Young, Brave and Beautiful

by Tania Szabô

  That night they did not sleep. They stayed for a long time just sitting together. Huguette heard her murmur, ‘London has surely been warned now. It’s more than a week; they’ve had time to change their code. It can’t be important any more. It’s just unbearable, that kind of horror. They’ll start again tomorrow. Will I be strong enough to hold back vital information like that?’

  Several times, she asked Huguette, ‘Do you think that London’s been warned?’

  She replied, ‘I don’t know, Magda. I’m not in a position to know.’

  Violette understood that by asking Huguette she was seeking comfort but she felt she should be stronger than that. She knew that Philippe would have warned everybody. Although she carried very useful information, most of it would have already been useless to the Germans within forty-eight hours or so. At each question, she had told a close approximation to the truth, but with times, places and activities all jumbled up so that German resources would be used in one place uselessly while sabotage took place as planned elsewhere. This was a tactic she had learned as a student at the SOE schools – and she was particularly good at it.

  Bob Maloubier told Huguette that London had been warned the morning that Violette had been captured. It was one of the first things Philippe ordered Jean-Claude Guiet to do, as Jean-Claude’s messages show. However, it would have been much later in the day, not the morning after Violette’s capture that he could get the message across to warn all the circuits. Nevertheless, Violette knew that she had to keep silent, no matter what, for at least forty-eight hours. She would try for longer, as extra time for her people could save someone’s life. She had refused to carry the L-pill – the pill containing a lethal dose of cyanide that kills instantly, an eternal release from either intense fear or intense suffering. Those that took it usually had it fixed into their mouth in a special pouch. Violette had made her decision, had to do without. She plumbed the depths to find enough courage to prevail.

  The next day, when Violette came back for the last time, she seemed very serious but perfectly calm. She had just signed her death warrant, she knew that immediately. ‘That’s it. They have what they wanted. There would have been other tortures, other useless deaths. They’re taking me to Austria. To a fortress. They’ll shoot me. They don’t shoot women in France.’ Her words to Huguette were not quite true but protected her people.

  Huguette, after reporting Violette’s words, said, ‘She didn’t have time to sit down next to me as usual. The warders were already there, marching her off, still mute, but without violence. The second one moved aside to let her pass.’ She was struck by this attitude and added, ‘Perhaps it was true, that he felt a certain respect, a certain admiration for her.’

  The two girls hugged one another hard. Violette muttered, ‘Courage!’ In the doorway, she turned round. She smiled at Huguette and very discreetly waved.

  Huguette was all alone again, completely isolated, terrorised by the clicking boots, for three or four days – she was no longer sure how long – she was forgotten even, no food. She broke her nails on the cordes of the bedstead trying to make a noose to hang herself from the bars of the window.

  ‡

  Huguette told me what it felt like facing death in such circumstances. She said, ‘Ah well, when there was gunfire, for the dawn execution of five Maquisards, I trembled at first, but when I thought the fatal moment had arrived, I felt nothing, no fear. Totally accepted it. Absolute calm. A sort of anaesthetic perhaps, by the grace of God, I should think.’ But she had not faced that gunfire herself.

  Afterwards, she was taken to another cell, with ‘Simone la Marseillaise’, a big-hearted prostitute, for company. Condemned to death these final days, they both escaped the execution wall by an unbelievable miracle, it seemed to them.

  Huguette said that she had been able to hold on to her sanity, thanks to Violette’s fine example. She had, in some way, inoculated Huguette with some of her pride, and stoicism. Huguette told me she accepted every moment of suffering, every humiliation thinking about her – without tears. Nor are there from me as I write this – but very nearly!

  She closes by saying that Violette had sacrificed herself even when she was sure that she would not be putting her circuit in danger. She wanted an end to the poor boy’s agonising suffering and to save others’ lives.

