Sarah Helm

by Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins;the Missing Agents of WWII

  Also with the mail came a letter from Nora to her mother and one to Vera:

  Dear Miss Atkins, (excuse pencil) your bird has brought me luck. I remember you so often. You cheered me up so sweetly before I left—lots of things have happened and I haven't been able to settle down properly. Still my contacts have started to be regular and I am awfully happy. The news is marvellous and I hope we shall soon be celebrating. In fact, I owe you a date. Lots of love, Yours Nora.

  The “marvellous” news was the Allied invasion of Sicily and the fall of Mussolini.

  3.

  Thanks from the Gestapo

  There was a large empty hangar. The planes were out over on the tarmac. It was night, and we were lit up only by the moonlight.” Yvonne Baseden was describing flying off to France from Tempsford airbase, near Cambridge, in March 1944. Just twenty-one, she was one of the youngest SOE women to be dropped by parachute. As we spoke in her flat in Putney, a purple balloon bobbing above her said, “Happy Eightieth Birthday.” On the wall was a photograph of a female silhouette descending by parachute against a night sky.

  “Who was in the hangar?” I asked Yvonne.

  “When I think back, I can see only the two of us: Vera and me. I can see Vera sitting at the desk and I was standing in front. I was in my jumping suit. I can just picture her in the gloom. I think she was smoking. Checking things off on the list. She wasn't saying anything exactly, but one was conscious that if there was anything one wanted to ask or say, she was there. I remember being told how much money to put in my jumping suit so I didn't have anything to carry in my hands—things like that. And I had a feeling that she was thinking; that she wanted to say something. It was as if she didn't want to miss a single thing. You felt she was involved.

  “She was the link, you see. It was Vera we would turn to in those last few weeks. She was the last link, you might say. Because we had cut off from our own families—I mean, automatically, during our training, we had cut off from the outer world.

  “And one was physically extremely fit, and all one could think of was the mission. Because you had only just heard about your mission. In a sense, you see, your life had been taken apart and rebuilt.”

  She paused. “And Vera was in control of things. As a mother might be, I suppose. But I wouldn't have called her exactly motherly. She had a lot of responsibilities. And she was already in the picture as to who your mother was and who your father was. I knew she would remain in contact with my parents in a sort of distant way.”

  “In the hangar, to what extent do you think Vera was feeling the stress?”

  “I am sure she was, quite a lot. I think she was trying to put us at ease by looking herself at ease, as if it was something which a lot of people were doing and that it was nothing out of the ordinary. I think she was trying to shoulder the stress that everyone might be feeling. She knew that she had to keep everything moving along, under control. And for us, you see, she was the remaining link as we walked out too. And well, for me as well, she was the first person I saw when I came back.”

  Yvonne talked for some time longer, each word carefully chosen from memories that were deeply scarred. At the end her eyes welled up with tears.

  By the autumn of 1943 Vera was spending more and more of her time at airfields, seeing agents off on missions to France, a number of them women. Since the Prosper disaster of the summer, she had grown in stature within F Section. Throughout the crisis Vera's support for Buck-master had never wavered, and though she still held junior rank, he no longer addressed her as “Miss Atkins” but always as “Vera.” The two were nearly always together in the signals room or at Orchard Court; if not, they would be walking through the Ops room or sharing a late evening meal in the SOE canteen.

  Relations between them were not always smooth. As Buckmaster noted on Vera's personal file, she was “somewhat disinclined to accept instructions without argument. Requires handling.” For the most part, though—whether it was to compose an aide-mémoire or to choose a sabotage target—Buckmaster found that Vera was now the most reliable person to consult. After the losses of the summer Bomber Command had threatened to withdraw flights from SOE, using the Prosper collapse as yet further proof that planes and pilots were being wasted making drops to an ineffective resistance. Colin Gubbins, however, had fought back, defending F Section and exhorting Buckmaster in the strongest terms to prove Bomber Command and other critics of SOE wrong.

