Churchill's White Rabbit
Page 2
There are other letters, and SOE acquires them as soon as they can in order to analyse them. Agents are taught secret codes that can be innocently dropped into letters to family should they be caught, and Shelley’s letters are scrutinised for any clues. There is a feeling that SOE is clutching at very thin straws and their strained desperation even seeps into their analysis reports.
We are sorry, but [the letter to Mrs Thomas] does not contain a message according to the innocent letter conventions arranged here with [Shelley].
[However] it would seem that an investigation of the names and addresses [mentioned in the letter], and possibly replies, containing hidden messages on [Shelley’s] conventions might achieve good results.1
SOE is beginning to piece together a timeline of Shelley’s whereabouts during his absence. He has left clues wherever he can to let them know that he is still alive – scratched missives on walls, short messages, even contact with other British prisoners – but while they can pursue his route, SOE can do nothing to bring him home: that is up to the man himself.
But why is Shelley so important to SOE that they are pursuing him so diligently? Other agents vanish from official papers when captured, only being vaguely mentioned in a report about a more favoured agent. The files on Shelley are a bumper crop of information on one very special agent, but what made him so important? Who was he and why was his role so significant to SOE?
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Note
1. Extract from interrogation report from Forest Frederick Edward Yeo-Thomas’ SOE personnel file.
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The Secrets of a Tailor
SHELLEY’S REAL NAME WAS Forest Frederick Edward Yeo-Thomas, something of a mouthful, but a name that incorporated his French and British origins. Born on 17 June 1907 at a nursing home in Holborn, London, Yeo-Thomas was a child of two nationalities. Though British citizens, his parents, John and Daisy, spent the majority of their time in Dieppe, a tradition that went back to Forest’s grandfather, John Yeo, who had abandoned South Wales in the 1850s to travel to Dieppe and marry his sweetheart, Miss Thomas. The move had been spurred on by disapproving parents and to spite them further John incorporated his new wife’s surname into his own – the Yeo-Thomases were born.
The first Mr and Mrs Yeo-Thomas settled into Dieppe life, with John selling high-grade Welsh coal to the railways and securing his fortune; by 1895 they were so accepted within the community that grandfather Yeo-Thomas was able to form and become honorary president of the Dieppe Football Club, as well as becoming vice-president of the Dieppe Golf Club. Both his son and grandson were known as good amateur football players and in the 1960s players in the Dieppe area were still competing for a Yeo-Thomas Cup.
Despite being well integrated into the local French community Forest’s family still had strong British roots: they were ex-pats with firm loyalty to their king and country. A large photograph of Edward VII presided over mealtimes, inspiring obedience from Forest, who learned to sing ‘God Save the King’ as soon as he was able. When the king died his effigy in France was draped with black and the household remained in a state of mourning, talking only in whispers, for several weeks.
The influence of France could not be ignored, however. Forest spoke to his father in French, and it was natural that a child born into a foreign culture would tend to pick up its habits and quirks.
Forest’s parents chose to correct this by giving their son an education in England so Forest was sent to Westcliff School in Sussex, a typical boarding school and terribly English in its attitudes and methods. John hoped that this would instil some Britishness into his young son, but Forest was not the doting patriot that his father was, and Westcliff seemed totally alien to him. Switching cultures, despite the stern gaze of Edward VII looking over him since birth, was impossible for the young boy. He refused his school porridge in disgust and snuck out of his dormitory at night to sit on a nearby railway embankment to watch the trains. No doubt he was punished for his excursions, but Forest already had the stubborn streak that had taken his grandfather from Wales to France, and no beating could take that away from him. Fortunately his parents saw sense (or realised that it was hopeless) after a year, and he happily returned to France.
However, Forest’s French life was changing too. In 1908 a brother, Jack, was born and quickly became John’s favourite, pushing Forest further and further away. Forest attended the College de Dieppe in 1910, enjoying its naval links, before going to the Lycée Condorcet and the University of Paris. Forest was already favouring his French side and in Paris he studied history, eventually taking his Bachelier ès Lettres. His loyalties were now truly divided, with France’s influence being the strongest. The gulf between him and his father only increased his independence and made him favour French interests over British.
Forest may have felt awkward with his strange dual life, in essence living in two countries, but that would change with the First World War. The first advance of the Germans served to draw France and Britain together to stand against a common foe and suddenly being Anglo-French was a boon, rather than a disadvantage.
Naturally John Yeo-Thomas joined the British Army as soon as he could and quickly became a staff officer due to his fluency in French. Daisy also volunteered for the British Army as a nurse. While Forest felt proud of his family’s contribution, he could not have been unaware of the strain the war work put on his parents’ already fragile marriage. In fact Daisy and John were becoming virtual strangers to each other, a situation that only worsened when Jack contracted meningitis and died in 1917. John, devastated by the loss of his adored son, blamed Daisy for being too occupied with her war duties to properly care for the boy. In the bleak atmosphere that penetrated the family home, Forest saw one way out – joining the army.
