Women Wartime Spies

by Ann Kramer

  Chapter 7

  Missing

  ‘There now remains only the very slightest hope that your daughter may still be found alive.’

  VERA ATKINS, LETTER TO YOLANDE BEEKMAN’S MOTHER, 22 DECEMBER 1944

  The summer of 1943 had been disastrous for SOE’s French section, with many agents betrayed and captured. Later it would be established that the Gestapo in Paris knew almost everything there was to know about F section – and the Prosper network in particular. After the war, and even before its end, information emerged, which proved that, working from their base at Avenue Foch, German wireless operators were playing a ‘radio game’ with London, using captured agents’ radios and codes to continue sending transmissions and receiving valuable information, supplies and money in return. However as Allied plans for the invasion of Normandy advanced, there was increasing pressure on SOE to find, train up and send agents into France to arm and organize the Resistance to carry out sabotage in advance of the Allied troops. In February 1944 SOE sent a team of three into France. They were France Antelme (organizer of the Bricklayer network) a French-Mauritian and very experienced SOE agent who had already done two missions in occupied France and had managed to escape the Prosper round-ups, his wireless operator Lionel Lee and Madeleine Damerment (code name Martine) who was considered to be one of the best couriers available at that point and who was given the cover name Martine Jacqueline Duchateau.

  Madeleine Damerment was a remarkable young woman from a courageous and patriotic background, which no doubt influenced her decision to join SOE. Photographs show her as an attractive, fresh-faced young woman. In many ways she and her family continued the tradition of local family-based Resistance networks which were a feature of networks like La Dame Blanche during the First World War. Madeleine was born in the Pas de Calais in 1917 and named after her mother, Madeleine. Her father, Charles Eugene, was head postmaster in Marquette, just outside Lille; her mother, Madeleine Louise (née Godin) according to Madeleine’s niece – also named Madeleine after her aunt – was the driving force and ‘fighter’ of the family. Madeleine was the middle of three sisters; her eldest sister was Jeannine and Charline was the youngest. After doing well at school, Madeleine worked in the telephone service in Lille as a clerk. Well before she joined the SOE she had already been living a dangerous existence working with the French Resistance.

  When war began in 1939, Jeannine was living in the South of France with her husband and a young baby, and Charline was sent to stay with them. Following the German occupation of France in 1940, Madeleine and her parents became actively involved in the French Resistance. Initially her mother helped by openly providing Allied prisoners of war with food and clothing, something that she forcefully persuaded the German guards to let her do, but subsequently and secretly her parents hid Allied airmen in their house. Madeleine, working with a Resistance network set up by Albert Guerisse, helped smuggle them to safety along an established escape route, escorting them to Marseilles and Toulouse from where the local organization sent them through Spain and back to England. On one occasion, Madeleine heard that the Gestapo were making enquiries about her so she thought it wise to escape into unoccupied France, where she stayed with her sister and a friend in Toulouse. Her family managed to smuggle letters through to her telling her she was no longer a suspect so Madeleine returned to Lille from where she continued with her Resistance activities. She also took her younger sister back with her to Lille; according to Madeleine’s niece, ‘she headed back up through France to go from Free France to occupied France across a minefield at night’ and also, to Charline’s surprise, hid for one night in a brothel in Paris. Charline was smuggled across the checkpoint in the boot of a doctor’s car, ‘the doctor had a practice that straddled the checkpoint and he was a very brave man. He was used to taking people the other way but on that occasion he had a teenager in the boot of his car. I don’t know if my aunt normally went across in the boot of a car or varied the route, but on that occasion she walked across the border’, mingling with a group of French workers. According to the family’s accounts, Madeleine ‘had not been a factory worker and she always liked to keep her hands beautifully manicured so apparently a German soldier took her hand and said “Oh mademoiselle”. She took his hand and stroked it and said “I finish work at whatever” and she went through unchallenged. She was apparently very good looking.’

