The Secret Ministry of Ag. & Fish

by Noreen Riols

  ‘Big Ben would chime, followed by toc toc toc toc, toc toc toc, the V for Victory signal tapped out in Morse, then, as the signature tune, Handel’s – an anglicized German, what irony! – Water Music, faded a confident voice would announce: “Ici Londres. Les Français parlent aux Français.” (“This is London. The French speaking to the French.”)

  ‘These programmes in French were produced by a brilliant team of journalists, writers, university professors, politicians. Every evening the news of the day was commented on by Pierre Bourdan, a trusted, well-known French journalist. He did not hesitate to say: “I will not hide the truth from you. Tonight the news is bad.” Every evening, too, General de Gaulle’s spokesman, Maurice Schumann, in his warm, passionate voice, launched an impassioned patriotic call. He had a gift for strong slogans, such as “Pétain, le vainqueur de Verdun et le vaincu de Vichy” (“Pétain, victorious at Verdun, vanquished at Vichy”). And once a week “les trois amis” met in the studio to discuss the latest developments in the war: the stage and film producer Jacques Duchesne, who, after the war, under his real name, Michel Saint-Denis, was responsible for many brilliant productions at the Old Vic; Jean Oberlé, the journalist who had arrived in London as the correspondent for AFP in 1939; and the naval officer Jean Marin; all broadcasting under assumed names so as not to incriminate their families still in occupied territory. Their lively discussions were one of the highlights of the BBC broadcasts.

  ‘At the end of the primetime evening bulletin, the famous messages personnels were broadcast. Listening clandestinely in occupied France to these seemingly nonsensical, meaningless phrases, we realized that they conveyed important messages for Resistance fighters and maquis groups. And we rejoiced that the fight was being carried on. The voice of the BBC was listened to by millions of French people, bringing hope, encouragement and the strength to resist, boosting their morale throughout the years of occupation.’

  The messages personnels were devoid of any sense. Indeed, in most cases, they were a complete nonsense. After the war I met a man who had been a newsreader in the BBC French Section. ‘I often felt a right Charlie reading those messages personnels,’ he confided. ‘Some were serious, others amusing, but many of them were completely idiotic. I couldn’t make head or tail of them. But I knew they were important, and had a hidden meaning for those listening on the other side.’

  They were important, but occasionally there were messages personnels that were neither requests nor instructions. One agent had left for the field a couple of months before his wife was due to deliver their baby. Naturally he was concerned, so the Section arranged for a message to be sent out for five nights running when the baby came, in the hope that he would hear it. Should it be a girl, the message was to read, in French of course: ‘Clémentine looks like her grandmother’, and if a boy, ‘Clément looks like his grandfather’. But in this case, there was not one but two babies – twins – and they arrived early. No one knew what to do. ‘Ask Buck,’ piped up one bright spark. So we did. It might have been one of his bad days – he did have a lot on his plate. But, for whatever reason, he didn’t seem very interested. ‘Oh, do what you think for the best,’ he said, and turned away. So the message went out: ‘The two Cléments look like their grandfather.’ The message reached their father. But I’m not sure that it wouldn’t have been kinder to let the poor man wait until he was safely home to discover the outcome of the happy event. He might not have been all that pleased; he already had two boys!

  Another agent left for the field without either he or his wife even suspecting that she was pregnant. Nowadays, with all these new-fangled devices, women seem to know after about five minutes, but in that far-off, less ‘technical’ age it was unusual to know for certain for at least two months. When the agent returned from his mission, I saw him racing down the corridor waving what appeared to be a piece of paper. I didn’t take much notice, thinking he was yet another member of the Crazy Gang exhibiting their usual exuberance. But when he skidded to a stop and paused for breath, he thrust a photograph of an adorable little girl in my face. She was sitting upright on a cushion, wearing only a vest and a pink ribbon in her hair, looking accusingly at the camera. She must have been eight or nine months old. I can understand her angry expression. I don’t think I’d have been very happy to have a photograph taken of me wearing only a vest waved in the air for every passer-by to see. ‘Look what I found waiting for me when I got back,’ he exclaimed proudly, before dashing off to dangle his precious trophy at someone else.

  The messages certainly sounded odd, and I can easily believe that the enemy was puzzled and could make neither head nor tail of such phrases as: ‘The little white rabbit sends greetings to his friends and also to Daddy Rabbit’ or ‘The next door’s goat has eaten grandpa’s vest’. Through SOE’s intelligence grapevine we heard that the Germans knew the messages were important and were desperate to work out what they meant. We also heard that they thought the ‘personal messages’ were broadcast using a very sophisticated code and they spent hours trying to decode them. But since they were broadcast ‘in clear’, the Germans never succeeded. It’s impossible to decode something which hasn’t been coded in the first place! They had a meaning only for those who were expecting them.

  On the night on which a drop was to take place the same message was repeated on the nine-fifteen news bulletin to confirm that nothing untoward had happened since the earlier bulletin to prevent the operation taking place, and that the drop was actually going ahead. Anything could have cropped up in between the two bulletins: weather conditions might have suddenly deteriorated, or HQ might have received news that the reception committee feared that they were under suspicion and that the drop would fall into enemy hands, or the members of the réseau expecting the drop had been arrested or were in hiding. Should the ‘confirmation’ not be broadcast, the operation was automatically cancelled.

