Madame Fourcade's Secret War

by Lynne Olson

  CHAPTER 15: A GENERAL ESCAPES

  “must be given no role”: Lynne Olson, Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Finest, Darkest Hour (New York: Random House, 2010), 220.

  “nothing must stand in the way”: Ibid.

  “idiotically self important”: Schoenbrun, Loc. 7302.

  CHAPTER 16: CAPTURED

  “Dirty Boche!”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 166.

  “I only hoped”: Ibid., 301.

  “I resume my place”: Colin Smith, England’s Last War Against France: Fighting Vichy 1940–1942 (London: Phoenix, 2010), 367.

  “As I understand it”: Ibid.

  “Ike had never been”: Ibid.

  “Then I shall return”: Ibid., 373.

  “In a second”: Boutron, 295.

  “You were to come”: Ibid., 296.

  “a low, elongated mass”: Ibid., 302.

  “a bunch of ordinary”: Ibid.

  “I was going”: Ibid., 303.

  “Be careful”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 172.

  “The whole police”: Ibid., 175.

  “No! Don’t move!”: Ibid., 312.

  CHAPTER 17: OPERATION ATTILA

  “For my part”: Lacouture, 349.

  “hit me like a bomb”: Boutron, 306.

  “Between Giraud and de Gaulle”: Harold Nicolson, The War Years: Diaries and Letters, 1939–1945 (New York: Atheneum, 1967), 294.

  “looked terribly British”: Monique Bontinck Rodriguez, unpublished manuscript.

  “I was looking”: Rodriguez, 14.

  “constant good humor”: Anthony and Barbara Bertram, eds., Jerome Bertram, The Secret of Bignor Manor (Lulu Press, 2014), 134.

  CHAPTER 18: “DOWN GO THE U-BOATS”

  “A word from us to London”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 194.

  “moving them”: Philip Kaplan, Grey Wolves: U-Boat War 1939–1945 (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2014), 18.

  “It was a great mistake”: Jonathan Dimbleby, The Battle of the Atlantic: How the Allies Won the War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 116.

  “From an operational”: Daniel V. Gallery, U-505 (San Francisco: Lucknow Books, 2016), Loc. 2901 (Kindle edition).

  “In Breton eyes”: Jean-Luc Bannalec, Death in Brittany (New York: Minotaur Books, 2014), 30.

  CHAPTER 19: ON THE RUN

  “the terrible year”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 189.

  “If there had been any bridle”: Philippe de Vomécourt, An Army of Amateurs (New York: Doubleday, 1961), 126.

  “almost to a man, thugs on the make”: Ibid., 108.

  “as if it had been preserved”: Martin Walker, The Resistance Man: A Mystery of the French Countryside (New York: Vintage, 2015), 173.

  “I refuse to persecute”: Jean Philippe, Association l’Alliance, reseaualliance.e-monsite.com/​pages/​biographie-des-membres/​philippe-jean.html.

  “we marched off”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 206.

  “have a hard time”: Ted Morgan, An Uncertain Hour: The French, the Germans, the Jews, and the City of Lyon, 1940–1945 (New York: Arbor House, 1990), 124.

  “For a clandestine”: Jean Overton Fuller, The German Penetration of SOE: France 1941–1944 (Maidstone, UK: George Mann Books, 1996), 31.

  “You forget”: Cointet, 203.

  CHAPTER 20: THE TINDERBOX OF LYON

  “a citadel of old money”: Morgan, An Uncertain Hour, 19.

  “You couldn’t go”: Douglas Porch, The French Secret Services: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995), 236.

  “at me with his”: “Klaus Barbie: Women Testify of Torture,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 23, 1987.

  “In my network”: Cointet, 209–10.

  “Have they gone?”: Schoenbrun, Loc. 425.

  “I had always thought”: Ibid.

  “Marie-Madeleine, there’s”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 226.

  “My son came through”: Ibid., 232.

  “Last Sunday”: Jeffery, Loc. 8415.

  “had been more”: Ibid., Loc. 8432.

  “Act as if”: Rodriguez, 103.