  Although the date of D-Day was still a closely guarded secret, all the signs at this time were that it would take place sometime in the first half of 1944. As the invasion plans gathered pace, Buckmaster was left in no doubt of the central role that Gubbins expected F Section to play. He was also left in no doubt that, in order to succeed in its D-Day role, the section must brace itself for the sacrifice of very high numbers of agents.

  “Strategically France is by far the most important country in the Western Theatre of War,” declared Gubbins, and the morale of the resistance “is a vital factor in our success.” He went on: “I think therefore that SOE should regard this theatre as one in which the suffering of heavy casualties is inevitable. But will yield the highest possible dividend. I would therefore increase to the maximum possible peak SOE aid to the French field from now on and so maintain it until D-Day.” The instruction called for the hiring, training, and dispatching of new agents to France as fast as possible, whatever the risks. As Buckmaster strove to achieve these aims, nobody gave him more support than Vera did.

  The closing months of 1943, however, were not easy for F Section, and there were many new alarms. Several highly valued agents simply vanished, among them an expert in explosives who disappeared on his way to Pickersgill and Macalister's Archdeacon circuit in the Ardennes.

  Wireless operators had also caused new fears. Extra security measures, agreed after the loss of Prosper, had brought in stricter rules on composing messages. For example, in addition to using his bluff check and true check, an operator named Marcel Rousset was instructed to sign off “adiós” or “salut” if all was well, and “love and kisses” if he was caught. Over a nerve-racking weekend in Baker Street in September, Rousset sent a series of strange messages that suggested that he had forgotten his new rules. Buckmaster, without any senior staff to consult, anxiously showed the messages to the duty secretary, Nancy Fraser-Campbell, and asked for her advice, but the messages soon reverted to normal and fears were dispelled.

  A technique called “electronic fingerprinting,” by which a wireless operator's “fist” could be electronically recorded by a machine before departure, had also been introduced. This “fingerprint” allowed London to compare a message sent later from the field with the “fingerprint” that the agent left behind. But often there was little time to make such checks, because of the volume of F Section activity in the field. Among operations carried out around this time was the bombing of the Miche-lin factory at Clermont-Ferrand, set up by one of Buckmaster s most trusted organisers, Maurice Southgate, alias Hector, with the assistance of his resourceful courier, Pearl Witherington. At the same time, another of F's best men, Francis Cammaerts, who had built up the highly successful Jockey network in the southeast, was blowing up railway locomotives about to be taken to Germany.

  It was Nora Inayat Khan who caused the most regular alarms in Baker Street during the autumn of 1943. In early October a message had come in saying an informant, unknown in London, called Sonia had reported: “Madeleine had an accident and in hospital,” which clearly meant “burned,” or infiltrated, if not captured. Sonia's reliability was never confirmed and the anxiety sparked by her warning then passed, until, in November, somebody drew attention to a report from Paris that said that nobody in the field had set eyes on Nora for nearly two months. Buck-master held his nerve, saying she must be sensibly lying low. The fact that no handwritten letters had come from Nora since September was, in Buckmaster's view, another sign of her new concern for security. Her latest request to London for a new letterbox had been p
roperly encoded and sent by wireless message. The message detailing these changes had come in from Nurse at 1415 GMT on October 17:

  MY CACHETTE UNSAFE. NEW ADDRESS BELLIARD RPT BELLIARD 157 RUE VERCINGETORIX RPT VERCINGETORIX PARIS PASSWORD DE PART DE MONSIEUR DE RUAL RPT DE RUAL STOP. THIS PERFECTLY SAFE. TRUE CHECK PRESENT. BLUFF CHECK OMITTED GOODBYE.

  Anxieties about Nora were therefore once again dispelled until, at Christmas, she caused further jitters in F Section. This time the operations officer, Gerry Morel, was letting it be known that he was not happy about Nora's fist. A respected figure, and one of the few Baker Street staff who had experience in the field, Morel was not a man to voice concerns lightly. Vera offered a solution: to send a test message for Nora containing questions of a personal nature that only she could answer. The message was designed to settle the doubts about Nora once and for all. If the questions were wrongly answered, it would have to be accepted that she was in German hands. Although slow in coming, the answers were in Vera's view quite satisfactory, and Buckmaster's confidence was immediately restored.

