The Secret Ministry of Ag. & Fish

by Noreen Riols

  Chapter 8

  A drop could be cancelled at the last minute, sometimes even when the agent was about to board the plane. This need not have been for any dramatic reason but simply because fog had suddenly risen over the Channel, and since the pilot flew without lights he obviously couldn’t fly in a fog! And for the same reason drops could only take place during what was called ‘the moon period’ – nine or ten nights a month. If the warning came at the beginning of the moon period, the agent was hidden in a nearby manor house and a second attempt to leave would be scheduled for the following night. But if it were the last night of the moon, there was nothing he could do but return to London. . . and wait three weeks.

  Henri Diacono was scheduled to drop as a radio operator on 17 December 1943. He finally got away, after three abortive attempts, at the beginning of March 1944. Desperate to be in the field doing the work he had spent almost nine months training for, like Lise de Baissac on her first mission, Henri agreed to ‘drop blind’ on a moonlit night and make his own way to his réseau, rather than hang around London any longer waiting, perhaps again in vain, for the next ‘moon’. On landing he therefore was obliged to bury his parachute and flying suit, find his way to the nearest railway station and link up with his Resistance group.

  One woman agent had seven abortive attempts to leave on seven successive nights before finally having to return to London.

  This return to base after a failed attempt for whatever reason – unfavourable weather conditions or the infiltration of the receiving réseau – was very difficult for the agents. They were hyped-up, adrenaline flowing freely, and suddenly they were back in London, obliged to hang around for three weeks until the next moon. When this happened the agents were usually put up at 32 Wigmore Street, a house that had been taken over by SOE for use as a hostel. There was a lounge and a bar which served bar snacks, but no hot meals, so the agents often went to Casa Pepe in Soho. Another popular restaurant was Chez Rose. But the favourite was Chez Céleste. Céleste was a Frenchwoman who served steak without requiring the client to hand over food coupons. It was horse! Even in the lean wartime years no bona fide, dyed-in-the-wool Brit would touch it. But the French had no such scruples! Not only was Céleste very popular with F Section agents, BCRA staff also patronized her. I’m not sure the general would have approved!

  The only trouble with Céleste was that her restaurant was not licensed to sell wines and spirits. But the problem was solved by Monsieur Berlemont, who ran the York Minster, the ‘French’ pub opposite Céleste’s restaurant. So, having ordered their steak, the agents would take a jug, provided by Céleste, and nip across the road to the York Minster for a ‘fill-up’ of red wine, which they then carried back to their table, where their steak would be waiting. Monsieur Berlemont was famous for his pub but also because of his magnificent moustache. It was reputed to be the longest moustache in London and measured twenty inches across from end to end. I imagine he must have been obliged to go through a door sideways.

  Perhaps these touches of home and the combined ministrations of Céleste and Monsieur Berlemont helped soothe the agents’ feelings of frustration after a failed drop. They were frustrated, many of them very uptight and often angry. They knew it was nobody’s fault, but some expressed anger all the same. I like to think it was at this time that we women at HQ were able to help them. They had no one else they could talk to, no one else on whom they could vent their frustration and their anger, no one with whom they could share their apprehensions. They were instructed not even to tell their wives about their mission, but I’m sure many of them did. I would have been furious. Perhaps furious is not the right word. I would have been disappointed and hurt if my husband had not confided in me. It would have shown such a lack of trust. After all, what woman who loves her husband would gossip about his clandestine activities, even to her best friend, knowing that in doing so she put his life at risk?

  So, if they had to return to London and wait for the next moon, we tried to help them cope with their disappointment and frustration at this setback, to take their minds off the future, to think about other things – pretend, in fact, that it wasn’t happening. We went to cinemas, theatres, dined in good restaurants, danced in nightclubs. But, looking back, I cannot help wondering whether that was what they really needed – or wanted.

  Like all children born in the 1920s, when I was six weeks old I was christened with great pomp (so I’m told: I don’t remember a great deal about it!) in Valetta, the capital of Malta, where I was born, taken to church every Sunday morning afterwards, taught to say my prayers by my bedside every night and was confirmed at fifteen. My confirmation was a low-key ceremony, not at all like my children’s communion solennelle in the Catholic church in France, where the girls are decked out like brides and the boys like novice monks and there is a great family celebration lunch afterwards, during which the communicants are showered with splendid gifts, most of which bear no relation at all to the event. I was confirmed in Wales, where I was at school at the time, and I remember taking the instruction beforehand very seriously. I even considered becoming a nun, but quickly gave up that idea when I discovered the charms of the opposite sex.

