Their train pulled in at the Pont de l’Arche station outside Rouen without anything untoward happening and as much to celebrate their safe arrival as to help ease his worries, Forest hopped off the train to visit the station buffet and order a beer for himself and Ryan. The station was busy and crowded, Forest ordered his drinks and fumbled in his pocket for his wallet. To his alarm it wasn’t there, fumbling in the other pocket he snapped out in English: ‘Where the hell is my money?’
The second the words were out of his mouth, Forest knew he had blundered. It would have been so easy at that moment for someone to overhear and betray him, or for a German to be nearby and be startled by the burst of English. Cringing, Forest looked about him. Luckily it seemed the bustle of the station had been his saving grace, as no one appeared to have heard or have taken notice. Still, it served as a reminder of how easy it could be to slip up, and all because of something so foolish as a momentarily misplaced wallet.
He returned to Ryan a little shaken but none the worse for his mistake, and turning to the smiling American it occurred to him how torturous this must be for the young man, knowing that a single spoken word could be his downfall. Could he even say yes and no without revealing his accent? Thankfully their journey was nearing its end; a local train took them on the last leg to Fleury-sur-Andelle. There they were met by a party of bicycles, their last transport before the Lysander collected them. Forest grimaced at memories of his last trip on a bicycle and Ryan uncomfortably mounted his with his fractured shoulder. Balancing suitcases as best they could (this time, fortunately, Passy was carrying genuine luggage and not a concealed W/T set!) they rode along the country lanes to Lyons-la-Forêt.
They arrived after dark and the village was quiet except for a small reception group keeping an eye out for the returning men. The Vinets greeted Passy and Brossolette as warmly as before and took them directly to their home; a neighbouring farmer took in Forest and the young American. The next 24 hours would be a tense time. Lysanders only came at night to avoid German patrols and they were scheduled for the following evening. During the day Forest and Ryan had to keep out of sight as there was no knowing if anyone who saw them might betray them, accidentally or deliberately. For Forest it was a chance to rest. For Ryan it was yet more torture for his exuberant nature. Throughout the day he struggled not to speak and would occasionally burst out loudly with a comment in his strong accent. More than once the farmer’s wife crossly ordered him to be silent.
At 10.30 p.m. Ryan and Forest were bundled into a van and hidden behind sacks of potatoes. It was an undignified journey along bumpy country roads and Ryan was uncomfortable with his shoulder, but he managed to hold his tongue, and luckily the subterfuge was not needed as no Germans stopped the van for inspection.
They were unloaded at the edge of a field. The moon was full and the grass in the field shimmered in the light. At the far side there was a copse of trees, which was to be Forest’s hiding place for the next few hours. Scuttling across the field with Ryan like a giant startled rabbit, Forest prayed that the Lysander would be on time and would not be spotted by the enemy. It wasn’t long before Passy and Brossolette joined them.
Forest lay on the damp floor of the copse and found his mind drifting from elation to be finally going to a safe place again, to anxiety that some last-minute catastrophe might prevent his return to England. His alert mind was all too good at conjuring up scenarios that could turn the evening into a disaster. The weather might not be so good in England and the Lysander may not have been able to take off, or it might have encountered heavy anti-aircraft fire and been damaged. It might have experienced a problem or become lost. Then there were the German patrols, which were numerous in the area. They may have been tipped off or heard the plane arriving. Surrounded by leaves and earth Forest could only let these thoughts circulate in his mind, unable to control the fears that overwhelmed him. It was one of the rare times he felt uncertain and nervous, and it was also one of the few times that he was not the one in full control. He was reliant on someone else and their skills and that was not something that sat easily with Forest.
Out of the darkness the hum of a plane engine sounded over the trees. It seemed inordinately loud after the silence of the copse, but no curious Germans appeared, so perhaps the landing party had chosen their location well. The three resistance members ran out of the trees and switched on a line of torches they had set up earlier in a large ‘L’ shape. It was a rudimentary landing strip for the Lysander but it was all they had and for much of the time it worked.