  Sympathetic neighbours, who knew perfectly well what was going on, warned the family if Germans were on their way, so that any Allied airmen in the house were told to get out through the back garden and hide until it was safe for them to return. But eventually the family and the network were betrayed. According to Madeleine’s niece, ‘Inevitably, I suppose, they were eventually betrayed. My aunt was not in the house; they came for my grandparents and apparently a neighbour saw my aunt coming up the street and said, out of the side of their mouth “Don’t go home”; she understood, turned around and went down her own escape route, out through Spain and on to England.’ It was later established that the network had been betrayed by a Resistance worker named Harold Cole. Madeleine’s parents were arrested and imprisoned. Her father was deported and later died in a German concentration camp, her mother spent the remainder of the war in Loos prison near Lille, only managing to escape deportation to Germany because the railway lines were bombed. After the war, Madeleine’s mother was awarded the Légion d’honneur for her work with the Resistance. Madeleine’s younger sister Charline also survived the war but was arrested and probably tortured by the Gestapo before being released.

  Madeleine used the regular escape route to get out of France, travelling through Marseilles and Toulouse and arriving in Barcelona in March 1942. She reported to the British Consul and was taken to Madrid but subsequently arrested because her papers were not in order. She spent about two weeks in prison, experiencing ‘extremely rough and degrading’ treatment according to an SOE report and then in May was released. She reported to the British Embassy and finally arrived in England in June 1942, where she gave an account of her activities so far and volunteered to work for the SOE. According to the report, the work she had already done was ‘very risky as she was constantly out in the streets with British airmen and prisoners of war and had she been caught… the death penalty would have been unavoidable.’ Madeleine did not know exactly how many people she had helped to safety but said it was ‘a very considerable number’. Her report said that she was ‘extremely modest in her statements and looked upon the whole matter as something very natural. She said many Frenchwomen are willingly doing this sort of work every day.’ It was hardly surprising that she volunteered to be an agent for SOE.

  Like other agents, Madeleine went through the usual training course. The report on her paramilitary training said she was ‘aggressive’ in close combat, was a ‘fair shot with a pistol’, and very good at explosives and demolitions. She was also good and ‘painstaking’ at map reading. Her final report described her as ‘quite intelligent, practical, shrewd, quick and resourceful. She has imagination and cunning’, although the instructors felt she did not always work very hard. She was described as having a strong character and a vivacious personality but was also said to be temperamental at times and in need of ‘careful handling’.

  Given her previous experience with the Resistance in France, there can be little doubt that Madeleine would have been a first-class courier but in the event she did not get the opportunity. She was due to work with the Bricklayer circuit and on the night of 28 February 1944 she and the other two agents were parachuted into a field near the city of Chartres. Ignoring all signs to the contrary, Buckmaster had chosen to believe that Noor Inayat Khan was still at liberty and because transmissions were apparently coming through from her, the arrangements were made through her radio. However Noor had been arrested months before and the Germans were using her set and codes. When Madeleine and the other agents landed in France on 29 February 1944, the Gestapo were waiting for them and they were captured im
mediately. Madeleine was taken to Gestapo headquarters at the Avenue Foch and interrogated but refused to say anything. In May she was sent to prison in Germany. On 13 September 1944 she was shot at Dachau at the same time as Eliane Plewman and Yolande Beekman. She was 26 years old.

  Even though all evidence pointed to the fact that SOE circuits had been penetrated, more agents were sent into France ahead of the D-Day landings, among them Violette Szabo, Yvonne Basedon, a 22-yearold wireless operator who was parachuted into France in March 1944 and 20-year-old Sonya Butt, who was sent into France as a courier shortly before the Normandy landing.

  ‘She [Madeleine’s mother] was very, very proud of her, very proud of her. I think up to a point she felt that she did what she had to do, that she did her duty.’

  (Madeleine Brooke on her aunt, Madeleine Damerment.)