  Cheering Christmas messages from other agents had also lifted his spirits, among them one from Frank Pickersgill. Buckmaster had been warned by Bodington back in August that Pickersgill's Archdeacon circuit “must be considered lost,” but he was now more convinced than ever that Bodington was wrong.

  Kay Gimpel (née Moore), who worked for another branch of SOE, told me she saw in a flash that Pickersgill's Christmas message meant he was caught, but she never dreamed of telling Buckmaster. Like Pickersgill, Gimpel was a French Canadian and the two had long been friends. “He was a brilliant, charming boy,” she said. “Tall and gangly with a very sharp wit.” Before his mission Pickersgill and John Macalister, who was a Rhodes scholar, used to spend time at Kay's house at 54a Walton Street. “We all yacked a lot, and Frank loved to go off and make lots of tea.”

  Kay used to travel into work on the same bus as Buckmaster, who one day in December 1943 sat down next to her and asked if she could think of a Christmas message for Frank. “I said tell him the samovar is still bubbling at 54a.” The reply came back a few days later: “Thank you for your message.”

  “It was an awful moment,” said Kay. “If he was all right, I knew he would have said something personal and secret to our little group.”

  Why had she not told Buckmaster of her fears?

  “He would not have listened to somebody like me. I was junior in rank.”

  In January 1944 there were new crises to face. One agent who had been held briefly by the Gestapo at their Paris headquarters in Avenue Foch claimed that Prosper was cooperating with a German named Boemelburg and with another named Kieffer. Prosper was said to have plotted a large map for the Gestapo showing F Section circuits. “Total provocation. Obviously untrue,” noted Buckmaster.

  Allegations of treachery against Henri Déricourt, first made the previous summer, had also spread. So persistent were the accusations against the air movements officer that in February 1944 Buckmaster was obliged by MI5 and SOE's own security directorate to recall him for investigation. Déricourt flew back to England on the night of February 8–9, bringing with him his wife, Jeanne. He protested his innocence and was reassured by Buckmaster, who told him he had nothing to fear from the charges and put him up in the Savoy.

  Déricourt had won Buckmaster s trust from the moment they first met. The thirty-five-year-old from Château-Thierry, birthplace of La Fontaine (whose fables he loved to cite), had an easy manner, a quiet confidence, and a muscular physique, with fair hair curling into a quiff. His charms had impressed not only Buckmaster and most in F Section but also the pilots of “Moon Squadron.” The self-educated son of a postman, he had been drawn to the thrill of flying from a young age, going on to organise aerial events before training as a commercial pilot. In 1942 Déricourt had been promised a job by British Overseas Airways, but when offered a role with SOE, he had readily accepted this instead.

  MI5, who checked the Frenchman's history, warned Buckmaster at the time that they were “unable to guarantee his reliability.” The reason they gave was that, after he was first offered the job with British Overseas Airways, Déricourt had delayed coming to England, spending several more weeks in France. During this time “he would have been a likely subject for German attention,” cautioned MI5, but Buckmaster saw nothing to fear.

  As Déricourt's interrogation began in February 1944, Buckmaster conceded that, should the allegations against the air movements officer prove true, every agent landed in France by air over the previous ten months, and every agent brought back to England, would be contaminated. But Buckmaster refused to believe the allegations would ever be proven and declared it an “SOE war objective” to clear Déricourt's name.

  Throughout this time Vera had remained as loyal and diligent as ever, and Buckmaster recorded in another effusive note: “An extremely able, hard working, capable and loyal officer. Nothing is too much trouble for her.” While Buckmaster's dependency on Vera was by now quite evident, however, few could have been aware just how dependent she was on him, particularly at the turn of the year. In January and February 1944 small notices appeared in the personal columns of the Kensington News and West London Times, and Buckmaster was probably the only one of Vera's colleagues to be aware of them. “Notice is Hereby GIVEN that Vera May Atkins (otherwise Rosenberg) of 725 Nell Gwynne House, Sloane Avenue, SW3 in the County of London, Spinster, is applying to the Home Secretary for Naturalisation,” read the announcement.