  ‡

  * * *

  147 PF = Each agent had a Personal File. Many are held at the National Archives in Kew.

  148 It happened that, years later, Jean Bariaud, the man who had run away, told my companion, Paul E.F. Holley, and me in his family home in Croisille-sur-Briance, ‘J’ai honte! J’ai honte! On aurait dû la sauver.’ That is, ‘I’m ashamed! I’m ashamed! We should have saved her.’ Maybe, as Huguette says, the two men ran away together and only Violette was there with her Sten gun! Maybe I should ignore the supposed verbal report. Maybe …

  149 Verts de gris = in French slang for the Germans. Vert = green, ver = worm (both pronounced the same). Gris = grey (the colour or Wehrmacht uniforms).

  150 Magda Valetas was the name of a pharmacist in Tulle at that time and although it seems doubtful that Violette had been there, she may have acquired this woman’s identity as an extra cover. Maybe Violette had simply seen the name and decided to use it.

  151 Panther = one of the more ferocious female guards, silent when wishing to inflict a surprise attack.

  152 SS-Das Reich 1c (3rd General Staff officer, responsible for intelligence).

  153 This information on Kowatsch I received from the author of Das Reich, Philip Vickers, in his fax to me on 19 June 2000. I have since researched this back to discover the SD man Aurel Kowatsch was sentenced to death in 1951 in absentia. Philip provided me with much information when Paul Holley and I stayed in his lovely French home not far from Angoulême.

  154 Bonbonne = carboy, i.e. a large globular glass or plastic corrosive liquid container, usually protected by a wooden casing; a large flagon.

  155 Huguette is referring here to a television programme that did not take sufficient care in how they filmed her, the questions they asked and her responses along with their voice-overs. I was informed that there was no recording preserved of what she actually said in French. Where it is translated, it is unclear and is very upsetting and distressing to Huguette.

  156 ‘Traction’ = light armoured vehicle during the war. Today, a 4×4 or jeep.

  157 Chant du Départ = Song of Departure.

  34

  Limoges to Avenue Foch

  and More Interrogation

  Friday 17 June 1944 onwards

  At dawn on 17 June, Violette was taken to a communal shower room of Limoges prison, given back her belongings, told to shower, dress and comb her hair. The shower was heaven, even though the water was cold and the soap hard. She felt clean for the first time since 10 June. Imprisonment had not been a great shock, nor had Violette expected it to be.

  She had been conveyed to the prison, that hot afternoon of Friday the 10th, in a staff car of the Waffen-SS (SS militarised unit). SS-Sturmbannführer Kowatsch, stationed in Limoges as an interpreter with the SS-Das Reich Panzer Division, had also been in the vehicle.

  Violette was delivered over to the SD or Gestapo. At the Kommandandeur des SD in Limoges was a good-looking man in his forties, SS-Obersturmbannführer Nummer-73073, August Meier. This man spoke no language other than German, having been educated at a trade school, became a young businessman and then, after normal military service, entered the ranks of the SS. To interrogate his prisoners he used the interpretation skills of his colleague and friend Kowatsch, who later claimed that SOE agent Louise had been treated with respect and supplied with clean clothes before being handed over to the SD. This may have been true briefly; however, once with the SD, things were different as Huguette’s account attests, along with those of so many other men and women who suffered under their hands in Limoges, including Harry Peulevé.

  Her lack of shock and her calm demeanour was due in no
small part to the fact that, at the SOE training schools, potential agents were duly warned and trained under pretty rough conditions for such an eventuality. No, not shocked after her six days’ incarceration but nevertheless deeply distressed and in considerable pain from internal contusions and ripped skin. Her shoulder was healing but remained sore. The welts from the Panther and interrogations were still an angry red.

  Violette found it laughable that Kowatsch, Schmald and Meier would think her shamed and intimidated by being stripped naked before them and then savagely questioned. She dealt with their physical offences against her with stoicism. She bore the degradations that followed with great dignity while giving nothing away.

