Madame Fourcade's Secret War

by Lynne Olson

  After the convoy had gone, she again forced her head through the bars, an effort even more excruciating than before. With her body slick with perspiration, she squeezed one shoulder through, then her right leg. The most searing pain came when she began easing her displaced hip through; as she worked at it, she told herself that the agony of torture would be far worse than what she was enduring now.

  Miraculously she succeeded and found herself out on the ledge, with her dress still gripped between her teeth. As she jumped to the ground, the soft thud of her feet alerted the sentry, who clicked on his flashlight and shouted, “Who’s there?” She lay flat, and the beam of the flashlight passed above her. When the sentry finally turned it off and moved away, she wrapped her dress around her neck and scuttled on her knees, like a crab, across the street.

  On the other side, she jumped up, put on her dress, and ran off, stumbling in the darkness. After a few minutes, she spied a cemetery that was dotted with white family mausoleums, some as big as chapels. There she could hide for a moment and figure out what to do next. She found a crypt with a broken door and crept inside. Sinking down to rest, she examined the damage to her body from the escape: her face was bruised and bloodied, her knees badly skinned, and the soles of her bare feet shredded from running through brambles and on the stony streets.

  She knew she couldn’t stay there for more than a few minutes. She had to reach des Isnards’s farm no later than seven, to stop him from going to her flat in Aix and walking into the Gestapo trap. But first she had to thwart the efforts of the German searchers and dogs that soon would be on her trail. Remembering a book she had read as a child about an escaping officer who had eluded search dogs by washing off his scent in a stream, she found a trickle of a creek nearby and bathed her injured face, knees, hands, and feet. As she did so, she tried to remember how to get to des Isnards’s farm.

  She was appalled when she realized that to reach the road leading to the farm, she would have to retrace her steps through town, past the barracks from which she had just escaped. And she had to do so as soon as possible. Dawn was breaking, and before long, the guards would open the door to her cell and find her missing.

  Trembling with fear and pain, she walked back the way she had come. Everything was quiet in the golden early-morning light, and although a few passersby looked at her curiously, the sentry in front of the barracks paid her little heed. But just a few minutes later, as she turned onto the road leading to des Isnards’s farm, she heard in the distance the sounds she had feared: the barking of dogs and the unearthly din of sirens. They had discovered her escape.

  Mechanically, she kept walking as her mind scrambled to come up with a way to dodge the roadblock that would soon be set up on this road, as well as on all the others leading out of Aix. Leaving the road, she headed into the field that stretched beside it, where a number of old peasant women were gleaning stray ears of corn left on the ground from the previous harvest. Marie-Madeleine joined them, stooping over and picking up an ear or two as, from the corner of her eye, she saw soldiers halting foot and motor traffic on the road and checking papers. None of them paid attention to the women in the field.

  Marie-Madeleine continued gleaning for several more minutes—until the soldiers and roadblock were well in the distance. Joining the road again, she finally found des Isnards’s farmhouse. The front door was unlocked, and Marie-Madeleine limped inside. As she did, she called out the names of des Isnards and his wife. She opened their bedroom door, and they sprang from their bed, their eyes wide with surprise. “I’ve just escaped,” she said. “I’ve saved your lives.”

  And then she collapsed.

  Within an hour after Fourcade’s arrival at the farmhouse, she and the des Isnards family were gone. Putting two-year-old Catherine on the back of her bicycle, the pregnant Marie-Solange cycled about twenty miles to a château owned by members of her husband’s family north of Aix-en-Provence, where she and Catherine stayed for the rest of the war. Helen des Isnards, meanwhile, whisked Fourcade off to a hideout he shared with other local resistance groups in the hills near Aix.

  According to an Alliance operative who brought her a change of clothes, the Germans were rampaging through Aix in a door-to-door search for her and des Isnards, but thus far his headquarters had not been touched and all his agents were in hiding. Des Isnards’s radio operator, Michel Lévêque, brought his transmitter to the hideout, where Fourcade and des Isnards would stay a day or two to give her a little time to recover from her ordeal. Then they would move on to a maquis camp in the foothills of Mount Victoire, the limestone peak overlooking Aix.

