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Spy Princess

Page 26

by Shrabani Basu

Noor Inayat Khan

  Madeleine

  Jeanne-Marie Renier

  Henri Garry

  Cinema

  Prosper

  Francis Suttill

  Prosper

  François Alfred

  Desprez

  Andrée Borrel

  Denise

  Gilbert Norman

  Archambaud

  Gilbert Aubin

  Jack Agazarian

  Marcel

  Lise de Baissac

  Odile

  Armel Guerne

  Gaspard

  Alfred Balachowsky

  Serge

  Pierre Culioli

  Adolfe

  Yvonne Rudellat

  Jacqueline

  Francine Agazarian

  Marguerite

  Jean Amps

  Tomas

  Bricklayer

  France Antelme

  Renaud

  Antoine Ratier

  Lise de Baissac

  Odile

  William Savy

  Alcide

  Farrier

  Henri Déricourt

  Gilbert

  Rémy Clément

  Marc

  Julienne Aisner

  Claire

  Satirist

  Octave Simon

  Badois

  Dutilleul

  Champagne

  Arthur de Montalambert

  Bistouri

  William Savy

  Alcide

  Chestnut

  Charles Grover Williams

  Sebastien

  Robert Benoist

  Lionel

  J.P. Wimille

  Robert Dowlen

  Achille

  Juggler

  Jean Worms

  Robin

  Gaston Cohen

  Justin

  Jacques Weil

  Jacques Atin

  Butler

  François Bouguennec

  Max Garel

  Marcel Rousset

  Leopold

  Marcel Fox

  Ernest

  Musician

  Gustave Biéler

  Guy

  Yolande Beekman

  Mariette

  Yvonne de Chauvigny

  Farmer

  Staggs

  Guy

  Michael Trotobas

  Sylvestre

  Archdeacon

  John Macalister

  Bertrand

  Frank Pickersgill

  Valentin

  Scientist

  Claude de Baissac

  David

  Lise de Baissac

  Odile

  Acrobat

  Diana Rowden

  Paulette

  John Starr

  Bob

  Carte

  Peter Churchill

  Raoul

  Henri Frager

  Paul/Louba

  Germaine Tambour

  Annette

  Madeleine Tambour

  Frager

  André Dubois

  Hercule

  Peter Churchill

  Raoul

  Donkeyman

  Henri Frager

  Paul/Louba

  APPENDIX II

  Agents and Resistance members who worked with Noor and the Prosper Circuit

  Though the tangled web of the SOE circuits often overlapped, it is beyond the scope of this book to cover the stories of the other agents. However, here is a brief look at the fate of the agents and Resistance workers who were linked to Noor and the Prosper circuit and who we have described in the previous chapters. Most were killed in concentration camps. Only a few lucky survivors lived to tell their stories.

  Francis Suttill – killed at Sachsenhausen

  Gilbert Norman – executed in Mauthausen, 6 September 1944

  Andrée Borrel – executed at Natzweiler

  Jack Agazarian – killed by firing squad at Flossenburg

  France Antelme – executed at Gross Rosen

  Henri Garry – executed at Buchenwald, September 1944

  Marguerite Garry – sent to Ravensbruck, returned 1945

  Charles Vaudevire – executed at Buchenwald

  Viennot – sent to Mauthausen, returned in 1945

  Paul Arrighi – sent to Mauthausen, returned in 1945

  Robert Gieules – deported to Germany, survived the war

  Arthur de Montalambert – executed at Mauthausen

  Octave Simon – executed at Gross Rosen

  William Savy – reached England safely, survived the war

  Germaine Aigrain – returned from prison, survived the war

  Raymond Andres – died in Avenue Foch in a mine accident after the Gestapo had left in August 1944

  Armel Guerne – escaped while being transported to Germany, survived the war

  Alfred Balachowsky – deported to Buchenwald, returned in 1945

  Eugène Vanderwynckt (Head of Grignon Agricultural College) – executed in Germany

  Marius Maillard (gardener at Grignon) – killed at Dora

  Robert Benoist – executed at Buchenwald

  Charles Grover Williams – died at Sachsenhausen

  John Macalister – executed at Buchenwald

  Frank Pickersgill – executed at Buchenwald

  Henri Frager – hung by a meat hook at Buchenwald

  Madeleine Damerment – executed at Dachau

  Yolande Beekman – executed at Dachau

  Diana Rowden – executed at Natzweiler

  Eliane Plewman – executed at Dachau

  Sonia Olschanezky – executed at Natzweiler

  Vera Leigh – executed at Natzweiler

  Cecily Lefort – died at Ravensbruck

  John Starr – escaped from Mauthausen

  Leon Faye – executed at Sonnenburg

  Brian Stonehouse – returned from Dachau

  Gustave Biéler – executed at Flossenburg

  Yvonne Rudellat – died in Belsen

  Jean Worms – executed at Flossenburg

  Julienne Aisner (Déricourt’s courier) – returned to London 5/6 April 1944

  Henri Déricourt – returned to London 8/9 February 1944

  APPENDIX III

  Chronology

  Date

  Events in Noor’s life

  Events in Europe

  Events in India

  1 January 1914

  Birth of Noor

  Unrest in Russia

  May 1914

  Inayat Khan leaves Moscow

  Tension in Europe

  28 July 1914

  First World War begins

  August 1914

  Inayat Khan moves to London

  January 1915

  Europe at war

  Gandhi returns to India from South Africa

  13 April 1919

  Jallianwala Bagh massacre

  28 June 1919

  Treaty of Versailles signed

  Spring 1920

  Inayat Khan moves back to France

  Gandhi begins Satyagraha resistance campaign

  5 February 1927

  Inayat Khan dies

  April 1930

  Gandhi goes on Salt March

  April 1931

  Noor joins École Normale de Musique

  Autumn 1931

  Gandhi attends Second Round Table Conference in London

  30 January 1933

  Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany

  11-12 March 1938

  The Reich annexes Austria in the Anschluss

  9/10 November 1938

  Noor publishing stories in Le Figaro

  Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass, when German Jews were attacked by the Nazis)

