Spy Princess

by Shrabani Basu

  Noor had asked Maurice Buckmaster if she could work in the Paris area, as she was familiar with it. Though this posed the danger that she might be recognised, Noor was confident that she would be most effective in that region. Occupied Paris was also the most dangerous place to operate as the city was crawling with the Gestapo.

  As a telegraphist, or ‘pianist’ as the job was called by SOE, Noor would need a transmitter. Since she was a petite 5ft 3in and weighed under 8 stone, she needed lightweight equipment. Transmitters were always in short supply and were imported from US manufacturers and then adapted for installation in a suitcase.

  Finally, the agents were given a set of four pills. One was a type that would induce sleep for 6 hours and was to be administered in the enemy’s tea or coffee if the need arose. The second pill was a stimulant, Benzedrine, which would keep the agent awake in an emergency if she was dog-tired but had to go on. The third could produce stomach disorders. This was for the agent if she wanted to sham an indisposition. The fourth was the L pill, a suicide pill containing cyanide in a little rubber coating, which the agent had the option of taking if they were captured and did not want to face Gestapo interrogation. The L pill would work only if it was bitten and would be ineffective if it was swallowed whole. The set of four pills was handed over to Noor by Vera Atkins.

  Once the agent was absolutely clear on the background of their mission, they were passed on to an escorting officer who stayed with him until the very moment when they boarded the plane. The officer was responsible for going through the agent’s pockets to make sure that no English cigarettes or money was slipped in at the last moment. A small lapse like this could cost a life and wreck weeks of careful planning. Noor’s escorting officer was Patricia Stewart-Bam, who clearly remembered the young woman’s courage years later.7

  Maurice Buckmaster made a point of meeting every agent personally before they left for the field and gave each one a small gift. The men got a pair of gold cufflinks or a cigarette lighter, and the women a gold compact. When the agents were alone in France the gift would remind them that their colleagues back home were thinking of them. If an agent was in dire straits, they could even sell the item to raise cash. Buckmaster tried to go to the airfield with as many agents as he could as it was always in the last few moments before they left the country that they would feel the most nervous and vulnerable.8

  A few days before she left, Noor paid an unexpected visit to her friend Jean. This was probably after 10 June when she had been given the all-clear for France and was living in Orchard Court. She arrived late at night at Jean’s flat and the two of them talked long into the night. Fuller remembered that Noor was looking very beautiful, that her skin was glowing and there was a shine in her eyes. Noor told her she was very happy. Jean thought she was in love. ‘Everything I have ever wanted has come at once,’ she told Jean.9 She was wearing her khaki FANY uniform and was very keyed up. ‘There was an extraordinary degree of excitement in her,’ said Jean.10 ‘She had stars in her eyes. She wanted to go.’

  Noor was, in fact, very much in love and engaged to a man at the War Office, as she had told her family. Strangely, she did not tell Jean about her romance. Perhaps this was because her relationships had so often gone wrong, and there was so much uncertainty in her life at the moment that she did not want to tempt fate by telling too many people. She had given only sketchy details of her fiancé to her own family and not given them any contact details either. He remained a mystery to them and they never discovered who he was.

  That night Noor asked Jean to read her palm and tell her what the future held for her. At one point in the evening she remarked that she had always been afraid of being tortured. As a child she had read about martyrs and lain awake at nights worrying about them; she had nightmares that she was being tortured so she would reveal a secret. She wondered how she would cope in a Nazi concentration camp if she were tortured. ‘I don’t see how one can know …’ she said, and then added: ‘I don’t think I would ever speak.’

  As they talked Jean was struck by the change in Noor’s personality. Though Noor had always been a highly strung person, Jean had never seen her like this before. After breakfast, Noor got up and said ‘I am going to go now’, and hugged and kissed Jean. It was the last time Jean saw her friend. For a long time she assumed that when Noor said she had to go ‘overseas’, it meant across the oceans to another continent. She did not think that Noor was just going across the Channel to France.

  On 15 June 1943, Noor was released from the WAAF and on the following day she was awarded an honorary commission in the WAAF as Assistant Section Officer. It was nearly a year since she had attended the interview for her commission in the same service, where she had spoken emotionally about Indian independence and almost ruined her chances. But life had taken a different course for her. Now she had been given an honorary commission and was to be sent on a dangerous mission for King and country.