  After what she’d been through, Fourcade couldn’t bear the thought of being confined indoors, and she insisted on sleeping outside. Lookouts were posted, with machine guns at the ready, and Fourcade, overcome with exhaustion, slept in the garden until dawn.

  MARIE-MADELEINE FOURCADE AFTER HER ESCAPE FROM JAIL. NOTE THE ABRASIONS AND BRUISES ON HER FACE AND NECK.

  Later that day, Lévêque set up his radio outside, hitching his aerial to a cypress tree. Among the messages he transmitted to London were an account by Fourcade of her arrest and escape and an appeal from her for an immediate parachute drop for des Isnards, his agents, and the maquis. As Lévêque worked, a stream of operatives came and went, bringing food, supplies, and news of the manhunt for the two fugitives. It was too dangerous to remain where they were, des Isnards decided. Even though Fourcade’s lacerated feet were still raw, he, she, and another agent would hike that night to the maquis camp, some twelve miles away.

  Over the previous few months, the maquis had become a major force in the French resistance. Most of them were young Frenchmen who had left their homes and gone underground to avoid being sent to Germany as forced laborers. But the maquis with whom des Isnards cooperated were mostly Spaniards who had fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War and had fled to France after General Franco’s fascist forces took control of the country in 1939.

  Late that evening, Fourcade and her two companions, carrying bags and weapons, set out for the camp. For her, the hike, which was uphill and took all night, was both painful and terrifying. At the slightest sound, the three took cover in the underbrush bordering the rock-strewn road. Such interruptions were frequent, as a seemingly endless parade of German patrol vehicles passed by. Fourcade found it increasingly difficult to walk, and des Isnards and the other agent had to help carry her.

  As they approached the camp at daybreak, she collapsed, and a mule-driven cart was summoned to take her the rest of the way. The camp was well protected: Sentries stood guard in a stand of juniper trees on a small bluff overlooking the road, and the camp itself was tucked away in a clearing surrounded by dense thickets of underbrush. Thanks to des Isnards and Alliance, the maquis, as well as other resistance groups in the area, were well supplied with weapons, other military gear, and food.

  In a corner of the clearing, Lévêque set up his battery-powered transmitter, with its aerial wrapped around a pine tree. Fourcade immediately set to work encoding the messages that continued flooding in from Alliance sectors around the country, containing intelligence about subjects ranging from the movement of German units on the Normandy front to the results of Allied bombing raids.

  Fourcade loved everything about her days at the maquis camp, particularly the experience of working and sleeping outdoors in the cool, drier air of La Victoire’s foothills. At night, she lay on her back in the clearing and gazed up at the stars in the brilliantly clear sky, remembering how, as a child in China, she and her father had done the same thing—she with her head on his chest as he pointed out the various constellations.

  She particularly enjoyed the camaraderie of the maquis, and one night she joined several of them around a small brushwood fire. A member of the group asked about her escape and how she came up with the idea of slipping through the bars of her cell. She told them about the example of the I
ndochinese robbers and noted how surprised she was that one of the gaps between the bars was actually wide enough for her to force her head through.

  One of the maquis laughed. He was a mason, he said, and, having installed bars in many prison cells, he knew how she was able to escape. While the cement was still wet and after prison officials had checked the gap between the bars, he would push one of them an inch or two to widen the gap. That was the bar that allowed her head to go through, he said. He and his fellow masons called it “the bar of freedom.”

  After more than a week in this idyllic setting, Marie-Madeleine decided that with her feet almost completely healed, it was time to move on to Paris. She dyed her hair yet again and had a new photograph taken. Armed with a new name and forged identity papers, she left the camp on July 29, riding pillion on a motorcycle behind one of the maquis, her arms clasped tightly around his leather-jacketed middle.