  “Of course”: Ibid., 104.

  “the blood flowed”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 233.

  “My guards burst into”: Monique Bontinck Rodriguez, unpublished manuscript.

  CHAPTER 21: HIGH ANXIETY

  “forbidding as fortified”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 238.

  “They were on the front”: Marie-Madeleine Fourcade radio interview, French Culture, July 29, 1989.

  “Who would ever think”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 239.

  “Be brave”: Ibid., 250.

  “flood of beacons”: Ibid., 253.

  CHAPTER 22: “HERE YOU ARE AT LAST!”

  “Here you are”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 252.

  “A delightful hostess”: Anthony and Barbara Bertram, The Secret of Bignor Manor (Lulu Press, 2014), 216.

  “intimacy and love”: Barbara Bertram, French Resistance in Sussex (Pulborough, UK: Barnworks Publishing, 1996), xv.

  “When they arrived”: Ibid., 22.

  “the beautiful Marie-Madeleine”: Ibid., 47–48.

  “So this is the terrible”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 255.

  “You mean you’re”: Ibid.

  “a most unpleasant”: Ben Macintyre, Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies (New York: Crown, 2012), 44.

  “eyes of a hyperactive”: Ibid.

  “Everyone was scared”: Anthony Read and David Fisher, Colonel Z: The Secret Life of a Master of Spies (New York: Viking, 1985), 12.

  “an utter shit”: Ibid.

  “consumed by hate”: Patrick Reilly, unpublished memoirs, Bodleian Library, Oxford.

  “one of Dansey’s”: Read and Fisher, 297.

  “I see it’s made”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 259.

  “This material looks”: Schoenbrun, Loc. 11551.

  CHAPTER 23: “THE MOST REMARKABLE GIRL OF HER GENERATION”

  “The Germans still wanted”: David Ignatius, “After Five Decades, a Spy Tells Her Tale,” Washington Post, Dec. 28, 1998.

  “all the things”: Ibid.

  “that would take”: Ibid.

  “I knew all the details”: Ibid.

  “I had become”: Ibid.

  “I would absorb it”: Ibid.

  “This afternoon”: Michael J. Neufeld, Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War (New York: Knopf, 2007), 137.

  “the new weapons”: Ibid.

  “stratospheric bomb”: R. V. Jones, Most Secret War (Ware, UK: Wordsworth Editions, 1998), 351.

  “the chilling fear”: Ibid., xiv.

  “this extraordinary report”: Ibid., 354.

  the most remarkable: Ibid.

  “a masterpiece in the history”: William Grimes, “Jeannie Rousseau de Clarens, Valiant World War II Spy, Dies at 98,” New York Times, August 29, 2017.

  “would affect the whole course”: Martin Middlebrook, The Peenemünde Raid: The Night of 17–18 August 1943 (Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword, 2006), 79.

  “It was like hell”: Ibid., 141.

  “A substantial proportion”: Jones, 346.

  “had a far-reaching”: Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1951), 207.

  “Were the Germans”: Tessa Stirling, Daria Nałęcz, and Tadeusz Dubicki, eds., Intelligence Cooperation Between Poland and Great Britain During World War II (London: Valentine Mitchell, 2005), 476.

  “Although we could”: Winston S. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1953), 53.

  CHAPTER 24: PINK HEATHER

  “If you or
der him”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 261.

  “Damn their law”: Ibid.

  “It’s up to you”: Ibid., 262.

  “Good work”: Rodriguez, 11.

  “We will have”: Ibid., 12.

  CHAPTER 25: CALAMITY

  “I’m going mad”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 267.

  “with a hand as heavy”: Ibid.

  “Since September 16”: Ibid., 272.

  “the indifference”: Paul Bernard, unpublished manuscript.

  “I experienced”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 272.

  “represented a wealth”: Ibid., 278.

  “their uncontested leader”: Jackson, 428.

  “The Resistance, for him”: Frenay, 206.

  “Despite our proven”: Ibid., 287.

  “full-scale and dangerous”: Brown, 333.