  On the afternoon of 16 June, Vera Atkins called for Noor at Orchard Court in an open car. (This estate car had been nicknamed ‘the hearse’ by the SOE.) They drove through the Sussex countryside in full summer bloom with honeysuckle and marguerites. Noor hardly said a word. Vera Atkins noticed she had a serene expression on her face and a half smile playing on her lips. She always felt that Noor was very self-contained and had an unworldly idealism.

  It was nearly evening by the time they reached Tangmere in Sussex and stopped outside the little ivy-covered cottage just opposite the main gates of the RAF station. It was partly hidden by tall hedges and could hardly be seen from the road. Though it was a summer evening all the doors and windows were shut and the silence was almost eerie. But as the two women stepped inside, they found the hall was full of smoke and they could hear men’s voices.

  Tangmere Cottage was a seventeenth-century house with low ceilings and thick walls. On the ground floor were two living rooms and a kitchen. One of the living rooms was used as an operations room for the crew and there was a large map of France on the wall, a table and a map chest. There was also an ordinary telephone line and a ‘scrambler’ phone line for confidential conversations. The second living room was used as the dining room and had two long trestle tables where agents and pilots often had their supper before they left. Upstairs there were five bedrooms functioning as dormitories for the pilots.

  After a hearty farewell supper, Vera Atkins led Noor upstairs to a room. On one of the chairs lay a novel called Remarkable Women. Noor remarked that the men probably enjoyed reading about remarkable women. Vera Atkins replied that perhaps one day someone would write a book about the ‘most remarkable women of all’. She commented to herself: ‘That book will have to be rewritten after these girls have done their stuff.’11 Noor started to get ready, putting on her green oilskin coat. In her handbag was a French identity card, ration card and her Webley pistol. The rest of her belongings – radio, clothes and personal effects – would be parachuted separately, so she did not have to carry them with her. She needed to carry the pistol on her in case they were ambushed as soon as they landed.

  Vera Atkins did the usual last-minute pocket-check for English cigarettes, English bus tickets or English money – anything that could risk the agent’s life if discovered. As she was getting ready, Noor noticed a silver bird on Vera Atkins’ suit and remarked how lovely it was and how Vera always managed to look so smart. She herself, she felt, inevitably looked plain. The older woman took off the bird and pinned it on Noor’s lapel. When Noor protested she said: ‘It’s a little bird, it will bring you luck.’12

  Soon there was a knock on the door signalling that it was time to go. The full moon shone high in the sky. A large Ford estate car was waiting to take them to the airstrip. There, silhouetted against the night sky, she could see the two Lysanders waiting for their passengers. Noor stepped out into the night and walked on English soil for the last time. She felt she was keeping her promise to the people of France. She was going back.

  In France that ev
ening, waiting agents received a message in the middle of an entertainment programme on the BBC French service. It said: ‘Jasmine is playing her flute.’13 It was the code telling them to prepare for the arriving agents.

  SEVEN

  Joining the Circuit

  On the night of 16/17 June two Lysander aircraft were to take off from Tangmere with agents and land in France. Agents going into the field were referred to by the pilots as ‘Joes’ and the Lysanders were affectionately called ‘Lizzies’.

  On duty that night were pilots Bunny Rymills and James McCairns, usually referred to as Mac. Rymills was flying Noor’s Lysander. Her fellow passenger was Cecily Lefort, who was being landed in France as a courier. Cecily and Noor had trained together in Wanborough Manor. The second Lysander was flown by Mac and carried Diana Rowden (also a courier) and Charles Skepper, organiser of the Monk circuit, which operated in the south of France near Marseilles.

  Noor had practised the drill many times before. After the briefest of greetings from Rymills (the pilots were not told the names of the agents), she climbed up the short ladder into the aircraft followed by Cecily. Rymills showed them where to put their bags below the wooden seat, how to plug their flying helmet into the intercom and how to switch their microphone on and off. He then climbed into his cockpit, slid the roof shut, primed the engine and started off.

