Women who Spied for Britain

by Walker, Robyn

  Khan continued to roam the surrounding areas of Paris, looking up old friends and staying one step ahead of the Gestapo. She actively sought out safe houses to transmit from, preferring houses with gardens, or flats with trees adjacent, so that she would have some place to hang her aerial. Occasionally friends who had cars would drive her out into the country so that she could transmit outside the city. SOE once again gave her the opportunity of returning to Britain, but Khan felt that she could re-establish some of the broken Resistance networks and that her transmissions were more important than ever. SOE warned her only to receive messages (received messages could not be tracked) and not to transmit, since all German direction-finding devices would be trained on her radio. Khan ignored these warnings, and began regular transmissions to London starting the first week of July. Her transmissions focused mainly on providing updates on the status of the network, and on identifying locations for drops of arms, ammunition and money, which would be picked up by members of the French Resistance. On one occasion, desperate for a place to transmit from, Khan returned to Grignon, her original transmission site. She was dismayed to find the agricultural school occupied by the Germans, and had to make a quick escape under heavy fire. Her citation for the French Croix de Guerre states, ‘Falling into an ambush at GRIGNON, in July 1943, her comrades and she managed to escape after having killed or wounded the Germans who tried to stop them.’ There is also evidence that Khan was involved in providing assistance to Allied airmen who had been shot down over France. While information regarding the extent of her assistance has not been preserved, there is a commendation in her personnel file that states, ‘She was instrumental in facilitating the escape of 30 Allied airmen shot down in FRANCE.’13 Most likely her involvement was linked to her role as a wireless operator, and perhaps she provided the communication link, with either London or other SOE networks, that enabled these airmen to escape from Occupied France.

  Khan was optimistic that the war would soon be over, and events taking place in Europe seemed to support this hope. General Montgomery had defeated General Rommel in North Africa, Allied troops had landed in Sicily and the Russians were attacking German positions along the Eastern Front. Khan felt that the information she was sending from Paris would prove invaluable to the Allied armies in their preparation for an invasion of the Continent. An excerpt from one of her postcards to SOE reveals her cheerful state: ‘Thanks a lot! It’s grand working [with] you. The best moments I have had yet.’14 She changed her hair colour to disguise her appearance, purchased a bicycle so that she could remain mobile, and continued her transmissions to London.

  All through the summer Khan managed to stay one step ahead of the Gestapo. However, German counter-intelligence was operating in full force in Paris, and German soldiers filled the streets. Khan had several narrow escapes. One such incident occurred on the metro, when two German officers became suspicious of the suitcase Khan was carrying. The suitcase, of course, contained her radio, which she was forced to carry with her now that she was constantly on the move. However, she breezily told the two officers that the suitcase contained a cinematograph projector and even opened the case to show them what she was carrying! Thankfully, the officers did not recognise the contraption as a wireless transmitter. Khan’s nerve, which instructors at Beaulieu had questioned, was now serving her very well. She managed to elude the Germans for months, transmitting when she could and compiling a list of all of the agents who had survived the PROSPER arrests. However, the net around Khan was slowly closing in. German counter-intelligence officers were picking off her contacts one by one, and it became increasingly dangerous to meet with any of her fellow agents, as Khan could never be sure who might have been captured and forced to work for the Germans. In late September 1943, Khan had a meeting scheduled with another agent. The agent never showed up and Khan feared that he had been arrested. She shared her worries with a friend who worked in the Resistance, and together they decided to call the agent’s apartment to discover what had happened to him. The agent answered his phone, and tried to convince Khan to come to his apartment. Khan was suspicious, since she had never been to his apartment before, and insisted they meet in a more public place, on the corner of the Avenue Mac-Mahon and the Rue de Tilsitt. The agent agreed. Khan waited at the Arc de Triomphe where she had a full view of the meeting place. Her friend drove up and down the Avenue Mac-Mahon, observing the agent seated on a bench with several suspicious-looking men posted along the length of the block. After waiting approximately forty minutes, the agent and the suspicious-looking men all got into a car and left the meeting place together. Clearly, Khan had avoided an ambush that the agent, under German control, had attempted to set up.

