Sonja returned from Paris 25th reports Ernest Maurice and Madeleine had serious accident and in hospital. Maurice is Barde. Madeleine is w/t operator. If you go ahead on pick up plan I could tell on receipt of photograph whether genuine or Gestapo Maurice. Am trying to get further information via Sonja.
Buckmaster replied:
Have had apparently genuine messages from Madeleine since 25th therefore regard Sonja’s news with some doubt. Can you give us estimate of Sonja’s reliability?
The original message was sent by Jacques Weil of the Juggler circuit, who had escaped to Berne after the Prosper debacle. The ‘Sonja’ in the message is clearly Sonia Olschanezky, his courier and fiancée, who was lying low in Paris, and who was later killed at Natzweiler. Though the warning was wrong as Noor was never hospitalised and was not caught till mid-October, it nevertheless should have put London on guard and made them examine her messages more carefully. This, again, Buckmaster did not do, despite Noor sending out her distress special security check after capture.
It took F-section six weeks to realise that Norman had been arrested and the messages coming from his wireless were false. When London realised the game the Germans were playing they started playing the same game back to them. They continued to drop arms and cash to the Germans, giving them the impression that they had not tumbled to their deception. This gave the SOE time to build new circuits which the Germans did not get to know about. It also gave the Gestapo a false sense of security. Besides, London could find out where the Gestapo had their local reception committees organised.
Goetz and his assistant, Joseph Placke, were delighted at the large amounts of cash they received (about 8,572,000 francs or nearly £43,000),10 but SOE felt it was a loss worth incurring. By distracting the Germans, Maurice Buckmaster hoped to build new circuits in south Normandy of which the Germans knew nothing. These were the Headmaster and Scientist circuits which played a crucial role in the area before D-Day. But by then many of his top agents had been captured.
In April and May, Himmler, Goering and Hitler are said to have discussed the radio game. They had been wondering when they should tell London that they had captured some of their best agents. Hitler thought this blow should be delivered to them at such a time that it disarmed them completely. But by then Baker Street, too, was in on the act. Resistance had been planted firmly on French soil. The sacrifice of the wireless operators, who suffered the highest casualties in the field, would be simply remembered as their contribution to the war.
Apart from the controversy over the radio games, there was also the belief that the SOE had protected double agents like Déricourt for their own ends, exposing their own agents to the Gestapo. Jean Overton Fuller, was, however prepared to give Déricourt the benefit of the doubt, saying he had carried on a deliberate deception of the Germans and given them some secrets to win their trust. In exchange, he had managed to secure the evacuation of many agents back to England. Déricourt managed to charm and convince Jean Overton Fuller that he was not just a double agent but a triple agent reporting to someone else as well as Buckmaster. The third group, he implied, was MI6.
In June 1948, Déricourt faced a military tribunal in France accused of betrayal of agents. But F-section’s Nicholas Bodington appeared as a witness in his favour saying he not only knew that Déricourt was friendly with the Germans but ‘also how and why’. He claimed he was doing it for a reason and he would trust his life to Déricourt. When Bodington visited Paris in July 1943, Déricourt had arranged his safe passage. This could be the reason Bodington had infinite trust in him. But according to the Germans (Hugo Bleicher of the Abwehr), Déricourt had arranged for Bodington’s stay and safe passage with German help, precisely so that Déricourt would get the full support and trust of the SOE. The extensive SOE files on Déricourt reveal that they mistrusted him, had him watched and even tried to bug him, but in the end they let him get away. The files reveal that the SOE also mistrusted Bodington, but again did little about it.
Goetz had said that Déricourt had dined with him and Karl Boemelburg (the head of the Paris Gestapo based at 82 Avenue Foch), the last night before he left Paris. He also said that Déricourt made copies of all the letters that went on his Lysanders and passed them on to Boemelburg.11 Déricourt had informed Goetz about the place of transmission of his own radio operator, so that the German wireless-detection squads would not arrest him. He suggested Déricourt was Boemelburg’s agent, and the latter had ‘complete confidence’ in him.
Déricourt’s photocopies of the letters no doubt demoralised British agents, including Noor, by giving the impression that there was a traitor in London. Both Kieffer and Goetz said they had got information from Déricourt. Other agents in the field, like Henri Frager of the Donkeyman circuit, had had their suspicions about him,12 but in the end it was the word of Bodington, an F-section chief, versus a Nazi, and Déricourt was acquitted. One of F-section’s most controversial double agents walked free. He died in a plane crash in 1962.
There were strong allegations that each one of Déricourt’s flights was watched by the Germans and the arriving agents were followed. Despite all these suspicions, Déricourt had been retained by F-section, leading to questions in many minds about the SOE’s game plan. Since it was Déricourt who had greeted the Lysander flight of 16 June carrying Noor and her colleagues, could it be a surprise that all four agents would die on their mission? Many of these questions remain unanswered.
What was beyond a doubt, however, was that though the SOE made many costly slip-ups back home, their agents in the field had done exemplary work. According to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, the contributions of the SOE had shortened the war in Europe by six months.
