Women Wartime Spies

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Women Wartime Spies Page 1

by Ann Kramer




  First published in Great Britain in 2011

  by Pen & Sword Military

  an imprint of

  Pen & Sword Books Ltd

  47 Church Street

  Barnsley

  South Yorkshire

  S70 2AS

  Copyright © Ann Kramer 2011

  ISBN 978 1 844680 58 0

  eISBN 978 1 844683 82 6

  The right of Ann Kramer to be identified as Author of this Work has been

  asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is

  available from the British Library.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

  form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying,

  recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission

  from the Publisher in writing.

  Typeset in Palatino.

  Printed in the UK by

  CPI UK.

  Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the imprints of Pen & Sword Aviation,

  Pen & Sword Family History, Pen & Sword Maritime, Pen & Sword Military,

  Wharncliffe Local History, Pen & Sword Select, Pen & Sword Military Classics,

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  Contents

  List of Plates

  Acknowledgments

  Timeline

  Introduction

  Chapter 1 Women and War

  Chapter 2 Spy Paranoia and The First World War

  Chapter 3 Spying Under Occupation

  Chapter 4 Backroom Women

  Chapter 5 Special Operations Executive

  Chapter 6 Behind Enemy Lines

  Chapter 7 Missing

  Chapter 8 Setting the Record Straight

  Appendix

  References

  Bibliography

  Edith Cavell.

  Propaganda poster which exploited the execution of Nurse Edith Cavell by the Germans.

  Detail from the memorial statue showing Edith Cavell’s last words.

  Edith Cavell’s memorial statue, St Martin’s Lane, London.

  Mata Hari: 1906 image, wearing only breast covering and jewellery.

  Mata Hari (1906 postcard).

  Mata Hari: execution 1917 – probably a reconstruction, maybe around 1920.

  ‘Kill that File’ – chasing after a recalcitrant file in the Registry, 1919. The cartoon appeared in the programme for the Hush Hush Review, an MI5 review show, 1919.

  Eager Girl Guides who worked as messengers for MI5 during the First World War. The image is taken from Outbursts from Waterloo(se) House, book of caricatures printed and privately circulated towards end of WWI. The original caption reads: ‘The Electric Bells having broke, the G.G.’s (not Grenadier Guards) sit outside Maj. D.’s door in case he wants them.’

  Violette Szabo. Imperial War Museum

  Blue plaque on Violette Szabo’s home, Burnley Road, London. Thanks to Simon Adams

  Stockwell children painted this mural of Violette Szabo in 2001. Thanks to Simon Adams

  Violette Szabo, bronze bust, Albert Embankment, London. Author’s photo

  In memory of SOE: detail from Violette Szabo memorial, London. Author’s photo

  Odette Sansom. Imperial War Museum

  Yvonne Cormeau. Imperial War Museum

  Noor Inayat Khan. Imperial War Museum

  Noor Inayat Khan. Personal file HS 9/836/5 The National Archives

  Madeleine Damerment. With thanks to Madeleine Brooke for permission to use

  Croix de Guerre, Légion d’honneur & Médaille de la Résistance awarded to Madeleine Damerment. Thanks to Madeleine Brooke for permission to use

  Letter from Vera Atkins to Madeleine Damerment’s mother informing her that despite their ongoing efforts there was still no news of her daughter. Thanks to Madeleine Brooke for permission to use

  WTS (FANY) Memorial, St Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge. With thanks to St Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge.

  In 1976 this memorial was unveiled at Dachau in memory of the SOE women killed there: Yolande Beekman, Noor Inayat Khan, Eliane Plewman, Madeleine Damerment.

  Vera Atkins, intelligence officer SOE French section. From personal files, The National Archives HS 9/59/2

  Every attempt has been made to contact the copyright owners of quoted materials. Should any references have been omitted, please supply details to the publisher, who will endeavour to correct the information in subsequent editions.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks are due to the following:

  Helen Currie for permission to quote from her experiences of working with Tunny machines at Bletchley Park.

  Cynthia Waterhouse for permission to quote extracts from her private papers held in the Imperial War Museum, Documents Department.

  Madeleine Brooke for permission to quote from an interview with her about her aunt, Madeleine Damerment, and for permission to photograph memorabilia belonging to her family.

  The History Press for permission to quote ‘The Life that I have’ from Between Silk and Cyanide, Leo Marks, The History Press, 2009.

  Random House Group for permission to quote from Open Secret, Stella Rimington, published by Hutchinson, 2001. Reproduced by permission of the Random House Group.

  The Imperial War Museum for permission to reproduce photographs of Violette Szabo, Odette Sansom, Yvonne Cormeau and Noor Inayat Khan.

  Timeline

  1903

  Erskine Chalder’s The Riddle of the Sands is published.

  1909

  Britain’s first Secret Service Bureau set up.

  1907

  First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) formed.

  1911

  Official Secrets Act passed, Britain.

  1914-1918

  First World War.