  As a wireless operator, Khan’s biggest threat was from German radio-direction-finding devices. The Germans had identified her signal but Khan’s constant movements made her impossible to pin down. She would transmit briefly and then immediately travel to a new location. In an extract from an official statement, the Commandant of the Paris Gestapo, Hans Kieffer, noted, ‘I remember the English W/T operator, Madeleine … We were pursuing her for months and as we had a personal description of her we arranged for all stations to be watched. She had several addresses and worked very carefully.’15 German direction-finding technology, however, would not prove her undoing. Rather, in early autumn of 1943, Khan was betrayed when a woman contacted the Gestapo with an offer to ‘sell’ them Madeleine. The Gestapo was familiar with Khan’s code name and knew exactly how important the information that the woman was offering to sell them was. They purchased Khan’s address from the woman and, during the second week of October, Khan returned to her apartment to find a Gestapo officer waiting for her. Khan struggled with the officer, scratching and biting and putting up such resistance that he had to call in other officers to assist in bringing her in. The Gestapo confiscated her radio transmitter and a school copybook that she always carried with her, which contained all of her messages and security checks. Khan’s notebook violated SOE security instructions, which clearly stated that all codes needed to be committed to memory and never written down for someone to find. However, in her assignment instructions, it clearly states, ‘Be very careful in the filing of your messages.’16 It is believed that Khan simply misunderstood the meaning of the word filing: to file one’s messages meant to send or transmit; Khan obviously thought it meant to keep careful record of her transmissions. Because of this misunderstanding, all of Khan’s messages were carefully documented in her notebook. The notebook, in German hands, was to have tragic results.

  Khan was taken to German counter-intelligence headquarters at the infamous Avenue Foch, where she was initially interrogated by Ernest Vogt. She attempted escape less than an hour after being brought in. Demanding to be allowed to bathe, Khan threw a tantrum when she realised the guards were planning on keeping the door to the bathroom open. She made such a fuss that Vogt agreed to allow the door to be shut. Khan wasted no time, and quickly climbed out of the bathroom window. She was spotted on the ledge by Vogt, however, and he very quietly, so as not to startle her and cause her to fall, leaned out of the window and said, ‘Madeleine, don’t be silly. You will kill yourself. Think of your mother! Give me your hand!’17 Over the next five weeks, she was interrogated almost daily. The Germans urged her to play back her radio for them, but Khan was steadfast in her refusal. Hans Kieffer stated, ‘Madeleine, after her capture, showed great courage and we got no information whatsoever out of her.’18 Ultimately, the Germans did not need Khan to operate her radio for them. With her codebook in hand, the Germans were able to continue transmitting to London using Khan’s security checks. It wasn’t until early 1944 that SOE realised that Khan had been captured, and by that time the Germans’ use of Khan’s radio had had several tragic results, including the capture of several SOE agents who had been dropped into France at location spots transmitted by Khan’s radio. All of those agents were later executed.