  These drops didn’t happen overnight. It took time to organize them, especially since they were taking place every night during the ‘moon period’ – the ten to twelve nights each month when the moon was bright enough for the pilots to navigate by – to the numerous réseaux not only in France, but in every other German-occupied country. And this is where the cooperation between the RAF and SOE was invaluable.

  It’s all very well to train agents and prepare them for infiltration behind enemy lines, but if you can’t get them to where they need to be, and once there they cannot receive supplies, the whole system collapses. There were always submarines, fishing boats and feluccas which discharged agents into enemy-occupied territories, but by far the most popular and most tested method was by parachute. And for that SOE needed the cooperation of the RAF, which was not readily available at the beginning of the war, when ‘gentlemanly warfare’ was still the order of the day among the ‘top brass’. Lord Portal, the Chief of the Air Staff, even declared that he was not prepared to use the RAF to drop civilians into enemy-occupied territory to act like bandits and kill regular soldiers, even if they were the enemy. It wasn’t cricket! But eventually the strategic importance of SOE’s operations overcame the hierarchy’s opposition, and in August 1941, 138 Squadron was formed as a ‘Special Duties’ squadron, with 161 Squadron being added in late 1942.

  All the same, this obstacle overcome, dropping thousands of tons of stores and equipment to the Resistance didn’t happen without planning. They were not dropped randomly into a field ‘somewhere near Paris, or Lyons or Marseilles’. A complex, detailed, but sadly not always foolproof plan had to be carefully worked out beforehand: the precise ‘dropping ground’ sought out, measured and prepared by the chef de réseau before any drop could take place, and résistants made ready on the ground before the plane arrived to collect and dispose of the supplies dropped. 161 Squadron flew 6,000 sorties between 1943 and 1945 and 138 Squadron, which began dropping supplies a year earlier, flew considerably more. The history of the Special Duties Squadrons is intimately linked with the history of SOE, since supplies,
and often agents, were carried by Hudson, Stirling and Halifax aircraft, the mainstay of both supply- and agent-dropping activities for most of the war.

  The two squadrons flew almost exclusively on SOE missions and were soon known as the ‘Moonlight Squadrons’. The pilots were all very young, mostly between nineteen and twenty-three. One, who was actually twenty-seven, was called ‘uncle’ by the others in deference to his great age! The members of the squadrons were among the most experienced pilots in the RAF. They had to have at least 250 hours’ night flying time behind them before even being considered. They flew at night without lights, navigating only by the moon, following the course of rivers, church steeples, cathedral spires, chateaux, towns and villages; it was rare that they missed their target. These pilots all signed the Official Secrets Act and lived apart from other RAF squadrons at Tempsford, near Bedford, and Tangmere, near Chichester. Only these two airfields were used by agents departing on missions. They were never used by any commercial traffic during the war and were completely unknown to the general public.

  When the supplies were ready for despatch, the BBC broadcast the message personnel the organizer had sent, to warn him that the drop would be parachuted to him within the next few days. As soon as the organizer heard his own message broadcast at the end of the BBC French Services’ evening programme, he would inform the courier, who would then cycle into the nearest town and stop at the bar-tabac, where the owners were usually very cooperative. Over a drink she would slip in the news that the first message had been broadcast. And when the local résistants dropped in on their way home from work for their coup de rouge, the barman would pass on the message. The courier would then cycle to the outskirts of the town or village, often with the message hidden in the rubber band on the handlebars of her bicycle, and leave it in a prearranged ‘dead letter box’, which could be under a certain stone or hidden in a wall behind a loose brick for résistants living or working outside the town to collect. But on the night when the drop was to take place, there would be a subtle change in the message: a colour would be introduced. For example, ‘The goat next door has eaten grandpa’s vest’, or ‘There’s a cow asleep on the duchess’s sofa’ would become ‘The goat next door has eaten grandpa’s blue vest’ or ‘There’s a brown cow asleep on the duchess’s sofa’. No wonder the Germans were puzzled. Then the courier would send out the warnings. The résistants would gather for the rendezvous before nightfall in an isolated building or farmhouse outside the village or town: not all leaving together, and taking different routes, in order not to alert the Germans as to what was going on.

  When it was dark, after the curfew, taking lorries, farm carts, bicycles, anything with which to transport the material to be dropped, they would head for the landing site, where, hiding in the shelter of the surrounding trees and bushes, they would wait for the sound of the approaching plane’s engine. Sometimes they waited all night in vain because the plane had been shot down en route. But more than half the planes managed to get through the German flak and ward off the fighter planes sent up to intercept them. They would usually arrive at around one o’clock in the morning, depending on the season and the distance they had to cover. Since the pilot flew without lights, and as soon as he crossed the Channel was subject to enemy gunfire, he could not take off before dark.