  “viciously petty”: Keene, Loc. 4247.

  “Though SOE and MI6”: Malcolm Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time: Vol. 2, The Infernal Grove (London: Collins, 1973), 174.

  “almost incoherent with indignation”: Keene, Loc. 1812.

  “Great news!”: Patrick Reilly, unpublished memoirs, Bodleian Library, Oxford.

  “an evil man”: Ibid.

  “was said to be”: Ibid.

  “Cohen’s bitch”: Ibid.

  “all these cumbersome”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 290.

  CHAPTER 26: CAPTIVES

  “A snake sliding”: Rodriguez, 40.

  “I do not believe”: Ibid., 44.

  “had done absolutely nothing”: Frenay, 53.

  “I walk constantly”: Rodriguez, 47.

  “these separations”: Ibid., 52.

  “a splendid, vague, dreamy”: Shrabani Basu, Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan (Amherst, MA: Omega Publications, 2007), Loc. 1687 (Kindle edition).

  “tends to give far”: Sarah Helm, A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII (New York: Anchor, 2007), 12–13.

  “if this girl’s an agent”: Leo Marks, Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker’s War, 1941–45 (Stroud, UK: History Press, 2013), 311.

  “was necessary”: Basu, Loc. 1795.

  “She told us nothing”: Helm, 486.

  “Kieffer’s artist in residence”: Ibid., 176.

  “The Gestapo boys”: Ibid., 176.

  “His presence was unfortunate”: Ibid., 177.

  “drunk with happiness”: Unpublished journal, Léon Faye, French state archives.

  “This girl is crazy”: Ibid.

  “magnificent courage”: Ibid.

  “Water remains permanently”: Ibid.

  “she would have made it”: Helm, 487.

  CHAPTER 27: THE MAP

  “We have the impression”: Paul Bernard, unpublished manuscript.

  “won the lasting respect”: Patrick Reilly, unpublished memoirs, Bodleian Library, Oxford.

  “We Dampierres are not spies”: Dampierre family history.

  “disaster,” as one: Sir Frederick Morgan, Overture to Overlord (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1950), 279.

  “In this particular”: David Irving, The War Between the Generals: Inside the Allied High Command (New York: Congdon and Lattes, 1981), 94.

  “the most complete”: Schoenbrun, Loc. 12279.

  CHAPTER 28: GOING HOME

  “I can’t stop now”: Résistances-Morbihan, resistances-morbihan.fr/​alliance-bretagne-2/​.

  CHAPTER 29: CAUGHT IN THE NET

  “Where’s the lady?”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 321.

  “Hello, Marie-Madeleine”: Ibid.

  “Do you mean”: Ibid.

  “She would accompany”: Interview with Charles-Helen des Isnards.

  “Where’s the man?”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 328.

  “I’ve just escaped”: Ibid., 338.

  CHAPTER 30: LIBERATION AND BEYOND

  “the animals of the Ark”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 357.

  “returned, miraculously unaffected”: Ibid., 361.

  “By their work and sacrifice”: David Schoenbrun, “Animals at War,” New York Times, Feb. 17, 1974.

  “Colonel Bernis”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 361.

  CHAPTER 31: “HAIL MARY, FULL OF GRACE”

  “There is no personality”: Rodriguez, 169.

  “Where are we going?”: Ibid., 162.

  “Commandant!”: Ibid.

  “And our friends?”: Ibid.

  “like something out of”: Ibid., 82.

  “They’ve landed”: Ibid., 84.

  “God save the king!”: Ibid., 108.

  “Hail Mary”: Ibid., 133.

  “Your friends…all gone”: Ibid., 136.

  “Why are we still alive?”: Ibid., 169.

  “a choirmaster in a crypt”: Ibid., 184.

  “Tomorrow!”: Ibid., 185.

  “Am I mistaken?”: Ibid.

  “Our three lives”: Ibid., 186.

  “You are being exchanged”: Ibid., 194.

  “So, you’re all”: Ibid., 209.

  “we thought you would prefer”: Ibid., 210.

  “Life was worth”: Ibid., 215.