His father was not oblivious to this desire and, understandably desperate to protect his remaining son, contacted both the French and British recruiting offices in Paris to make it clear that if a young Forest Yeo-Thomas were to arrive he was to be turned away for being underage. Forest was only thwarted for a short time, however.
The entrance of the Americans into the war gave Forest the opportunity he needed. The American troops were under-manned and under-equipped. Desperate for troops, their recruiting examinations were minimal, to say the least, and in late 1917 Forest joined up under the name of Pierre Nord, declaring he was 19, despite barely looking his real age of 16. He was accepted, and so Forest enjoyed his first success at subterfuge, which would become such an important part of his life later on.
Anyone who has even a passing knowledge of the First World War will realise the horrors that Yeo-Thomas was marching into – he could hardly have been unaware himself – but Forest was eager and determined. He was also lucky, which was a trait that would carry him through a second war. By 1917 the war was coming to its conclusion, not that the ordinary soldiers realised this, and life in and out of the trenches, the fears of no-man’s-land and the horrific death tolls seemed just as great that year as any year before. But Germany was weakening, and in another year they would be defeated and signing an armistice that would become the basis for grievances that would spur more conflict.
What Forest did in that intervening year is rather hazy. On the M19 questionnaire that he filled in when being assessed to be an SOE agent, he stated that he was in the US Army from 1917–22 and during that time visited Germany, Austria, Poland, Russia, the Balkans, Turkey and the USA. After the First World War it is thought that he joined an American Legion set up to assist the Polish in their fight against the Russians.1
Whether that is the case or not, Forest did end up at the battle for the city of Zhitomir and was captured by the Russians. As a foreign national he was automatically sentenced to death, but made his first impressive escape by strangling his guard and fleeing through the Balkans and into Turkey. He finally arrived in the USA to spend two more years in the army before leaving, as he stated on the M19 form, ‘to go into business’.
There
is no doubt that this was a fabrication on Forest’s part and whatever his real reasons for leaving the army were, he kept them close to his chest. In reality, Forest returned to a France crippled by war, where many ex-servicemen found themselves unemployed and in desperate circumstances. Forest was no different: his parents had separated and John was involved with his former secretary (there was never a greater cliché) and was struggling to make ends meet. Some of his business investments had been tied up with Russia and after the Bolshevik revolution these had simply disappeared. There was little he could offer his son, and Forest drifted, at one point ending up selling bootlaces and matches in London. For the history graduate and war veteran it was demeaning.
Forest’s fortunes seemed to turn when his father managed to get him an apprenticeship with Rolls-Royce in 1922, but the economic climate saw even the mighty car manufacturer struggle, and Forest was let go.
Forest made another complete change of direction and went into accountancy. This seemed to suit him and for a time he was successful in the banking industry, serving as a senior cashier before moving on to be a business manager.
He needed the money his new job brought because in about 1924–25 he met Lillian Margaret Walker, a British/Danish national raised in France. He fell madly in love with her and they were married on 12 September 1925, and it wasn’t long before Forest’s first daughter, Evelyn Daisy Erica, was born in 1927. In 1930, a year after his parents had divorced and John Yeo-Thomas had finally married his secretary, a second daughter, Lillian May Alice, was born. In later records Forest’s daughters and wife would fade from memory and were virtually eradicated from military record, but in those hazy post-war days Forest seemed to have found some form of contentment.
Then, rather remarkably, he changed direction yet again. Giving up his banking career, he moved first to become an assistant general manager at Compagnie Industrielle des Pètroles, then made an even more radical change by joining the fashion house of British-born designer Edward Molyneux. It can only be imagined what pressures caused the change. France’s cracking political façade and the exhausted economy probably made a move into a thriving business seem sensible, but it is still interesting to wonder what Forest, a man who could strangle a Russian guard and partially build a Rolls-Royce, could have had to offer a fashion designer.
Molyneux must have liked his new general manager however, as Forest remained with the company until the outbreak of the next war. In the meantime he kept up his interests in sports by boxing, competing as a flyweight or bantamweight, and writing for the British magazine Boxing under the anglicised name Eddie Thomas. He was successful enough to hold a part share in a gymnasium and for the time being Forest looked set to follow a contented and successful career in the fashion world.
But all was not so rosy in the world of Yeo-Thomas. France was in turmoil as successive ineffectual governments crippled its economy, and Europe’s desperate fear of another war was leading to political appeasement towards the belligerent Germany, which was turning into a frightening power under the auspices of a hitherto unknown leader called Adolf Hitler.
While his business life was stable, Forest’s marriage was disintegrating. In a strange echo of his parents’ disastrous union, Forest and Lillian found themselves increasingly incompatible, and this little domestic war resulted in separation in 1936. Forest moved back to his father’s house, now run by his new stepmother.
Forest regularly met with Lillian to arrange money for his daughters. Divorce seemed the inevitable course for them, but even on this they could not agree. Forest was fearful he would be cast in the role of scapegoat and would lose access to his two young daughters, so when Lillian pushed for it he held back. Ironically when their roles were reversed and Forest sought divorce, Lillian was the one to oppose it, and as war loomed in 1939 they were still at an impasse. To add to his burdens, on 17 July 1939 Daisy passed away and Forest had to deal with arranging her funeral. His only consolation was that his mother would not see France crumble into war again.