  Vera's first application for naturalisation as a British citizen had been made in February 1942 and was rejected. No reason was given, although, as Buckmaster was well aware, senior figures in SOE's security directorate were suspicious of her Romanian and Jewish origins. So to ensure that her application was not blocked again, Buckmaster himself was this time backing Vera's request for naturalisation.

  A former SOE staff officer told me he recalled “a stink” and “a smell” in the office when Vera first joined SOE. The same person recalled a further “stink” when Vera first applied for naturalisation in 1942. When I asked him the reason for the “stink,” the man said: “Something in her background.” He then thought for a moment and added: “I am not anti-Semitic but I am not very keen on Jews. They are always touching and pawing one, and the fleshy nose and all this flesh at the back of the neck,” and he then reached for the back of his neck.

  Another officer, Anghais Fyffe, employed in SOE's security directorate, gave an even more graphic account of the prejudice Vera faced from anti-Semitic officers at the most senior levels of SOE. One day in December 1942 Major General John Lakin, then head of the security directorate, came to him and said: “Morning, Fyffe.” Fyffe replied: “Morning, sir.” Lakin then asked: “Have you heard of a woman called Rosenberg?” and the conversation continued until he said: “That damn fair-haired Romanian Jewess has applied to be naturalised. I've put a stop to it.”

  In February 1944 Vera's renewed application for naturalisation came up for decision by the Home Office, and she hoped that a long letter from Maurice Buckmaster backing her claim would bring success this time. Buckmaster, whose second wife was part Jewish, did not tolerate anti-Semitism in his section and openly criticised anti-Jewish prejudice in other sections when he encountered it. Many of F Section's most motivated agents were themselves Jewish exiles.

  Furthermore, Vera's lack of British nationality had been inconvenient to Buckmaster in the office, not least because her origins had to be kept strictly secret in case SOE's detractors got to hear. MI6, always ready to do SOE down, might well have made much of the fact that F Section's intelligence officer was an enemy alien, as might de Gaulle's fractious Free French. It was an SOE rule that, for reasons of security, only British subjects by birth should be employed in HQ.

  By February 1944 Vera's nationality had become more than inconvenient: it was now standing in the way of Buckmaster's D-Day plans. As he told the Home Office in his letter supporting her application, V
era had been chosen to run a forward station in France to coordinate post-D-Day operations. “If Miss Atkins goes overseas as a Roumanian subject we fear that she will be both obtrusive and much restricted in her movements.”

  Buckmaster's letter explained: “In as large a city as London we hope that the true nationality of Miss Atkins might not be known, but in any move overseas where papers will have to be shown such a fact could not be concealed. This consideration is one of great delicacy, but one of tremendous importance if enemy penetration is to be successfully resisted.”

  On February 25 Vera was interviewed at the Home Office, where she said: “It is essential that many of the people whom I meet should not know that I am a Roumanian.” The fact she was not British continued to be “a great hindrance,” she told her interviewer, and “a point has now come in the work she is doing when it would present even greater difficulties.”

  The officer wrote: “Miss Atkins impressed me as being a woman of intelligence and discretion, well able to keep her own counsel” and finally added: “Nothing detrimental recorded at New Scotland Yard.”

  During the month of February SOE's air operations over France suddenly expanded at a rapid pace. Churchill himself had given orders that the arming of the resistance was now a priority, and no longer could the RAF hold back the supply of planes for F Section drops. Among the F Section agents to be dropped by parachute in February was a team of three led by France Antelme, who had so luckily escaped the Prosper roundup. A man who, according to his instructors, had “plenty of guts, stalks well and uses his head” was evidently wasted in Baker Street, and Buckmaster wanted him back on the ground to fulfil his pivotal role of overseeing supply lines for the Allied forces after D-Day.