  He took her to Marseille, where she was met by Georges Lamarque and some of his Druids. They gave her a disguise for the next part of her journey—a full set of mourning regalia, including a black dress and woolen coat, hat with a black crepe veil, black stockings, and patent leather shoes. Even though the idea of wearing heavy black clothing in the July heat was unappealing, to put it mildly, Marie-Madeleine accepted the role of grieving widow and played it to the hilt when she boarded the train to Paris that night. Accompanying her were Lamarque and another of her regional chiefs, Henri Battu.

  As a result of frequent air raid alerts, the tortuous journey took two days. A few miles outside Paris, the tracks had been destroyed by an Allied air raid and the train could go no farther. Lamarque and Battu flagged down a truck loaded with sacks of charcoal to take them the rest of the way. Marie-Madeleine was sitting atop the charcoal sacks when she caught her first glimpse of Paris, after more than a year away.

  It was early August 1944, and Paris was gripped by a feverish energy. Allied troops, after a long, bloody summer of slogging across Normandy’s hedgerow country, had finally broken through and were now slicing through the heart of France. Rumors had it that they were closing in on Paris, with liberation only a matter of days away.

  After being taken to an apartment near the Eiffel Tower, Fourcade began recovering her former self. There were no more drab, dour disguises: If she was going to live in Paris, she had to look the part of a chic Parisienne. After having her hair newly colored and styled at a proper salon, she bought an elegant beige Hermès suit and a large rectangular shoulder bag that was currently in fashion.

  Within days of her return, Fourcade tracked down Jean Sainteny, who was hiding out in an apartment in the middle of the city. She told him that he was still in danger and that MI6 wanted him in London as soon as possible. She offered to have him evacuated by sea or Lysander. Sainteny suggested another possibility—crossing enemy lines to join the Allied forces closing in on Paris, who would then help him get to Britain.

  JEAN SAINTENY

  When she asked him how he planned to do that, he replied, “By motorcycle.” His friend Bernard de Billy—the owner of a popular bar near the Arc de Triomphe and a part-time Alliance operative—had offered to take him. But he did not want to travel empty-handed; he would carry with him the most vital of the latest Alliance intelligence reports from around the country, as well as information for the Allies regarding German activity and positions in Paris itself.

  Under Fourcade’s direction, Alliance operatives in and around the city put together reports about the German presence there. Contrary to rumors that the Germans were preparing for a last-ditch stand, it appeared that the defensive measures they were taking were meant only as a maneuver to allow a massive retreat by their troops from north and central France. For days, entire Wehrmacht units had marched through or near Paris on their way east, requisitioning every kind of vehicle they could lay their hands on, from trucks to farm wagons to bicycles.

  On August 16, the intrepid Sainteny set out on the back of Bernard de Billy’s motorcycle, its saddlebags stuffed with material about the headlong German flight from Paris as well as a raft of other intelligence. Disguised as telephone engineers, the two made it to Le Mans, 130 miles to the southwest of Paris, where General George Patton’s Third Army had established its temporary headquarters. There Sainteny turned over to Patton’s intelligence chief the information that Alliance agents had collected, as well as his own observations about the state of German defenses between the capital and Le Mans. At Sainteny’s request, the radio operator at Patton’s headquarters passed on Fourcade’s other intelligence reports to MI6.

  Believing that Sainteny was now safely ensconced in London, Fourcade was startled when he called her from a Paris café two days later. Why was he back in the capital? Didn’t he know how dangerous that was? Interrupting her scolding, Sainteny said the Americans had been so impressed with the intelligence he had brought that they wanted additional information, as detailed and specific as possible. They particularly needed to know which, if any, of Paris’s bridges had been mined and more about German troop concentrations in the Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes.