The Lysander banked then lined itself up with the long vertical arm of the ‘L’. Steadily, it swooped down and landed on the grass, following the vertical stretch of torches before veering right at the foot of the ‘L’ where the torches created a horizontal strip of light. The landing had taken mere moments and now the plane stood at a standstill, the wind behind it, ready to return to the skies as soon as its passengers boarded. Forest had never seen a more welcome sight.
Forest, Ryan and Passy fled the copse and hurried to the gunner’s cockpit of the Lysander. In some accounts Brossolette went with them, in others he flew home on a second Lysander that was waiting to land once its counterpart had taken off again. In any case, very soon the three SOE agents and their American guest were on a plane and taking off for home. As they left France behind, Forest felt he could relax completely for the first time in many weeks.
On 17 April the BBC broadcast a discreet message on its French service: ‘Le petit lapin blanc est renter au clapier’ (the little white rabbit has returned to his hutch). The white rabbit was the code word used to identify Forest to his friends in the resistance. It was only used on the BBC broadcasts where the use of any of his other codenames (particularly Shelley) would have instantly alerted German interest. How he got the odd name is a slight mystery. Barbara claimed that one of her friends gave Forest the nickname, though exactly why she didn’t explain. But it was unusual for SOE to take on a person’s normal life nickname to use in operations. Perhaps some clue could come from Colonel Hutchinson, or ‘Hutch’ as he was affectionately known. Calling one of his agents the ‘white rabbit’ would have appealed to his sense of humour, and the dry wit that tended to run through all operation coding. Hutch seems to have had some affection for Forest, perhaps he saw himself in the younger man. Whatever the case the message was wholly appropriate – the rabbit had returned to his hutch.
It was not long before Forest was compiling reports and expressing his firm opinions about the resistance situation to his superiors. There was so much that he needed to get across to the SOE heads that at times he may have seemed like a broken record to those who did not understand the realities of trying to resist in an occupied country. He insisted over and over that the invasion of France could only be a success if a strong secret army was ready and waiting in the country, and he was probably right. In hindsight it is easy to forget the part played by the resistance, particularly the Maquis, on D-Day.
Forest recognised the significance of the resistance long before D-Day and found it frustrating that his views seemed to fall on deaf ears among his superiors. He bitterly informed them time and again that the resistance was vital and a secret army was essential, but it couldn’t be built without weapons and supplies.
Forest ranted against the imposter Giraud who he saw as the enemy of organised resistance. Again and again he repeated that the French resistance must unite behind de Gaulle, and that Giraud was a nuisance who was muddying the waters. He talked about the French fear that the Allies would remove part of their colonial empire after the war (namely North Africa), so the British and Americans must announce publicly that they would not do this.
He spoke of the difficulties of operating clandestinely, and of the constant dangers and anxieties. He particularly emphasised the risks that W/T operators took. Was it not to be expected that W/T operators would struggle to send out messages that were error free? Yet time and time again the British complained about
the muddled messages they were sent. Forest stated that they needed to be more sympathetic.
His strongest criticism, however, was reserved for Jean Moulin. Moulin had not made a friend in Forest, in part this was due to Forest’s strong loyalty and belief in Brossolette, but it was also due to his concerns that such a character as strong as Moulin’s could do more harm to the resistance than good.
Forest felt his concerns were not listened to by his superiors:
It was impossible for people who had not lived the clandestine life of an agent, to realise how sensitive one became. They could not always appreciate that seemingly simple things were frequently very complicated and difficult to do.2
From his superiors’ point of view, the reports, though rather dogmatic, were logical, and Churchill’s advisor Sir Desmond Morton felt that Forest was a sensible and level-headed fellow, though dismissed him slightly as being pro de Gaulle.