  Early reports

  Agents and Resistance fighters worked feverishly in the period before the Allied invasion, sabotaging railways lines and cutting German supply and communication links. The Allied invasion of France began on 6 June 1944 (D-Day); by 25 August Paris had been liberated and Allied forces were making their way south. The work of SOE’s French section was over; 118 agents were missing – thirteen of them women – but at this stage and in the post-invasion confusion no one knew which agents had survived and which had not. Discovering the truth would take a long time and there were many problems and mistakes along the way.

  In August 1944 Vera Atkins went to Paris and based herself at the Hotel Cecil hoping that F section agents might make their way there. The situation was extremely confused; information about the fate of SOE’s agents was sporadic and vague, not made easier by the fact that General de Gaulle wanted to obliterate all references to SOE. He wanted SOE out of France, preferring instead to promote the idea that the French had liberated themselves, without help from SOE. Information about agents did begin to trickle through and as it did, Vera Atkins updated the file cards she kept on all her agents. In June news had come through that Violette Szabo, Odette Sansom and Yvonne Baseden had been arrested and jailed in France. SOE hoped that with the liberation of France, their captured agents would be found in the jails but this did not happen. The jails were empty and agents had been moved. Rumours flew around that they had been shot in France but there was no proof and Vera Atkins was doubtful. A few agents, among them Pearl Witheringon, arrived at the base in Paris to great rejoicing and Vera Atkins tracked down another one of her surviving agents, Lisé de Baissac who was in a Normandy village, posing as a poor widow. One of the first women to be sent to France – as a courier and liaison officer – she had helped to set up a new circuit and had managed to survive the war. Around this time, Vera also learned that another of her agents, Muriel Byck, who had been sent to France in April 1944 as a wireless operator, had died of meningitis.

  Vera Atkins returned to London and information about agents began to reach her via letters sent to her or the War Office from people who had known agents in the field, who had sheltered them or shared prisons with them. She began to compile casualty reports listing agents’ names, where they had last been seen, the nature of casualty, source of information and so on. Most of them are still in personal files in The National Archives. In September, Vera Atkins heard of Yolande Beekman’s arrest from a woman named Mlle Gobeaux, who had worked in a pharmacy in St Quentin; Yolande had transmitted from the attic above. She had gone to the British Embassy in Paris with her information and also had provided a date for Yolande’s arrest: 13 January 1944. Disturbingly, Mlle Gobeaux reported that Yolande showed signs of ill treatment and had been taken to Paris by the Gestapo. Vera also received news that another of her agents, Cecily Lefort, was imprisoned in somewhere called Ravensbrück.

  ‘Yolande was brought by four Gestapo to the pharmacy. Source stated that her face was very swollen and she had obviously been very badly treated.’

  (Vera Atkins’ interview with Mlle Gobeaux.)

  In late September a bitter and angry but very detailed report came through from one of SOE’s agents, Marcel Rousset, who had been captured and taken to the Gestapo headquarters at the Avenue Foch, Paris. The building, which was at 82-86 Avenue Foch, was where many of the captured F section agents were taken. It was on four floors and headed by Hans Kieffer, by all accounts a plausible Gestapo officer who managed to ingratiate himself with a number of the agents and by so doing gained their trust. From evidence that emerged after the war, captured agents were shocked to find out how much information Kieffer already had about their activities and in some cases were persuaded to provide more, thinking it might save lives. One agent who never trusted Kieffer was Noor Inayat Khan. Avenue Foch also contained a wireless section run by Dr Josef Goetz, a coding expert. Captured agents were interrogated and tortured on the third floor. Rousset provided first-hand information about the torture room and mentioned a number of agents whom he had seen either at the Avenue Foch or another Gestapo prison in Place des États Unis. In all he had seen about sixteen F section agents, including John (‘Bob’) Starr, Gilbert Norman and France Antelme. Rousset confirmed that the Gestapo at the Avenue Foch had considerable information about F section and was angry that Buckmaster and others had failed to recognize how deeply Prosper had been infiltrated and therefore how much the agents’ safety had been compromised. Rousset confirmed that agents had been tortured and described how he, together with other agents, including a group of women from Fresnes prison, which was about 12 miles (19.3km) outside Paris, had been transported to Germany. Rousset himself had been imprisoned in Silesia but had managed to escape. The following month the British gained access to the Avenue Foch premises where they found a list of agents’ names written on a wall by the agents themselves: among them were those of Diana Rowden and Nora Baker (Noor Inayat Khan).

