Читать книгу Sisters, Secrets and Sacrifice: The True Story of WWII Special Agents Eileen and Jacqueline Nearne - Susan Ottaway, Susan Ottaway - Страница 9

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.