  The SOE circuits in France worked in threes – the organiser, the courier and the radio operator. The organiser was the head of the circuit, the courier was responsible for passing messages between the organiser and his contacts, and the radio operator sent their messages to head office. The radio operator was the only link between Baker Street and the circuit and all the crucial information would go through him. The Germans knew that if they caught the radio operator of a circuit, the others might easily fall into their hands.

  Noor was the first woman radio operator to be flown into occupied France. Women agents dropped in previously had gone as couriers. The chronic shortage of radio operators meant that women had to be trained in this area as well. Women were considered to be skilled wireless operators because they were good at knitting and could master keying better than men. But clandestine radio work was very different from ordinary radio transmission. Radio operators had the most dangerous job in the field as chances of capture were high. Up till 1943, when Noor was sent to France, the SOE had trained only a handful of radio operators. Even at its peak, STS 52 at Thame Park was turning out only sixteen to eighteen trained operators a month.1 Radio operators had a high chance of being arrested as they had to carry their wireless sets about with them most of the time and if stopped and questioned had to explain their incriminating evidence. Based in the Paris area, Noor would be specially vulnerable because she would have to use the Metro and the Gestapo frequently checked people at all the interchanges. The average survival time for a radio operator in the field was estimated by SOE to be six weeks. Despite this, the SOE had to carry on sending them out to France, as without them the agents could not communicate with London.

  All the agents flying that night were doomed. Diana Rowden would later be executed at Natzweiler concentration camp. Cecily Lefort would die in Ravensbruck concentration camp, and Noor at Dachau. Charles Skepper would also die in Germany.

  After the war, the pilots were shocked to learn of the fate of the three women they had flown that night. They could not believe that the jolly party that had left Tangmere after a hearty supper had all been flown to their deaths.2 Vera Atkins recalled that they had all set out bravely, and the only sign of nervousness she detected was a slightly trembling cigarette in the dark (which could have belonged to any of the three girls).3 But at that moment they were all charged up, waiting for the mission ahead.

  Rymills remembered his passengers clearly. He remarked that Cecily Lefort looked like a vicar’s wife whose French ‘did not seem to be all that hot’ and recalled Noor’s green oilskin coat. It was also the time he forgot to switch off his transmitter during the flight. As the Lysanders took off in the clear moonlit sky, Mac remembered that Rymills’ voice could be clearly heard on the next plane as he talked to his passengers.4

  The moment they crossed the Channel, Mac heard Rymills say: ‘Now Madame, we are approaching your beautiful country – isn’t it lovely in the moonlight?’ Back came the answer in a soft, accented voice, ‘Yes, I think it is heavenly. What is that town over there?’ Mac remembered thinking that the German listening service, which monitored the airwaves, would have heard the conversation as well. ‘Black mark!’, he thought.

  In the tight confines of their Lysander, Noor and Cecily looked out at the country below. The flight to France usually took anything from 2 to 6 hours depending on the distance. Lysanders were the most popular aircraft by which agents were landed in France. RAF 161 Squadron was charged with the Lysander flights and took most of the agents to France during the war. The SOE had two airstrips at their disposal. The main one was the carefully camouflaged special-duties airfield at Tempsford, west of Cambridge. The second was at Tangmere, near Chichester, which was favoured by Lysander pilots as it was closer to the English Channel and they could secure a greater penetration into France from here.

  The Lysanders were ideally suited for the dangerous job. The single-engined aircraft moved slowly at around 200mph, half the speed of the German fighter aircraft, which would fly by at double speed and not notice the Lizzy. It could also fly low, hedge-hopping before it landed. The Lysanders flew at a height of 8,000ft. Since it was dangerous to fly them in the daylight when they could easily be seen, they were generally only used on full-moon night drops.5 Initially the planes were painted black, but it was found that they were clearly visible when the sky was bathed in moonlight. So later versions had the top half of the aircraft painted blue and green. Lysanders were also particularly useful because they could land in muddy fields and on the smallest airstrips. To minimise the time the aircraft spent on the ground, the Lysanders were fitted with a small ladder on the side so agents could get in and out in the shortest time possible. Lysanders could carry two passengers easily, three at a pinch and four in a crisis, besides the pilot. If there was a third passenger he sat on the floor. Over 100 sorties were made by Lysanders during the war, setting down as many as 250 passengers and bringing out nearly 450.