According to SOE historian M.R.D. Foot, it was the necessity of war that led to the radio game and the greater goal of deceiving the Germans and securing the Normandy landings. It was unfortunate that by the time London started playing the game back, they had already lost many top agents. The need to fight a force like Hitler had led to unusual methods. Mistakes were made in the heat of the moment, but the ultimate victory had been achieved.
Foot thought it questionable that agents like Noor were sent into the field without finishing their training, but the exigencies of the hour demanded a radio operator and she had to leave. ‘To the question why people with so little training were sent to do such important work, the only reply is: the work had to be done, and there was no one else to send,’ wrote Foot.13
Sixty years after the war it is easier to assess the role of the SOE. According to Foot, the sacrifice made by the sappers (three-quarters of whom were killed or badly wounded) when they went to clear the minefields before the Normandy invasions was on a par with those demanded from Suttill, Noor and the other SOE agents. Both jobs had to be done to prepare for the invasion, and both jobs were absolutely invaluable.
Noor’s courage and performance in the field were exemplary and except for misunderstanding her instructions about carefully filing her stories (instructions which were in any event not at all clear), there would have been nothing to fault her with. If she had not been betrayed, Noor would have actually beaten the Gestapo at their own game. Her courage and strength led her to hold on till the end without giving in, and she stood proud till the last. When Vogt put it to her that her sacrifice had been in vain, she told him: ‘I have served my country. That is my recompense.’14
In the end, Noor was able to justify the faith that Maurice Buckmaster, Vera Atkins and Selwyn Jepson had put in her. She successfully used her training and wit to keep the Germans from arresting her for over three months by changing locations, changing her looks and using her circuit of loyal friends to help her. She would have returned to England if she had not been betrayed. Unlike other radio operators (like Brian Stonehouse or Robert Dowlen), who were caught by direction-finding vans while on the air because they transmitted from the same place, Noor was arrested through no fault of her own. Even her Germa
n captors admitted that she had evaded arrest for months despite their best efforts to trap her.
‘I had first learnt of the existence of Madeleine at the time of Archambaud’s arrest,’ said Goetz in his interrogation after the war.
We had a personal description of her and knew she was a W.T. operator of the reseau Prosper. It was, naturally, of the greatest interest to us to arrest her as we suspected she carried on W.T. traffic with London … The wireless detection station had such a sender under observation but could not close in on it as the place of transmission was constantly changing. In October or about this time it was thought that one was closing in on it, but again it was impossible to effect an arrest.15
And Josef Kieffer confirmed this: ‘We were pursuing her for months and as we had a personal description of her we arranged for all stations to be watched. She had several addresses and worked very carefully.’16
After Noor’s arrest, her behaviour was exemplary. Though the toughest of SOE agents cracked under interrogation and torture (Gilbert Norman and Dowlen, to name just two), Noor stood firm – revealing nothing despite torture and hardship. Even her captors could not help but be impressed by her. Kieffer apparently broke down before Vera Atkins at his interrogation when told that Noor had been sent to Dachau from Pforzheim and executed.
On 5 April 1949, Noor was posthumously awarded the George Cross, the highest civilian honour in Britain.
The citation said:
The King has been graciously pleased to approve the posthumous award of the George Cross to Assistant Section Officer Nora Inayat Khan (9901), Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.
Assistant section Officer Nora Inayat Khan was the first woman operator to be infiltrated into enemy-occupied France, and was landed by Lysander aircraft on June 16th, 1943. During the weeks immediately following her arrival, the Gestapo made mass arrests in the Paris Resistance groups to which she had been detailed. She refused, however, to abandon what had become the principal and most dangerous post in France, although given the opportunity to return to England, because she did not wish to leave her French comrades without communications, and she hoped also to rebuild her group. She remained at her post therefore and did the excellent work which earned her a posthumous Mention in Despatches.
The Gestapo had a full description of her, but knew only her code name Madeleine. They deployed considerable forces in their effort to catch her and so break the last remaining link with London. After three and a half months she was betrayed to the Gestapo and taken to their HQ in the Avenue Foch. The Gestapo had found her codes and messages and were not in a position to work back to London. They asked her to co-operate but she refused and gave them no information of any kind. She was imprisoned in one of the cells on the fifth floor of the Gestapo HQ, and remained there for several weeks, during which time she made two unsuccessful attempts at escape. She was asked to sign a declaration that she would make no further attempts but she refused, and the Chief of the Gestapo obtained permission from Berlin to send her to Germany for ‘safe custody’. She was the first agent to be sent to Germany.
Assistant Section Officer Inayat Khan was sent to Karlsruhe in November 1943 and then to Pforzheim, where her cell was apart from the main prison. She was considered to be a particularly dangerous and uncooperative prisoner. The Director of the prison has been interrogated and has confirmed that Assistant Section Officer Inayat Khan, when interrogated by the Karlsruhe Gestapo, refused to give any information whatsoever either as to her work or her colleagues.
She was taken with three others to Dachau camp on September 12, 1944. On arrival she was taken to the crematorium and shot.
Assistant Section Officer Inayat Khan displayed the most conspicuous courage, both moral and physical, over a period of more than twelve months.