  15 March 1939

  Germany invades Czechoslovakia

  Summer 1939

  Noor’s Twenty Jataka Tales published

  Germany and Italy announce formal alliance; Germany and USSR sign non-aggression pact

  1 September 1939

  G
ermany invades Poland

  3 September 1939

  Britain, New Zealand, Australia and France declare war on Germany

  10 May 1940

  Winston Churchill forms coalition government in Britain. Germany begins aggression against Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg

  28 May 1940

  Belgium surrenders to Germany

  5 June 1940

  Noor and family leave Paris

  9 June 1940

  Norway surrenders

  17 June 1940

  Pétain declares Armistice; De Gaulle leaves for Britain

  18 June 1940

  Noor wants to help

  De Gaulle broadcasts war effort from London rallying Free French

  28 June 1940

  British government recognises De Gaulle as leader of Free French

  10 July 1940

  Battle of Britain begins

  16 July 1940

  SOE is born

  19 November 1940

  Noor enlists in WAAF

  2 March 1941

  Germany attacks Bulgaria

  6 April 1941

  Germany attacks Yugoslavia and Greece

  5/6 May 1941

  First SOE agent George Bégué drops into France

  Summer 1941

  Subhas Bose begins recruiting Indian prisoners of war in Germany to join his Indian National Army in the fight for independence from the British. Meets Ribbentrop

  7 December 1941

  Japan attacks Pearl Harbor

  8 December 1941

  USA, Britain declare war on Japan

  14 June 1942

  Noor’s ‘The Fairy and the Hare’ broadcast on BBC Children’s Hour

  8 August 1942

  Congress leaders launch Quit India movement

  28 August 1942

  Noor attends RAF interview for Commission

  All top Indian leaders in jail

  November 1942

  Noor attends interview for SOE

  Prosper circuit building up in Paris

  February 1943

  Noor signs Official Secrets Act

  Bose’s movements watched closely by SIS and IPI (Indian Political Intelligence) at Bletchley. His submarine journey monitored by British intelligence

  Gandhi begins three-week fast against British violence against demonstrators. On 8 February Bose sails in a submarine organised by the Germans to reach Japan

  February 1943

  Bengal famine caused bydiversion of food to feed troops leads to three millions dead over three years (1942-4)

  16/17 June 1943

  Noor flown in by Lysander

  21 June 1943

  Cullioli, Rudellat, Macalister and Pickersgill arrested

  23 June 1943

  Norman, Borrel arrested

  24 June 1943

  Suttill arrested

  1 July 1943

  Worms and Guerne arrested, Grignon staff arrested

  2 July 1943

  Prof. Balachowsky arrested

  19 July 1943

  Antelme leaves

  22/23 July 1943

  Bodington and Agazarian return to Paris

  30 July 1943

  Agazarian arrested

  31 July 1943

  Robert Dowlen arrested

  2 August 1943

  Maurice Benoist, Grover Williams arrested

  16/17 August 1943

  Bodington returns to London

  19/20 August 1943

  Robert Benoist returns to London

  7 September 1943

  Rousset arrested

  29 September 1943

  Gieules arrested

  13 October 1943

  Noor arrested

  26 November 1943

  Noor sent to Pforzheim

  29 February 1944

  Antelme, Madeleine Damerment and Lionel Lee arrested

  6 June 1944

  Normandy Invasions

  6 July 1944

  Diana Rowden, Sonia Olschanezky, Andrée Borrel, Vera Leigh executed at Natzweiler camp

  17 August 1944

  Gestapo move out of Avenue Foch. Last trainload of Jews leaves France for Auschwitz

  26 August 1944

  De Gaulle heads parade from Arc de Triomphe to Notre Dame

  13 September 1944

  Noor, Eliane Plewman, Madeleine Damerment, Yolande Beekman executed at Dachau

  26 January 1945

  Soviet troops enter Auschwitz

  29 April 1945

  Dachau liberated

  8 May 1945

  VE Day. Germans surrender

  Subhas Bose’s Indian National Army surrenders in Rangoon

  15 August 1945

  VJ Day. Japan surrenders after bombs on Hiroshima (6 Aug) and Nagasaki (8 Aug)

  18 August 1945

  Subhas Bose dies in air crash

  November 1945

  Trial of INA officers begins in Delhi leading to an outcry

  16 January 1946

  Noor posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre

  18 February 1946

  Royal Navy Mutiny in India

  April 1946

  Stewart Menzies, head of SIS, and heads of Indian intelligence agree to continue cooperation

  2 June 1946

  Governor General Lord Wavell takes direct control over Indian intelligence - IB and IPI

  15 July 1947

  Britain in financial crisis. Hugh Dalton, former head of SOE, now Chancellor of the Exchequer, tries to control it

  8-9 August 1947

  Plans for partition of India revealed leading to riots

  13 August 1947

  Hugh Dalton retires ill to Wiltshire as currency crisis continues

  15 August 1947

  India wins independence

  5 April 1949

  Noor posthumously awarded the George Cross

  APPENDIX IV

  Indians awarded the Victoria Cross and the George Cross 1939–1945

  Two and a half million Indian soldiers volunteered for the Second World War. It was the largest volunteer army in recorded history and suffered the greatest casualties. They served in fields far away from the sub-continent in Italy, Africa and the Far East and 28 VCs were awarded to members of the Indian army during the course of the war. There follows a list, plus a brief outline of the reason for the award.

 

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