  1914

  4 August: First World War begins.

  8 August: The Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) passed.

  9 August: Aliens Restriction Act (ARA) passed.

  1915

  Hamil Grant publishes Spies and Secret Service, a history of espionage.

  William Le Queux’s Spies of the Kaiser is published; helps to stimulate spy paranoia in Britain.

  September: German-born Louise ‘Lizzie’ Wertheim arrested, charged with spying for Germany and imprisoned.

  12 October: British nurse Edith Cavell is charged with espionage and executed by firing squad in Belgium. Leads to international outrage.

  1916

  1 April: Belgian patriot Gabrielle Petit charged with espionage and executed, Belgium.

  June: La Dame Blanche resistance and espionage network formed, Belgium and France.

  1917

  January: Belgian patriot Elise Grandprez charged with espionage and executed, Belgium.

  July: Dutch-born Mata Hari is charged with being a German spy.

  12 September: Emilie Schattermann and Leonie Rameloo shot for spying, Belgium.

  15 October: Mata Hari shot by firing squad, Paris, France.

  1919-38 Inter-war years

  1939-45 Second World War

  1939

  1 September: Germany invades Poland.

  3 September: Britain, the Commonwealth and France declare war on Germany.

  1940

  17 June: Fall of France; Pétain declares Armistice.<
br />
  18 June: General de Gaulle broadcasts to France from London.

  16 July: Special Operations Executive (SOE) is set up, Britain, with orders to ‘set Europe ablaze’.

  1941

  May: Frenchman Georges Bégué is the first SOE agent to be parachuted into occupied France. In July, SOE agent Brian Stonehouse is parachuted in.

  December: British government introduces conscription for women.

  1942

  First women SOE agents are sent into France.

  24 September: Andrée Borrel and Lise de Baissac are parachuted into France.

  31 October: Odette Sansom and George Starr arrive near Cannes, France, by boat.

  1943

  16 April: Odette Sansom and Peter Churchill arrested.

  13 May: Vera Leigh and three other SOE agents arrive by Lysander near Tours, France.

  16 June: Diana Rowden, Noor Inayat Khan and Cecily Lafort arrive by air near Angers, France.

  20 June: Yvonne Rudellat meets SOE agents parachuted into France, all captured after skirmish with Germans.

  23 June: Andrée Borrell, Francis Suttill and Gilbert Norman arrested.

  15 September: Cecily Lefort arrested by Gestapo.

  18 September: Yolande Beekman, and agents Harry Peulevé and Harry Despaigne arrive in France by Lysander.

  13 October: Noor Inayat Khan arrested, Paris.

  30 October: Vera Leigh arrested, Paris. Taken to Fresnes Prison.

  18 November: Diana Rowden arrested and taken to 84 Avenue Foch. Interrogated for two weeks then taken to Fresnes.

  25 November: Noor Inayat Khan, with John Starr and Leon Faye, escape but are recaptured. Noor Inayat Khan sent to Germany.

  1944

  13 January: Yolande Beekman (and Gustave Bieler) arrested, Paris.

  28/9 February: Madeleine Damerment and two other agents parachuted into France and immediately arrested by Gestapo.

  2/3 March: Eileen Nearne lands in France.

  5 April: Lilian Rolfe dropped near Orléans, France.

  29 April: Nancy Wake is parachuted into France.

  13 May: Vera Leigh, Andrée Borrel, Odette Sansom, Diana Rowden, Yolande Beekman, Eliane Plewman and Madeleine Damerment taken from Fresnes to 84 Avenue Foch, Paris. Sonya Olschanezky joins them. All moved to Karlsruhe, Germany.

  6 June: D-Day landings begin, Normandy, France.

  July: Eileen Nearne arrested.

  6 July: Diane Rowden, Vera Leigh, Andrée Borrel, Sonya Olschanezky taken to Natzweiler concentration camp, Alsace, France, injected with phenol and cremated. SOE agent Brian Stonehouse sees their arrival.

  6 July: Christine Granville parachuted into France, joins Jockey network.

  31 July: Lilian Rolfe arrested, taken to Fresnes prison; taken to Ravensbrück concentration camp, August.

  25 August: Allies liberate Paris; de Gaulle returns; victory parade 26 August.

  10 September: Yolande Beekman, Madeleine Damerment, Noor Inayat Khan and Eliane Plewman transferred to Dachau concentration camp.

  13 September: Yolande Beekman, Madeleine Damerment, Noor Inayat Khan and Eliane Plewman executed Dachau.

  1945

  27 January: Violette Szabo shot, Ravensbrück concentration camp.

  5 February: Lilian Rolfe executed and body cremated, Ravensbrück concentration camp.

  8 May: V-E Day, Germany surrenders. War in Europe ends.

  1946

  January: Vera Atkins goes to Germany.

  16 January: Noor Inayat Khan awarded Croix de Guerre posthumously. Special Forces Club established, London, for surviving SOE members.

