas Bose dies in air crash

November 1945

Trial of INA officers begins in Delhi leading to an outcry

16 January 1946

Noor posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre

18 February 1946

Royal Navy Mutiny in India

April 1946

Stewart Menzies, head of SIS, and heads of Indian intelligence agree to continue cooperation

2 June 1946

Governor General Lord Wavell takes direct control over Indian intelligence - IB and IPI

15 July 1947

Britain in financial crisis. Hugh Dalton, former head of SOE, now Chancellor of the Exchequer, tries to control it

8-9 August 1947

Plans for partition of India revealed leading to riots

13 August 1947

Hugh Dalton retires ill to Wiltshire as currency crisis continues

15 August 1947

India wins independence

5 April 1949

Noor posthumously awarded the George Cross

APPENDIX IV
Indians awarded the Victoria Cross and the George Cross 1939–1945

Two and a half million Indian soldiers volunteered for the Second World War. It was the largest volunteer army in recorded history and suffered the greatest casualties. They served in fields far away from the sub-continent in Italy, Africa and the Far East and 28 VCs were awarded to members of the Indian army during the course of the war. There follows a list, plus a brief outline of the reason for the award.

A)
 
Recipients of the Victoria Cross for services in the Second World War

 
1.
 
Jemadar Abdul Hafiz – 9th Jat Infantry – 1944, Imphal, India

Led an attack up a bare slope with no cover. Though the Japanese fired at him from the top and injured him, he continued his assault killing the enemy one by one till he had chased all the Japanese from the top of the hill. A final bullet in his chest finally grounded him, but he was still trying to give cover fire to his colleagues when he died.

 
2.
 
Naik Agansing Rai – 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles – 1944, Bishenpur, Burma

Securing the crucial post of Mortar Bluff and Water Picquet in the face of devastating enemy fire.

 
3.
 
Sepoy Ali Haidar – 13th Frontier Force Rifles – 1945, Fusignano, Italy

Destroyed enemy post in face of heavy gunfire, killing many Germans. Battalion could enter after he cleared the way, took 220 of the enemy and secured the post.

 
4.
 
Rifleman Bhanbhagta Gurung – 2nd Gurkha Rifles – 1945, Tamandu, Burma

Took five positions single-handedly using his bayonet, grenades and his kukri to kill the Japanese in fox-holes and bunkers, all the time under heavy fire.

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