  Khan made a second escape attempt from Av
enue Foch with two other male prisoners. She had made contact with a Frenchman, Colonel Leon Faye, by tapping out Morse code messages to him between their cells. The other man was Captain John Starr. Starr had been arrested by the Germans in July and, in an effort to save his own life, had shown himself willing to work with them. Starr knew Khan was at Avenue Foch and managed to slip a note under her door one evening. They arranged to keep up correspondence by leaving messages under the basin in the lavatory. The three devised a plan to escape, using a stolen screwdriver to loosen the bars on the skylights in the ceilings of their rooms. On the night of 25 November 1943, the three prisoners managed to remove the skylight bars and make their way onto the roof of 84 Avenue Foch. With their shoes hanging around their necks and their blankets (to be tied together to make a rope for their descent) in their hands, they made their way across the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. Suddenly, air-raid sirens went off. Anti-aircraft fire exploded around them and searchlights lit up the rooftops in response to an RAF attack. The three knew their escape would soon be discovered, as the cells were always checked during an air raid. As they attempted to climb down to the next roof, they saw the block was surrounded by Germans. The trio tried to take refuge in one of the buildings, but were soon apprehended and returned to Avenue Foch. The officer in charge demanded that Khan promise to make no more escape attempts. She was steadfast in her refusal (unlike Starr who was more than happy to comply) and was immediately sent to a German civil prison in Pforzheim. Labelled as a dangerous prisoner because of her lack of cooperation and her escape attempts, Khan was kept in chains throughout her incarceration. In a sworn statement, the Governor of Pforzheim prison, Wilhelm Krauss, explained, ‘I was told that she was to be treated in accordance with regulations for Nacht und Nebel prisoners [note: Nacht und Nebel means Night and Fog. It was the expression used for people who disappeared and, once in custody, were kept on the lowest rations, in solitary confinement, etc.] and moreover that she was to be chained hand and foot.’19 It was a degrading situation as she was unable to bathe or feed herself. For almost ten months she remained chained and in solitary confinement. A fellow prisoner at Pforzheim, Yolande Lagrave, befriended Khan and they, along with two other French girls, began to communicate by scratching messages on their food bowls. Lagrave recalled that Khan used the name Nora Baker (another one of her aliases) and that she was ‘very unhappy. Hands and feet were manacled, she was never taken out and I could hear that she was beaten up.’20 Khan’s messages would often ask the girls to think of her, as she was so unhappy, or for any updates they might have as to how the war was going. Her final message, scratched onto her bowl in September 1944, read simply, ‘I am leaving.’21

  On 11 September 1944, the Gestapo removed Khan from Pforzheim prison. Along with three other female prisoners – Yolande Beekman, Eliane Plewman and Madeleine Damerment – who had been collected from nearby Karlsruhe prison, Khan travelled by train to her next, and final, destination. They were told they were destined for a camp where they would do agricultural work, but, in fact, the order for their execution had already been given. The train ride was leisurely, and the women enjoyed the picturesque mountain scenery, and the chance to talk among themselves and smoke some English cigarettes. The train arrived at Dachau concentration camp, located in southern Germany, around midnight. Dachau was one of the most infamous of all Nazi concentration camps. Built in 1933, it was designated as an extermination camp in 1941, and throughout the war countless executions took place within its fences. What exactly happened on the morning of 13 September 1944 is the subject of some controversy. The official report, found in Khan’s personnel file, indicates that the women were given separate cells and then early the next morning all four were brought to a sandy spot in the camp yard. As the orders for their executions were read out, the women knelt in the sand, side by side. A bullet was put through the back of each woman’s neck and their bodies were quickly dispatched to the crematorium. However, there are several other accounts from individuals who were at Dachau, which say that Khan was ‘centred out’ for special treatment; they state that she was beaten and tortured the entire night of 12/13 September 1944 and was actually shot in her cell.

  Khan’s fate was initially unknown to SOE. After the war, Vera Atkins travelled to Europe attempting to track down what exactly had happened to the agents who had not returned. She originally thought, due to mistaken eyewitness accounts, that Khan had been one of the four women executed (and allegedly burned alive) at the Natzweiler camp on 6 July 1944. These women were Andrée Borrel, Vera Leigh, Diana Rowden and a woman who was described as being very petite with dark hair. From the descriptions given by individuals who had been at Natzweiler, including SOE agent Brian Stonehouse, Atkins was convinced that the fourth girl was Khan. A formal death notification was sent by the War Office to Khan’s family, and her brother Vilayat remembers receiving the notification, telling a family friend, ‘I’ve found out what happened to my sister. She was burned alive…’22 Khan’s mother was already devastated by the loss of her daughter, and Khan’s siblings kept the details of the death notification from her. Khan’s brother asked that all communication from the War Office be done through him, to spare his mother the anguish. Vilayat continued to search for details of his sister’s death, and soon became confused about the conflicting information he was receiving. He received a letter from Yolande Legrave, who said she had been incarcerated with Khan at Pforzheim prison and that Khan had left the prison for an unknown destination in September 1944. This meant that Khan was alive after her supposed 6 July 1944 execution. Khan’s brother pressed the War Office to look into these discrepancies, and Vera Atkins resumed her investigation. Poring over Pforzheim records, Atkins discovered that Khan had been at Pforzheim and had been transferred to Dachau in September 1944. Atkins confirmed that Khan was executed the morning after her arrival, and later established the identity of the petite, brown-haired woman who was executed at Natzweiler as Sonia Olschanezky, a courier for the JUGGLER circuit. Three years after Khan’s death, her true fate was finally known.