  My confirmation ceremony was held in the evening, the bishop was there, and my mother came for the church service. I did receive a few presents. An ivory-backed prayer book and a beautiful soft black-leather bible with gilt-edged pages. It lay on a shelf for years, gathering dust, though I did proudly carry the prayer book to church every Sunday morning. But there was no sumptuous post-confirmation meal. No one had sumptuous meals. It was wartime! After I married, I continued the church and bedtime prayer habit with my children. But it was only a habit, like cleaning my teeth. I never believed that my prayers went any farther than the ceiling and then bounced back off the top of my head.

  I have since become a committed Christian, and it has changed my life. And I cannot help wondering whether, if during the war I had had the strong faith I now possess, I would have been able to help those frustrated, sometimes apprehensive departing agents more. I shared many confidences with departing agents. Many of them were married with young children and they told me of their worries, their fears for the future of their families. Their own fear of torture and of death. But all I could offer them were the bright lights . . . and platitudes.

  I remember one agent in particular. He was a Jew, a radio operator, and he was leaving on a second mission. Two missions were not unusual. I think the record was seven. But for a Jew to go at all was dangerous, yet many of them did, though a second mission, especially as a radio operator, was almost suicidal. I was with him on the evening before he left. There was no romantic association, I was merely keeping him company. After all, he was an ‘old man’: he was thirty-five!

  During the evening he drew out of his pocket a small velvet case and opened it. Inside was a slim gold chain holding a star of David above a dove of peace. He held the box out to me. ‘I would like you to have this,’ he said simply. I was taken unawares, confused at being offered what, after all, was an expensive piece of jewellery.

  ‘I’m very touched,’ I stammered, ‘but I couldn’t possibly accept it.’ He looked so disappointed.

  ‘Please do accept it,’ he pleaded. ‘Please do. My entire family in Paris has perished in a concentration camp. I have no one left in the world, and I would like to think that someone remembers me, and perhaps thinks of me while I am over there.’ I was young at the time, embarrassed by his tragic revelation, and at a loss as to what to reply.

  ‘In that case,’ I said at last, ‘I will take it and keep it safely for you until you return.’

  I have often wondered since whether he was trying to tell me something. He may well have been a messianic Jew. Was he asking me, without putting it into so many words, whether I also was a believer? Asking me perhaps to pray for him? To pray with him now before he left? I’ll never know . . . because he didn’t return.

  Chapter 9

  Late one Saturd
ay evening in early February 1944, Buck told me that I was being transferred to Beaulieu, to Group B, where, after all the strenuous exercises they had endured, future agents finally learned the art of spying.

  ‘Pack your bags,’ Buck smiled, ‘and catch the two-thirty train from Waterloo tomorrow afternoon, and get off at Brockenhurst.’

  It was rather short notice, but one’s worldly possessions in wartime didn’t amount to much, so my packing didn’t take long.

  ‘A soldier in a car will be waiting for you outside the station,’ Buck ended.

  We never left the train at Beaulieu Halt, a small station which would have been much nearer our destination, because, since it was so small, our movements would have been more conspicuous.

  The Wrens, whose seductive hat I had once coveted, were stationed not far away, so naval uniforms were everywhere. But there were no Army units in the area. Beaulieu was a small, delightful village where everyone knew everyone else, so a group of khaki-clad figures to-ing and fro-ing from the local station might have caused raised eyebrows, leading to awkward questions being asked.

  When I stepped out of the train at Brockenhurst station, where the promised car with a soldier at the wheel was waiting, I walked into a winter wonderland. It had been snowing for several days, and after the slush and grime and the devastation and rubble of bomb-shattered London, I almost believed I had stepped into fairyland. It was like a scene from a glorious technicolor film. The snow was crisp and clean, and as the car whisked me through the small country town and on to Lord Montagu’s estate, the trees were sparkling, tinkling with diamond pendants of frost.

  The soldier decanted me in front of a small cottage deep in the forest. And it was there that I was to spend the rest of the war together with Jean, a South African, and Dorothy, a charming, elegant, distinguished woman in her mid-thirties. We were looked after by a marvellous housekeeper who clucked over us like a mother hen and concocted wonderful meals out of absolutely nothing.

  Jean was a FANY, the official title First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, an elite unit of upper-class girls who didn’t appear to have anything to do with nursing. The corps had been very active during the First World War, when they drove ambulances and staff cars. They may have lived up to their title during the Boer War, when the unit was created, but during the Second World War nursing was not part of their curriculum. They were almost exclusively attached to SOE as ‘drivers and secretaries’. But in reality, they performed many other duties. The FANYs wore khaki uniforms with maroon buttons and insignia and, like Army officers, shining Sam Browne belts. Their uniforms, which were beautifully tailored, were made of barathea, like the officers’ dress uniform, not the rough serge worn by recruits to the ATS and the WAAF.