  “I could not abandon”: Ibid., 218.

  “It was the antithesis”: Ibid., 220.

  “I cannot abandon”: Ibid., 226.

  “an intense need”: Ibid.

  “I look at myself now”: Ibid.

  CHAPTER 32: THE ROAD TO GETHSEMANE

  “the most terrible of all”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 365.

  “Where are the manacles?”: Ibid., 366.

  EPILOGUE

  “our handsome hero”: Schoenbrun, Loc. 336.

  “And somehow”: Ibid., Loc. 357.

  “a weekend of celebration”: Ibid., Loc. 363.

  “serve our unhappy country”: Ibid.

  “The connection formed”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 55.

  “very loud and powerful”: Interview with Charles-Helen des Isnards.

  “I mastered the urge”: Rodriguez, 230.

  “mapped out”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 371.

  “Devoid of selfishness”: Cointet, 300–301.

  “My mother deeply loved”: Interview with Pénélope Fourcade-Fraissinet.

  “Once the bête noire of the Nazis”: Schoenbrun, Loc. 16308.

  “Even if they didn’t live”: Interview with Pénélope Fourcade-Fraissinet.

  “an extraordinary esprit de corps”: Interview with Charles-Helen des Isnards.

  “For many years”: Deacon, 30.

  “solicited the cooperation”: Ibid., 95.

  “could only be considered”: Ibid.

  “Discrimination, based…on a notion of inequality”: Oliver Wievorka, The French Resistance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 404–405.

  “Just as businesses recruited female personnel”: Ibid.

  “After the war”: Robert Gilden, “Jeannie Rousseau Obituary,” Guardian, Sept. 6, 2017.

  “the wife of an officer”: Valerie Deacon, “From ‘femme d’officier, mère de famille’ to ‘grande dame de la Résistance’: Marie-Madeleine Fourcade During World War II,” Contemporary French Civilization, vol. 42, no. 2.

  “rather humble (and misleading)”: Ibid.

  “saved thousands of lives”: David Ignatius, “The Remarkable Life of Jeannie Rousseau de Clarens,” Washington Post, Sept. 4, 2017.

  “an anonymous”: K. G. Robertson, ed. War, Resistance and Intelligence: Collected Essays in Honour of M.R.D. Foot (Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword, 2000).

  “The years have passed”: Fourcade, Noah’s Ark, 15.

  “Resistance is a
state of mind”: Olivier Holmey, “Jeannie Rousseau, Spy for the French Resistance,” The Independent, Aug. 29, 2017.

  ARCHIVAL MATERIAL

  Archives of the French Ministry of Defense (Service Historique de la Défense), Vincennes. Gestapo Files on Alliance Network (subseries GR 28P 3)

  Bodleian Library, Oxford. Patrick Reilly, unpublished memoirs

  Imperial War Museum, London. Oral histories of Hugh Verity and Barbara Bertram

  International Spy Museum Archive, Washington, D.C. Jeannie Rousseau video interview with David Ignatius

  National Archives of France (Archives Nationales de France), Paris. Reseau Alliance, 72AJ/35, Dossier No. 8

  PUBLISHED MATERIAL

  Aid, Matthew M., and Cees Wiebes, eds. Secrets of Signals Intelligence During the Cold War and Beyond. Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge, 2001.

  Ambrose, Stephen E. D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

  Atkin, Nicholas, and Frank Tallet, eds. The Right in France: From Revolution to Le Pen. London: I. B. Tauris, 2003.

  Bannalec, Jean-Luc. Death in Brittany. New York: Minotaur Books, 2014.

  Bartos, Adam, and Colin MacCabe. Remembering Chris Marker. New York: OR Books, 2017.

  Basu, Shrabani. Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan. Amherst, MA: Omega Publications, 2007.

  Beevor, Antony, and Artemis Cooper. Paris After the Liberation 1944–1949. New York: Penguin, 2004.

  Bertram, Anthony, and Barbara Bertram (ed. Jerome Bertram). The Secret of Bignor Manor. Lulu Press, 2014.