  Once again, Alliance agents set to work to gather the details. Only the day before, most high-level German civilian officials, including the chiefs of the SD and Gestapo, had fled the city, along with a bevy of monocled generals. The bulk of the German forces stationed in and around Paris pulled out, too. Fourcade was informed that General Dietrich von Choltitz, the German commander of Paris, had pledged to the Swedish consul Raoul Nordling that he would do everything possible to save it from damage and destruction.

  She told Sainteny that the Germans apparently had only one aim—to retreat to the Rhine and save what they could. The German troops crossing the capital needed the Paris bridges because those farther downstream had been destroyed. The Allies could use them to enter Paris. But, she added, they must do so as quickly as possible because Communist members of the resistance, who had become the chief rivals of de Gaulle in the ongoing struggle for postwar control of France, had set in motion an uprising against German forces still in the city. Its purpose was to cement the Communists’ authority and power before de Gaulle could return to Paris.

  In mid-August, a series of Communist-inspired strikes had been launched in the capital; railway men, police officers, and postal and telegraph workers, among others, walked off their jobs. On the day Sainteny called Fourcade from the café, small bands of resistance fighters throughout Paris, most of them Communists, had begun to attack German patrols.

  Fearful that internal French political divisions would result in an unnecessary bloodbath, Fourcade urged Sainteny to impress on Patton and his generals the importance of immediate action to liberate Paris. On August 20, he set off through enemy lines, again on the back of Bernard de Billy’s motorcycle.

  This trip, however, was considerably more eventful than the first. Some forty miles from the capital, four gun-carrying German sentries standing at the side of the road ordered Billy to stop. After he did so, he and Sainteny were led to a small house that doubled as a sentry post. The two men showed their papers and explained that they were telephone engineers who’d been sent to repair phone lines damaged in a recent battle. Apparently unsure what to do with them, the Germans rummaged through their bags, missing an intelligence report hidden in the pocket of a pair of Sainteny’s trousers. Then the soldiers locked the two in the house while they went to confer with senior officers. The motorcycle was left outside. As soon as the four were out of sight, Sainteny and Billy broke a window, scrambled through it, and hopped on the motorcycle. By early evening, they were back at Patton’s headquarters.

  On August 25, the Second French Armored Division, part of Patton’s Third Army, entered Paris.

  * * *

  —

  MARIE-MADELEINE FOURCADE WAS NOT in the capital for the delirious celebrations that followed. A few days earlier, MI6 had asked her to send patrols t
o northeastern France to scout out information about German positions for the Third Army as it continued its dash toward the German border. Its next major objective was to liberate the eastern French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, which had been claimed by the Reich as German territory at the beginning of the war.

  In early August, Marie-Madeleine had rejected an appeal from Kenneth Cohen to return to London by Lysander during the next full moon. She would not leave France until it had been fully liberated, she told him. Now she decided to take personal charge of the final patrols. With Paris and much of western France now free, she did not think it right to assign operatives who had gambled with their lives for years to this new mission. She would send only those who volunteered, herself among them.

  Marie-Madeleine had another, more personal reason for assuming responsibility for these last reconnaissance operations: The more intelligence she and her agents could supply to the Allied forces, the sooner the troops could cross the German border and, with any luck, save the lives of Faye, Rodriguez, and the hundreds of other captured Alliance operatives who she hoped were still alive in German prisons and concentration camps.

  Georges Lamarque volunteered to take charge of the area around Nancy, the capital of Lorraine, while Marie-Madeleine headed toward Strasbourg, the capital of Alsace. As her deputy, she chose Pierre Noal, a young doctor who, although a fairly recent recruit, had already distinguished himself with his toughness and daring.

  Carrying a new identity card as a secretary/nurse named Marie-Suzanne Imbert, Marie-Madeleine and Noal borrowed a Red Cross ambulance and, with a radio transmitter hidden under blankets in the back, drove it east through German roadblocks. At every stop, they told the guards that they were French collaborators traveling with the fleeing troops to aid the wounded—a story that won them plaudits and permission to continue.