  Once he heard the drone of the approaching aircraft, the organizer would leave the shelter of the trees and flash a prearranged signal with his torch pointing upwards. The code was always a letter of the alphabet which changed every night and was known only to the pilot and the organizer. The pilot would reply giving the same signal, then make a U-turn, while two résistants would leave the shelter of the trees to join the organizer. The three of them would form an L with their torches flashing to indicate a corridor into which the pilot, now returning after his U-turn, would drop his cargo. The planes used for these drops were massive Whitleys, Halifaxes or Hudsons, with a pilot and co-pilot, an observer, a navigator and one or two rear gunners. There must have been a crew of seven or eight.

  At the plane’s approach, should the person on the ground give the wrong signal – flashing ‘P’ or ‘H’, or any other letter of the alphabet instead of the prearranged letter for that night – the pilot would turn around and fly home immediately. He didn’t hesitate. If it was a trap, he and his crew, as well as his precious cargo, would have fallen into German hands. It was in the organizer’s interest to get the letter right!

  Ideally, the messages personnels announcing these drops were broadcast for three nights in succession, five if possible, in order to give the chef de réseau time to organize his reception committee and be at the chosen landing ground, waiting to receive the drop. Not all the résistants lived in the mountains and forests. That was only the maquis, which was composed for the most part of former soldiers or Army officers who were disillusioned by France’s capitulation and wanted to continue the fight against the invader. There were also young men who had taken refuge with a maquis group in order to escape being sent to Germany as forced labour. They lived together in camps in the forests or mountains, away from their families, far from towns and villages, often supplied with food sent up to them by the local villagers. But there were many other résistants who remained at home, living their normal lives, yet at the same time were part of the local réseau.

  A lengthy pre-warning to announce a drop was not always possible. For instance, when a severely wounded agent or one who was in hiding with the Gestapo closing in on him had to be got out of the country in a hurry, it was imperative to send in a plane, often with only a few hours’ notice. Then the chef de réseau would despatch an urgent message requesting that a Lysander, or ‘Lizzie’, as the pilots affectionately nicknamed them, be sent in as soon as night fell.

  Besides being much more dangerous, a Lysander pick-up was a completely different operation from a drop by Hudson, Whitley or Halifax. The plane, having to land to pick up its passengers, needed a much larger area as a landing ground, without too many holes, and preferably on a height. The ‘Lizzie’ flew unarmed, with only a pilot and sometimes a despatcher, usually an RAF sergeant, and with the observer’s place left empty for the passengers. From the rear it was completely unprotected, its only safeguard from the Messerschmitts sent up to intercept it the grey and grey-green paint with which it was camouflaged! The Lysander was also slower than the larger planes, with a maximum speed of 212 mph and a cruising speed of 165 mph, and was therefore much more vulnerable.

  A Lizzie could only take two passengers, three at a real push. Being so light, it was frequently tossed about in violent air currents when the pilot, in order to avoid flak from anti-aircraft guns on the ground and German fighter planes in the sky, had to twist and turn to such an extent that he, along with anyone else on board, was horribly sick! A Lysander was also used to pick up an organizer whom London needed to see for a ‘briefing’ session, or a dignitary HQ wanted to interview.

  When the sound of the plane’s engine was heard, and after the prearranged signal had been exchanged, four résistants each lit a bonfire, prepared in advance – this was later changed to four flashing torches, or flashing bicycle lamps – forming a flare path along which the plane would rumble almost to a standstill. The pilot would make a U-turn, bank the plane steeply then descend almost vertically and cruise along the flare path. He did not cut off his engine: he hardly stopped. The despatcher threw open the door, the replacement, if they were collecting a wounded agent, leapt out, those departing leapt – or were thrown – in, and they were off. It was a rapid and very dangerous operation, which had to be carried out in less than three minutes.

  The return journey by Lysander was always perilous, because the Germans had been alerted by the engine noise, but also by the bonfires. Consequently, the plane was almost always subject to very heavy flak all the way to the coast, and many pilots lost their lives.

  Hugh Verity, one of the best-known of 138 Squadron’s young pilots, picked up the famous résistant Jean
Moulin from a landing ground in France and flew him to England for consultations with General de Gaulle. They had such an horrendous return journey he said on landing that he was ashamed to face his ‘Joe’, the nickname pilots gave to all their passengers, after the bumpy ride to which he had subjected him. Climbing down from the cockpit, Hugh Verity turned to leave. But ‘Joe’ came up to him, held out his hand and thanked him for a safe landing. Jean Moulin returned to France but was later captured and died under the most cruel torture. We heard that every bone in his body was broken by his torturers and that he was unrecognizable, no longer a human being, when death mercifully released him.

  The journalist Pierre Brossolette re-entered France by submarine, landing on the Mediterranean coast, not far from Narbonne. Like Jean Moulin, he was later captured, and, after suffering excruciating torture in the infamous Gestapo HQ at 84 avenue Foch in Paris, he was left alone in a cell on the fourth floor of the building, with his hands tied behind his back. He somehow managed to climb up to a window high in the wall and hurl himself to his death. Neither of these brave men ever revealed anything.