  Until this point Vera Atkins had continued to send the occasional so-called ‘good news’ letter to families of agents telling them that all was well but now she began to inform the families that their relatives were missing, believed to be prisoners of war. In 1945 as Allied troops pushed through Europe and began liberating the concentration camps, Vera Atkins determined that she had to discover the fate of her missing agents. With an ever-growing flood of refugees and prisoners of war, it was probable that those who had survived might not be found and she wanted lists of the agents’ names published and circulated to the various branches of the armed forces, the Red Cross and any other relevant organisations. She encountered considerable opposition, partly because SOE still did not want to break their secrecy and also because they did not want to advertise the fact that they had sent women into German-occupied territories. However in April 1945 SOE finally agreed that their missing agents’ names should be published and circulated. The horrors of the camps were emerging and evidence suggested that SOE agents had been taken to and killed in the concentration camps, some of them under Adolf Hitler’s infamous Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) decree of 1941, namely that enemies of the state, including spies, should be made to disappear without trace.

  As more details came in they were passed directly to Vera Atkins, who followed up every lead, sending urgent letters to the War Office, passing on any information that she had, and asking for further enquiries to be made so that she could have confirmation of details coming through to her. Families of the missing agents were also asking for information, and every request was passed to Vera Atkins, who checked and double-checked all facts. She also met with some of the relatives and passed on whatever details she had. In July 1944, for instance, she met with Vera Leigh’s step-brother, who apparently knew that his step-sister had been sent to France, and told him that Vera was missing but that she ‘had reason to believe that she was a prisoner’.

  Liberating the camps

  Russian forces had liberated the first concentration camps in Eastern Europe in 1944; from April 1945 British and American forces liberated concentration camps in Western Europe. The first to be liberated was Buchenwald, by American forces on 11 April
1945. Vera Atkins received early reports from the camp, which, backed up by a first-hand account from a Free French agent, Bernard Guillot, who had escaped the camp days before it was liberated, provided evidence that about seventeen male SOE agents had been shot or hanged at Buchenwald, among them two Canadians Frank Pickersgill and John MacAlister. Guillot, like Rousset, also stated that there were women among a transport that had left Paris for Germany, although the date that Guillot mentioned was earlier than the one given by Rousset. Guillot was shown photographs and identified Denise Bloch as one of the women. He did not however know what had happened to the women.

  On 15 April 1945, British forces liberated Bergen-Belsen and once again news of the atrocities that were uncovered flashed around the world. One of the women who survived was a Polish woman named Marie Moldenhawer, who had met a woman called Jacqueline Gauthier in Ravensbrück concentration camp and knew she had been sent to Belsen. Jacqueline Gauthier was Yvonne Rudellat, one of Vera’s missing agents. The information reached Yvonne Rudellat’s daughter, who in July 1945 wrote to SOE asking for more information. Vera Atkins immediately shot off letters to the Red Cross and the British army asking for more details saying that:

  ‘This woman went to the field for us in July 1942 and was arrested in June 1943. We know that she was eventually transferred to Ravensbrück camp and I have today heard that she was transferred from there to the camp at Bergen-Belsen at the beginning of March, 1945. It is believed that she was still there in April. We have the greatest interest in recovering her, not only because she is one of our oldest and best women agents, but also because she may be able to throw some light on the Prosper mysteries.’