At least there was one office in which Forest’s belief in de Gaulle as the uniting force of France was not so easily dismissed. On 20 May 1943 Forest was summoned to a meeting with the illustrious general himself. Forest’s name had been noted in Passy’s report on the Seahorse mission for the BCRA and the general was keen to meet the ‘White Rabbit’ who had sparked such attention from his subordinate. Forest did not know what to expect arriving at de Gaulle’s room; he was not a man easily intimidated by authority but his first impression of the general was of an immense man, with a gruff manner of talking. He later said he felt like a pygmy standing before the gigantic de Gaulle. It was as much the general’s presence as his stature that impressed this feeling of grandiosity upon Forest.
De Gaulle wanted to know Forest’s feelings on France and was somewhat surprised at the strength of ‘Gaullism’ in his country, but he was also impressed by the bravery and determination of the SOE agent. Before Forest left, de Gaulle awarded him the Croix de Guerre, a significant French medal awarded for heroism. It was a special privilege for Forest to be recognised by his home country, but it caused some problems, as British officers were not allowed to wear foreign medals. Eventually Hutch had to get involved to persuade the authorities to give Forest permission to wear it. Later Forest heard that he had been awarded the Military Cross (MC). He bought the purple and white ribbon, Barbara sewed it to his tunic and the BCRA threw him a celebratory meal, only for an Air Ministry official to inform him that there had been a mistake and he not actually been awarded the medal. The ribbon had to be removed from his tunic and it would be another year before he would be properly awarded the citation.
This bureaucratic error forced Forest into another diplomatic controversy. The French expected him to wear his MC and after the debacle with the Croix de Guerre, it would not look good to try and explain the error. Instead Forest returned to his habits of subterfuge and kept one tunic hidden at his office with the MC ribbon still stitched onto it. Every time he had a meeting with the French he wore this tunic, and during the rest of the time he wore an undecorated spare. If he accidentally bumped into one of his French colleagues when not wearing the decorated tunic, he explained it away as that he hadn’t had the time to sort out all his different tunics with the decoration.
The return to desk work, which had at first seemed such a welcome break from the strain of undercover operations, now began to test Forest’s patience. He had consoled Barbara before Operation Seahorse with promises that it would be his one and only clandestine mission. Now he realised he would have to break that promise or go insane running from office to office and arguing with an array of detached bureaucrats.
Forest could never be labelled as unambitious. If his scheme with Molyneux’s yacht had been far-fetched, his next idea was positively mad. The British had learned that Grossadmiral Karl Doenitz, the Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy, was prone to making regular trips from Paris to outstations in Cherbourg and Angouleme with only a small escort for protection. Forest came up with a dramatic scheme to attack Doenitz’s convoy on one of these visits, hold up the three escort cars and kidnap the Grossadmiral and bring him back to England. Forest suggested that he would work with Gilbert Vedy or the CDLL on the plan and submitted his ‘quite feasible’ proposal on 18 June. Unsurprisingly the audacious idea was turned down.
Meanwhile the resistance situation in France suddenly deteriorated. Delestraint, who Forest had deemed a liability to have so high up in the resistance, was arrested by the Gestapo on 9 June. Three days after Forest had submitted his failed proposal, Jean Moulin also fell into the clutches of the Gestapo.
Moulin’s capture came about partly through bad luck and partly through betrayal. A fellow resistance member, Rene Hardy, was tried twice and acquitted for his supposed betrayal of Moulin. Someone gave away the location of a meeting of the top leaders of the resistance to the Germans on that fateful day. Ironically the Germans were 45 minutes late and should have missed the conspirators. But unfortunately Moulin had also been delayed by 45 minutes. Had he been earlier or later the Gestapo may have never captured him, but as it was, his luck had run out.
Moulin was interrogated by the notorious Klaus Barbie, known as the ‘Butcher of Lyon’. The interrogation was brutally efficient – too efficient. Moulin never recovered from his initial torture and later interrogations only compounded his injuries. He died on 8 July while his captors were frantically trying to ship him to Germany.