  1948

  7 May: Memorial to members of the Women’s Transport Service or FANY who died during the Second World War unveiled St Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge. Includes the names of women who served with SOE.

  1975

  Plaque put up Dachau concentration camp in memory of Noor Inayat Khan, Yolande Beekman, Eliane Plewman and Madeleine Damerment; plaque also placed in Natzweiler crematorium dedicated to ‘Des quatre femmes Britanniques et Francaises parachutées exécutées dans ce camp’.

  2003

  Plaque uncovered Ravensbrück concentration camp.

  2011

  Memorial Trust for Noor Inayat Khan raises funds for memorial statue, Gordon Square, London.

  Introduction

  Women of Substance

  In September 2010 British newspapers and the BBC carried stories of a ‘brave hero spy’ who had died alone in her flat in Torquay aged 89. The woman was Eileen Nearne. She had lived the final years of her life as something of a recluse, so few of her neighbours knew anything about her or of her extraordinary past life. As details emerged it turned out that Eileen Nearne, who her niece described as a ‘very private and modest person’, had been one of the remarkable women recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War. Using a false identity she had been sent into enemy-occupied France where she acted as a wireless operator for five months, sending back more than a hundred coded messages to London. Captured by the Gestapo, she was interrogated and tortured but managed to survive – and ultimately escape from Ravensbrück concentration camp. In recognition of her importance, senior military officials attended her funeral and the eulogy was given by Adrian Stones, chairman of the Special Forces Club in Knightsbridge, London, the club that was founded after the Second World War for surviving members of the SOE.

  Perhaps it is not surprising that few people outside her specialist circle and immediate family knew very much about Eileen Nearne. Spying is by definition a secretive profession – a good spy passes unnoticed in a crowd – and very few women, or men for that matter, say much about what they are up to. It is also probably true to say that with some notable exceptions, most female spies or secret agents, from the courageous women of La Dame Blanche through to Noor Inayat Khan, have rarely received the recognition they deserve. There may be various reasons: women’s achievements are often ignored, forgotten or subsumed under those of men while the nature of the work itself is a hidden one. Either way the female spies who spring to most people’s minds are more likely to be women who have been immortalized through popular fiction and even legend.

  Ask anyone to name a woman spy and the answer is most likely to be Mata Hari. She is probably the best known of all women spies; her exotic lifestyle, sexual behaviour and tragic death in front of a firing squad in 1917 have become the stuff of legend, and have probably coloured perceptions of women spies ever since. And yet Mata Hari was probably not a spy at all, or, if she was, she was inept and naive and quite untypical of the women who have worked in the field of espionage and intelligence gathering.

  Even so, the image dies hard; only three months after Eileen Nearne was in the news, another woman made the headlines: Katia Zatuliveter, research assistant to Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock, who in December 2010 was alleged to be a Russian spy. Media images focused on her youth, blond hair and apparently raunchy lifestyle; she was being investigated by MI6 for possible connections to Russia’s foreign intelligence service, and certainly met the received image of a ‘typical’ woman spy, one that has been fostered and generated through popular fiction and writers of spy history for a very long time.

  It could be said that there are two major stereotypical images of women spies: the Mata Hari spy, who uses her sexuality to extract military and other secret information from unsuspecting men – a stereotype that reflects spying’s tag line ‘the world’s second oldest profession’, one assumes second only to prostitution – and who may well have been duped into espionage, perhaps by financial need or love, and the highly virtuous woman who dies heroically for love of her country. Edith Cavell, also of the First World War, is a prime example of this. She, it could be said, represents the complete reverse, all that is good in women as opposed to all that is evil. But it can also be argued that both these images were fostered for propaganda reasons, and that they reflected prevailing and deeply-held views of womanhood. Either w
ay the images belittle women’s true skills and courage in the field of espionage and certainly the reality for women who have worked as spies during wartime is quite different from the popular stereotypes.

  Although often seen as a male-dominated world, which it has been until women such as Stella Rimington helped to open the doors for women, espionage – the business of obtaining secret information from an enemy, particularly during wartime – has frequently involved women. During wartime women have played very significant roles in the secret war of intelligence gathering, whether working as undercover agents in the field, listening in to enemy intelligence, decoding secret information, or as resistance fighters, harrying an enemy while at the same time obtaining crucial military information. Some of their names, particularly those of women who worked with SOE, are quite well known; others such as the women who worked with spy networks in occupied Belgium and France during the First World War have all but been forgotten.

  Until about the Second World War, many male writers, such as Hamil Grant, who published a history of espionage in 1915, considered that women could never make good spies; Hamil Grant believed they were not capable of sustained patriotism, were too inclined to be knocked off course by romantic attachments and would not do the work without financial gain. On the other hand, there were those who considered that women were by nature duplicitous and therefore were to be automatically regarded with caution and suspicion during wartime in case they were spies. Other writers such as Richard Hannay or Ian Fleming continued with the stereotypes, trivializing or sexualizing the female spies in their novels, and making them subordinate to men.

 

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