  Noor Inayat Khan received numerous medals for her bravery, including the George Cross (Britain’s highest civilian honour), Member of the British Empire and the French Croix de Guerre with gold star (France’s highest civilian award). The role she played as the sole link of communication with Paris was considered to be the most important and dangerous posting in France during the summer of 1943. She refused to abandon her post and ultimately paid with her life. Khan’s bravery and sacrifice have not been forgotten. Her name can be found on numerous memorial plaques: at Dachau, St Paul’s church (London), the RAF Memorial in Runnymede, and on the Memorial Gates to the Commonwealth Soldiers in Hyde Park. There is a small plaque bearing her name that can be found at the agricultural college in Grignon where she made her first transmissions, and a plaque outside her childhood home in Suresnes reads,

  Here lived Noor Inayat Khan 1914–44

  Called Madeleine in the Resistance

  Shot at Dachau

  Radio Operator for the Buckmaster network.23

  4

  Sonia Butt (1924– )

  Code Name: Blanche/Madeleine

  Many of the Special Operations Executive’s best undercover agents during the Second World War were Canadians. Frank Pickersgill, John ‘Ken’ Macalister, Gustave Bieler and Guy d’Artois, as well as numerous other Canadian men, served bravely as agents in enemy-occupied territory; some, including Pickersgill, Macalister and Bieler, paid with their lives. However, Canada’s only claim to a female undercover agent comes through marriage. War bride Sonia Butt came to Canada in 1946 with her husband, fellow SOE agent Guy d’Artois. She brought with her a fascinating story about her exploits as one of the youngest female SOE operatives ever sent into Occupied France.

  Sonia (who changed the spelling of her name to Sonya in her twenties) was a beautiful girl and the daughter of a Royal Air Force (RAF) group captain. She was born at Eastchurch, Kent, on 14 May 1924,
and her parents separated when Sonia was two years old. She spent much of her childhood in France, being educated in private schools while her father was working in North Africa. Sixteen-year-old Sonia was in the middle of her school term when Germany launched its attack against France, sending its tanks tearing through the Ardennes Forest. Alone, as her mother was visiting Britain, and without a passport (it was common during this time for children to be registered on their parents’ passport), Sonia found herself in an extremely difficult situation. Without proper identification or a passport, leaving France and entering Britain seemed almost impossible. With the German advance showing no sign of slowing down, Sonia decided she needed to take action to protect herself. Demonstrating incredible nerve, Sonia borrowed the money for her travelling expenses from her headmistress, and travelled, on her own, to Calais, where British refugees were departing for Britain. Using all of her charm she managed to talk her way past the French emigration authorities and managed to get aboard one of the last passenger ships that was able to depart for Britain. Alone, Sonia made the dangerous voyage across the English Channel and pleaded with British immigration authorities to let her into the country. With no one at the port to meet her, Sonia borrowed some more money, this time from a family friend, and was eventually able to board a train which allowed her to reunite with her mother. Obviously, even at the tender age of sixteen, Sonia was an extremely resourceful young woman. Unfortunately, being reunited with her family did not mean that Sonia had escaped the German danger. After her arrival, she experienced first-hand the horrors of war. The Battle of Britain raged over British skies for almost a year as the German Luftwaffe attempted to bomb the British into submission. Originally the bombing raids focused on airfields, factories and naval yards but, when this failed to make a dent in British resolve, the Germans soon started selecting civilian targets. Hundreds of RAF pilots lost their lives defending the skies over Britain, and Sonia, as a civilian, feared not only for her own safety but also for that of her father.