It was a disaster for the resistance. Forest had been right, Moulin’s presence in the formation of the secret army had been too overpowering, making him indispensable; without him things began to fall apart. The circuits the men had been involved with were compromised and there was no knowing what had been said by the captives (the resistance was realistic about the chances of any man staying silent under prolonged torture). The networks broke themselves apart as people began to panic.
Two men were left holding the resistance reins: Capitaine Claude Bouchinet-Serreulles and Jacques Bingen. Bouchinet-Serreulles was an inexperienced young French army officer who had previously served in London as one of de Gaulle’s aides. He had been pressing for some time for a more active role and after rudimentary training in the clandestine life he was landed in France on the night of 15–16 June. By 19 June he was in Lyon and meeting with Moulin, and two days later he was effectively trying to fill Moulin’s boots and failing. Two months later Bingen arrived in France, landed in by Lysander on 15–16 August. Bingen found the more active role he had been pressing for to be more dangerous than he had imagined. A former head of the Free French Merchant Navy and aide to de Gaulle, he had been originally delegated to look after the Unoccupied Zone. Now these two novices were desperately trying to hold together the fragmenting French resistance.
Bouchinet-Serrulles and Bingen sent optimistic reports of their work back to London, but other reports quickly indicated the opposite. The plans for a secret army among the resistance were stuttering and dying. While the reception committees for supply or agent drops were still operating efficiently, information on the paramilitary side of operations was worryingly minimal. Regional military officers were complaining that they were not being supported by the resistance and it seemed that if something wasn’t done soon the whole organisation would crumble and have to be rebuilt from scratch.
Abruptly Forest found himself on a new mission with Brossolette. This time it was to save the resistance. Filled with excitement as well as trepidation, Forest took on his new codename of Tirelli, along with a new identity and false papers. As he memorised his brand-new persona and prepared for another parachute drop, he could only wonder what fate had in store for him on Operation Marie-Claire.
* * *
Notes
1. Professor Pasteur Valery-Roudet, a descendent of the famous chemist and microbiologist.
2. Seaman, Op cit.
– 9 –
Dinner with Sophie
ON 13 JULY 1943 discussions were underway to resolve the calamity in France. Passy was eager to get back to deal with the situation and ho
ped that Forest and Brossolette could be spared to assist him. The main matter they needed to deal with was contacting the various resisters, particularly FANA and Capitaine Bouchinet-Serreulles, who had come into some doubt over his glowing reports of the success of resistance. With the loss of Moulin it was vital to get someone inside quickly who could act as damage control.
Codenames were already being considered. Forest had been given the signal ‘Marie-Claire’; Brossolette would be ‘Marie-Claire II’. Bouchinet-Serreulles had been codenamed ‘Sophie’ and SOE was determined to catch up with the elusive figure who they disparagingly labelled ‘Moulin’s understudy’.
Meanwhile the BCRA had given them their own affectionate tags: ‘Magino’ and ‘Briand’. Add to this the new Tirelli identity that Forest had to learn, as well as the a previous set of papers under the name Thierry, and it was a lot of lies to keep straight in his mind. Forest did not have long to reflect on all this new information, as on 18 September he had a call at 1 a.m. to confirm that the mission would go ahead that night.
In the early hours of that Saturday morning, as Forest contemplated his next adventure, Barbara was fraught with worry. There could be no illusions between them that there was a very high risk of him being captured. Forest tried to comfort himself with the knowledge that SOE had introduced a new system of codes that made message sending even more secure. The ‘one-time pads’ as they were known had codes printed on slips of silk, which were used once and then destroyed. As long as his code pad kept in line with SOE’s control version then there was no problem.
He tried his hardest to convince Barbara that every feasible security precaution was being undertaken and that she mustn’t worry for him, but both of them knew the dangers he faced. When morning finally came, Barbara was trembling with nerves and insisted that Forest go to a photographer in Baker Street to have his portrait taken as a keepsake for her. Both of them knew it was meant for if he never returned, but despite the morbidity of the project Forest agreed and by lunchtime Barbara knew that she at least would have a memento of her lover if the worst happened.
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