The relative happiness Forest had experienced in the 1920s and early ’30s was now truly vanishing. The invasion of Poland thrust France and Britain back into conflict with Germany yet again, and for the fiery-natured Forest sitting on the sidelines was not an option. As war was declared he was preparing to sign up with whoever would take him but, just like in the First World War, it wasn’t so simple to find a unit that wanted him.
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Note
1. Report by B Group to RF, dated 27 February 1945, the National Archives.
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A Heart for Conflict
WAR BROKE OUT IN a Europe optimistically unprepared for conflict. Being forced to face reality also meant being forced to take stock of what they had and what they didn’t. One major service that had been neglected after the war was the intelligence division, but that was just the tip of a very large iceberg. Faith in appeasement had left Britain in a state of unreadiness and now it was necessary to pool what resources the country had and recall men who had experience from the previous conflict.
In France the situation was similar: disbelief at the dramatic turn of events seemed to be staying military hands, much to the frustration of Forest, who expected to be snapped up as a keen First World War veteran and volunteer. His aim was to join the British Army, but his first attempts via the British Embassy in the rue du Faubourg St Honoré ended in failure as no volunteers were being accepted. Annoyed, but not thwarted, he tried the French Foreign Legion, but they would not take on a British citizen, even if he did consider himself French.
It seemed that no one wanted Forest’s help, but he was not discouraged and returned to the British Embassy and made himself a nuisance to the air attaché until he finally accepted him as a volunteer driver under the condition that he supply his own car and petrol. Forest hovered uncomfortably between civilian and military status; he was neither one nor the other and his frustration was boiling over yet again.
All this would change on 26 September when he was finally accepted into the RAF as Aircraftman 2nd Class 504896, but his excitement quickly returned to disappointment when he was bluntly told that he would be serving as an interpreter as he was too old to fly. The irony that in a few short years he would be parachuting into rural France would probably not have impressed the RAF recruiting board. Forest, who had kept up his boxing and regularly sparred four to eight rounds with younger men, was angered by the implication, but the truth was that no one was particularly desperate for men as the war looked likely to be over before it had begun.
Perhaps the biggest problem was the desire not to fight that many felt and which acted as a psychological barrier to aggressive action. Britain and France, barely recovered from the First World War, did not want to enter into another conflict and there was a distinct impression of heels being dragged even as British forces crossed to France to support the defensive Maginot Line. Allied instinct felt that a quick, forceful assault, coupled with a blockade of German shipping, would result in sending the old Huns running back to where they came from. Unfortunately these weren’t the old Huns anymore, and strategies that might have worked a generation ago were now woefully out-dated. A hint might have come from the Germans’ easy defeat of Poland, but those in charge chose to be dangerously optimistic and the war effort crawled along rather than speeding to meet the threat. This period would become known as the Phoney War, the opening rounds when Britain and France both failed to realise the German might they faced and the risks ahead.
Forest was in the midst of this apathetic war. His role within the RAF seemed little better than when he was a volunteer driver and escorting VIPs and diplomats around and did nothing for his need to get into the action. But there was no real action. Even when Forest managed to get onto the Advanced Air Striking Force at Reims, which was supposed to be targeting Germany, he was disappointed to discover that they were not allowed to do anything unless the Germans hit first.
Forest had drifted into a hazy
world of harmonious inactivity. The Reims authorities were as confused about the situation as their counterparts in Paris were, and the Phoney War had cast a fog over their bureaucratic preparations. Forest was posted to the interpreters’ pool, but when he arrived no one could tell him where he was supposed to go, so he found himself a hotel room and hoped to be able to locate his office in the morning. He was in luck, for the next day he bumped into an old friend, Sergeant Albertella, who was able to direct him to the Château Polignac where the interpreters were being housed. When he reached it he was in for a further surprise as he had been unexpectedly promoted to acting sergeant. This triumph was unfortunately tainted, as Forest was still acting as an ununiformed interpreter to senior staff officers. This made his position among the other officers untenable at times and Forest’s dislike for incompetent authority quickly became apparent. To one squadron leader who asked him to summon a pilot officer with the phrase ‘send that sod out there in’, he replied that he would be happy to oblige when the request was ‘properly expressed’, to which he got the response: ‘Of course, you’re not an officer and you can’t expect the same respect as I can.’ On another occasion, when this same man learned that Forest had been employed in the fashion industry, he announced: ‘My God, what is the RAF coming to!’1
Worse was that the air attaché’s original conditions that Forest pay all his own expenses still held true. Forest’s pockets were soon empty as he tried to keep up with his superiors. In an effort to recoup something, he collected receipts and sent them to the RAF for payment. Conveniently for the paymasters, they were lost in the invasion of France before they could be paid and they refused to listen to any further requests on the subject from Forest without seeing duplicate receipts. Even in war bureaucracy gives no quarter.