  The three men, on the other hand, knew that they had instantly lost their dignity before her. They knew, too, that she knew. They had to face the scorn flowing from her beautiful eyes. It roused them to rage and immense frustration. They could not help but wonder, albeit subconsciously, who truly had the upper hand.

  The rather grand Gestapo office used for interrogations was part of the process to diminish these ‘peasants’ in the face of grandeur and power. In the photo, you can see the arrogance in Meier’s eyes. During these interrogations, seated behind a large, overly ornate desk, he explained gently at first that he wished to know what plans were being implemented by the Maquis to prevent the free movement of the German SS-Das Reich armoured forces through the region. On the wall was a large map with pins of various colours over the entire region from Châteauroux through the Haute-Vienne and down as far as Montauban. The roads and railway lines were well marked and Meier invited Violette to join him at the map and show him where the Maquis, parachute troops, SOE agents and Jedburghs would strike and where and when the Allies would fly bombing raids on the installations used by the Germans.

  She refused.

  Confronted by her silence and disdain, some of the frustration and strength of feeling of these three men against Maquis activity was vented on this brave young woman.

  She endured.

  The beatings and other indecent tortures were harsh but not unendurable as her tormentors wished to leave no permanent evidence of their assaults upon her. However, when SS-Obersturmbannführer Meier, Kommandatur der Sicherheitspolizei in Limoges, had failed so miserably he found a way almost to crush her. His minions were ordered to bring in a young man. They forced her to watch that poor boy being beaten to within an inch of his life. The thought of another youngster being brought in had all but destroyed her. Still, Violette knew that she had given nothing of substance away, and she took strength from that. She endured, even though it was well after the forty-eight-hour period agents should endeavour to withstand, after which they were permitted by their SOE masters to give way if things were unbearable.

  The SS officers had not succeeded in their given task. They were subsequently ordered, none too kindly, to have her taken to 86 Avenue Foch in Paris. There she would be questioned by the SD. No doubt that would produce something. Once they had finished with her, if she was still alive, she would be sent to the firing squad, to be hanged or left to rot in Fresnes prison some twenty miles south-east of Paris until they decided her fate.

  This was by no means an unusual pattern for men and women Résistants who had been caught. It was unusual that this young woman had come from England and defended herself and those around her from their crack forces with a Sten gun until her ammunition was exhausted. That she had been captured in a gunfight was de facto confirmation to her tormentors of her Résistance credentials. But what exactly did those credentials consist of? Whom was she helping? She was too self-possessed and aggressive not to have been well trained. And what an accomplished shooter she was – disciplined in her carefully measured firing and retreat, even though injured, isolated and alone behind a small apple tree.

  Violette had found it relatively easy not to reveal a single name or acknowledge that she knew any, even though many names were thrown at her. Invention was her tactic to buy time for her comrades and, for a while at least, slightly less pain.

  ‘This hothead Anastasie – is that who was with you and ran away leaving you to the Gestapo’s tender mercies?’ they gibed.

  ‘We know that his real name is Jacques Dufour. A common terrorist with a price on his head.’

  ‘You don’t wish to be likened to such riff-raff, an intelligent young woman like you.’

  ‘Where is this Préfet du Maquis?’

  ‘Who is Colonel Berger, and where is he’?

  ‘How many men and women are involved?’

  ‘Where are the safe-houses and what are the names of the people staying in them?’

  ‘Where have you been staying?’

  ‘What are the names of the Maquis groups and networks?’

  ‘Give us the names of the leaders and names of the SOE circuits.’

  On and on it went, hour after hour, day after day. Saturday became Sunday and Sunday became Monday and then Tuesday, and still the questions and treatment continued for another three days. From 10 to 16 of June, Violette went back and forth from the filth of the prison cell to the relative opulence of the Gestapo headquarters.

  It was when they brought the boy in that she decided to speak.

  She proceeded to throw them off the scent. She told them she knew very little about this man ‘Anastasie’, had never met him and would not wish a ‘hothead’, as they claimed he was, to be associated with her.