  Soon it was time to land. The familiar sign of the inverted L and the flashing Morse code guided the pilots to the landing strip. The landing code for the Lysander was a well-rehearsed one. Three torches – looking from the air like an inverted L – would make up the flare path which would guide the plane. Then the Morse code would be flashed, which had to be the special one the pilot was expecting. (If the prearranged Morse wasn’t flashed the pilot’s instructions were to turn around as quickly as he could and leave. In ‘no circumstances’6 was he to land.)

  It was a particularly fine moonlit night in the Loir (not Loire) valley when Noor and her colleagues landed. The landing field was north-east of Angers, 5.25 kilometres south of Tierce, not far above the Loir’s junction with the Sarthe and 3.5 km west-north-west of Villeveque.7 The Lysander stopped and Cecily got off. Noor remained on board. It was her duty to pass the luggage down to Cecily, then take and store the luggage from the other passengers who were waiting to return. Only then did she clamber down the short ladder herself. It was a well-rehearsed drill aimed to take as little time as possible.

  A double Lysander operation had to take no more than 20 minutes at the very most for both planes to load and unload passengers. Each plane usually took about 3 to 4 minutes, making it very difficult for the Germans to trace or intercept them. But the Germans probably knew about this flight. Noor and her colleagues were met by agent Henri Déricourt, F-section’s air movements officer, who was later confirmed to be a double agent. He had five passengers waiting to be taken back to England. They were three French political figures, Madame Pierre Bloch, Pierre Lejeune and Vic Gerson, and two F-section returning agents – Jack Agazarian and his wife Francine.
The returning passengers lost no time in boarding the aircraft, then the Lysander turned around and after a short run-up took off again. The last link with England had now gone. Noor and her colleagues stood alone on enemy territory.

  The landing field had to be cleared as quickly as possible. Henri Déricourt and his assistant, Rémy Clément, had bicycles waiting for the arriving agents. Skepper and Cecily Lefort travelled south together, Diana Rowden headed for her address south-east of Dijon, near the Jura mountains. Noor hastily buried her pistol in the field, as she was not normally allowed to carry a pistol since it could incriminate her if she was searched. She got on her bike and rode in the direction of the nearest railway station, Angers. She had to head for Paris, the most dangerous area of all. Rémy Clément would travel separately and meet her at the station but the two of them would travel in different compartments as a precaution.

  Noor had memorised her instructions from London. She was to go to 40 rue Erlanger, Paris 16e (8th floor opposite the lift door) to the house of Emile Henri Garry. Her password was ‘Je viens de la part de votre ami Antoine pour des nouvelles au sujet de la Société en Bâtiment’ (I have come on behalf of your friend Antoine for news on the building society), to which the reply would be ‘L’affaire est en cours’8 (The business is in hand).

  Noor’s instructions were to work as a wireless operator in the region of Le Mans. Her circuit would be Cinema, a sub-circuit of the famous Prosper circuit headed by Francis Suttill. Born in 1910 in Lille, the barrister Suttill was the son of an English father and a French mother. He spoke good French, and was an idealist with good leadership qualities. His job was to create an active circuit in and around Paris. On the night of 1/2 October 1942, Suttill (code name Prosper) had been parachuted in near Vendôme. He was preceded by his courier, the formidable Andrée Borrel (code name Denise), a young French girl, who had been parachuted in close to Paris on 24/25 September to prepare the way for him. A month later his wireless operator, Gilbert Norman (code name Archambaud) parachuted in near Tours. Suttill’s Prosper circuit now consisted of himself as the organiser, Andrée Borrel as his courier, and his radio operator Gilbert Norman. The circuit expanded so rapidly that soon another radio operator, Jack Agazarian (code name Marcel), was parachuted to help him and landed in the Seine valley. Agazarian’s wife Francine (code name Marguerite) acted as his courier. Suttill’s extended circuit also included Jean Amps (code name Tomas), who became his lieutenant.