The French had presented Noor with their highest civilian award, the Croix de Guerre with Gold Star, three years earlier on 16 January 1946. The citation said:
On the proposition of the Minister of the Armies, the President of the Provisional Government of the Republic, Chief of the Armies, Minister of National Defence, cites to the order of the army corps.
A/S/O Nora Inayat Khan, WAAF
Sent into France by Lysander on June 16th 1943, as a wireless operator with the mission of assuring transmissions between London and an organisation of the Resistance in the Paris area. Shortly after her arrival a series of arrests broke up the organisation. Obliged to flee, she nevertheless continued to fulfil her mission under the most difficult conditions. Falling into an ambush at Grignon, in July 1943, her comrades and she managed to escape after having killed or wounded the Germans who were trying to stop them. She was finally arrested in October 1943 and deported to Germany.
This citation carries the award of the Croix de Guerre with Gold Star.
Signed – General Charles De Gaulle
At a memorial service in Paris for Noor, Madame de Gaulle-Anthonioz, the General’s niece, President of l’Association Nationale des Anciennes Déportées et Internées de la Résistance, said:
Nothing, neither her nationality, nor the traditions of her family, none of these obliged her to take her position in the war. However she chose it. It is our fight that she chose, that she pursued with an admirable, an invincible courage.
No, we will never forget Noor Inayat Khan, auxiliary officer of the English army who was also a fighter of the French Liberation Forces. She returned to France, gave up her marriage, left her training to replace the lives of ours that the Gestapo had decimated. She never gave up the fight, struggling up till the end against all natural prudence till her arrest … For all of us, for the children of our country, what a marvellous example.
Her chiefs at SOE remembered the petite Indian girl, who had caused such controversy at Beaulieu, with fondness. Buckmaster had always had a paternal attitude to Noor and admired her courage greatly. He, along with Vera Atkins, had recommended that Noor’s George Medal be converted into the George Cross after they learnt the full extent of her courage both in the field and, later, in prison.
In a final comment Buckmaster added: ‘A most brave and touchingly keen girl. She was determined to do her bit to hit the Germans and, poor girl, she has.’
A plaque at the crematorium in Dachau pays tribute to Noor Inayat Khan and her three colleagues who were killed there. There is another plaque in her memory in the Remembrance Hall of the Museum in Dachau.
A plaque at St Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge, London, dedicated to the thirteen SOE agents who never returned from France, bears the name of N. Inayat Khan – GC.
Her name is included in the RAF Memorial in Runnymede in Surrey dedicated to the RAF personnel with no known graves and is inscribed on the Memorial Gates to the Commonwealth soldiers near Hyde Park Corner in London.
There is a plaque in her honour at the agricultural school in Grignon where she first began transmission.
A plaque outside her childhood home in Suresnes says:
Here lived Noor Inayat Khan 1914–44
Called Madeleine in the Resistance
Shot at Dachau
Radio Operator for the Buckmaster network
A leafy square in Suresnes has been named ‘Cours Madeleine’ after her and every year on Bastille Day – 14 July – a military band plays outside Fazal Manzil on the rue de la Tuilerie, remembering the sacrifice of the young Indian woman who gave her life for France and freedom.
Ten days after the announcement of Noor’s George Cross in April 1949, Amina Begum died. She had never quite recovered from the news of Noor’s death. It had weakened her physically and mentally. Vilayat, carrying the burden of the family on his young shoulders, had brought Amina back to Paris. It was as if she had clung to life just to hear the posthumous honour of her daughter and to return to the house she had set up with Inayat Khan all those years ago.
Fazal Manzil was the same when they returned, nearly seven years after they had left it. The war had taken its toll but it was still home. It had been preserv
ed by their friends and neighbours and the uncles who had stayed back in France. Noor’s harp was returned to Fazal Manzil, where it joined Inayat Khan’s memorabilia.
Noor’s achievements become even more important today, sixty years after the war, when we see her as a Muslim woman of Indian origin who was prepared to make the highest sacrifice for Britain. Though committed to Indian independence, she had no doubts about supporting the Allied war effort against Germany. At a time when the Indian freedom struggle was reaching its peak with the Quit India movement of 1942, she was applying for a commission at the RAF, giving her frank views about India, her support for the freedom struggle and the reasons she was keen to support England in the war. She would back England during the war and back the freedom struggle after the war. Her brother Hidayat was convinced that if she had lived, her next cause would have been Indian independence.17
In prison Noor stuck to her story of being Nora Baker. There are reports that the Germans treated her worse than others because of her dark skin, but she bore it all with dignity, never betraying her colleagues or giving out any information about her organisation.
In the end, Noor’s monkeys did cross the bridge. They escaped from the wicked king and found the road to freedom. On a slightly chilly September morning in a bleak death camp in Germany, Noor knelt down and made the ultimate sacrifice. Today on the site, just near the crematorium at Dachau, where the ashes of over 30,000 victims lie buried, the simple flower garden symbolises her gift to the free world.
APPENDIX I
Circuits linked to Prosper
Name
Code Name
Cover Name
Cinema/Phono
Spy Princess Page 25