  Perhaps, she murmured with great weariness, Colonel Berger was the préfet they were talking about, but she had not met him either. She was simply going to Angoulême to hand over some money; the money they had found in her suitcase and confiscated.

  Who was she to hand it over to?

  Violette did not know exactly, but someone there would see her in the square in front of the Hôtel de Ville and on meeting they would exchange a coded message. She was surprised that she had not been given any sort of name but the coded exchange would be sufficient. At that time they would exchange names, was all she had been told.

  Where was the square?

  She didn’t know as it would be her first journey to the town, but it would be easy enough to find, she said. After all, there must only be one Hôtel de Ville even in a big town.

  What was the coded exchange?

  Inwardly, she thanked her lost dream, her lost husband, Étienne, for giving her the memory she offered up in homage to him. It had been Bastille Day, 14 July, and her mother had sent her out to bring back a French soldier for tea, wanting to give a homesick soldier a little mothering and a taste of home. Unsure how to go about it, Violette enlisted her close friend, Winnie Wilson, to accompany her. Finally, feeling somewhat ridiculous, they went to Hyde Park and sat on a bench, looking at every French soldier passing by. One, a dashing Legionnaire, went past rather too quickly, glancing at the two girls. A few steps later, he returned to ask Winnie in halting English what the time might be. Violette, in a flash, leaned forward, pushed his sleeve up, and read the time to him from his watch in faultless French. They all laughed and Violette and Étienne fell in love.

  Well, she told her tormentors, the person meeting her, a man, she thought, would ask her the time of day, as if he were flirting with her. And she, flirting back, would bend forward, push his sleeve back, read the time off his watch and then laugh right into his eyes. Even if he were the ugliest son-of-a-bitch, that was what she had been instructed to do!

  She recounted these things haltingly, seemingly reluctant, she even managed a tear.

  The boy was spared further punishment but every time she held back a bit he, and therefore she, were threatened anew. And so it went on.

  At her penultimate session of interrogation at the Tivoli with the Limoges Gestapo, she was informed they had checked her story and found nothing. They presumed that it was all fabrication. But she insisted it was not and that they obviously were not fast and wily enough to find the people concerned.

  In a curious way, this story provided her with relief and
some sort of escape. Violette knew there would be further torture now they had checked all this out, but she had decided to cross each bridge as she came to it. She continued to plan each story so that it contained enough truth to be reasonably authentic and flexible enough to mesh into their interrogations and the information they dropped. She was also aware they were telling her things that could be useful to London if she managed to escape or, most unlikely, to be freed. It was not difficult to stammer, refuse, cry out and go a step further in her story, seemingly under duress. Each story, each lie, each small fiction was dressed in enough fact to be seductive and seem authentic.

  ‡

  The drive to Paris from Limoges was a long three to four hours, Violette thought. She was beginning to lose the ability to judge the passage of time. She was handcuffed in the back of a black Talbot and treated well on that drive. Another softening-up process, she surmised. Or a ‘last supper’ before execution. A cigarette was proffered and light extended from a fashionable gold lighter by the Milice officer seated beside the driver. In the back, on either side, were two Miliciens with loaded pistols holstered. She accepted the cigarette. She had taken her stand and was not broken. Now she must garner her strength and avoid undue confrontation.

  She had to admit it was good to be out of Limoges prison, to be on the road in the fresh air, to be relatively clean and relatively intact. The surface weals and other marks from the ‘robots’, Panthers and interrogators were hardly noticeable now; the other injuries were hidden from sight, some so internal that she might now never have another child, should she survive.

  She knew that what was in store for her in Paris would not be pleasant. But for now, she was content to be on the move, out of pain for the most part, and on the receiving end of a little courtesy, arrogant and dismissive though it may be. The Milice officer even ordered a stop on route in a tiny village for a coffee and snack. The officer apparently had a lady-friend there and spent some time in an upper room.