  Most of the future women agents, if civilians and not already members of one of the armed forces when recruited, were given honorary commissions in the FANYs. But, for reasons of which I am still unaware, FANYs were not considered to be part of the Army. They were a unit on their own, with the result that many women agents who had been commissioned into the FANYs were ignored by the War Office upon their return, receiving neither a pension nor benefits, in some cases resulting in great hardship.

  Jean, the FANY with whom I was to share the former gardener’s cottage, was a little older than I. She had left South Africa, her home country, and followed her fiancé, who, when war was declared, had immediately embarked for England to enlist. Unfortunately for Jean, by the time she had managed to secure a passage from Durban and disembarked at Southampton, her fiancé had already left with his regiment for the Western Desert. So Jean was very much a ‘lady-in-waiting’.

  Dorothy, the third member of our little group, was a very pleasant woman, very easy to live with, but she was also something of a mystery. However, we didn’t ask questions: it had become a way of life. It was only after the war that I learned something of what Dorothy’s real role had been.

  Although we three women at Group B were euphemistically known as ‘secretaries’ for want of a better word, most of the secretarial work was done by a splendid little cockney corporal called Frank. Frank was a treasure. He had a wonderful sense of humour, was endlessly cheerful, endlessly helpful, was never flustered or impatient, did 99 per cent of the work with a huge smile and got us out of all kinds of scrapes. He was engaged to a girl called Doris, who worked in Woolworth’s.

  On the eve of VE Day, we had a splendid celebration party at the House in the Woods, where the officers lived, to which, there being no longer any need for security, the Montagu family and other local guests were invited. I had danced till dawn and beyond and was staggering across to the office in the early morning, rather the worse for wear, when Frank suddenly popped up out of a rhododendron bush. The rhododendrons on the estate were magnificent and all in full bloom at that time of year. ‘Since it’s victory day,’ he said, ‘may I kiss you?’

  ‘Frank,’ I gasped, taken by surprise and not quite myself after my splendid night on the tiles, ‘what about Doris?’

  He smiled and winked at me, then whispered. ‘I’ll tell her it’s my last sacrifice for the war effort.’ Not very flattering for me!

  Soon after the files were opened in 2000, my husband heard this story and he wanted to know the outcome. Had I allowed him to kiss me or not? I told him it was one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war, locked in a secure safe, which would not be opened for 100 years. He’s noted in his diary to ask me the question again in 2040!

  There were twenty-five officer instructors on the estate. I think all but two were former agents who were ‘blown’, the code word for agents whose identity had become known to the Germans and who had had to hurriedly return home. One of the two was handsome, charming, efficient – everybody liked him. He had in fact with his brilliant mind organized the training programme for Beaulieu. He was recalled to HQ in London early on in the war and rapidly climbed the hierarchical ladder of ‘the Firm’, as the Intelligence Service was called, to become head of the highly sensitive Russian Section at the Foreign Office. From there he kept Moscow informed of all Foreign Office secrets. His name was Kim Philby. In 1963 he had to hastily flee his native land and seek asylum in Moscow when the British government discovered that he had been spying for the Russians since his days at Cambridge in 1933. He was, in fact, one of the ‘Cambridge five’.

  The other officer, Jock, was a rather rough diamond, not at all like his colleagues, who were all very public-school and every evening changed into service dress for dinner. Jock was a tough Glaswegian who knocked around in battle-dress and hob-nailed boots and never appeared to change into anything. He was not a permanent fixture at Group B, but turned up periodically. These officers lived in the House in the Woods, about ten minutes’ walk away from our cottage. It was a lovely house which Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson had apparently used for secret weekend rendezvous before his abdication.

  Our HQ was a rather ugly stockbroker-Tudor house called the Rings. It was situated between the cottage and the House in the Woods, and here the commandant, Colonel Woolrych, a stern man who didn’t suffer fools gladly, was in charge. We called him Woolybags behind his back. He was a regular army officer who had been in intelligence during the First World War – and probably ever since. I was rather in awe of him in the beginning and kept out of his way as much as possible. But I was later to discover that beneath that austere exterior was buried a wealth of compassion. An accomplished classical pianist, he used to play the beautiful grand piano in the drawing room at the House in the Woods for an hour every morning before breakfast.

  We worked every day of the week, finishing at one o’clock on Sundays, and had one weekend off a month, when we usually raced up to the ‘bright lights’ of London. Often on a Sunday afternoon Jock would bang on the cottage door and shout: ‘Anyone want to come for a walk?’ In winter, Sunday afternoon was the only time during the week when we could get a breath of fresh air in the forest, since the days were short and by the time we finished working it was alr
eady dark. So, when he called, I often tripped off with him. The New Forest was beautiful at any time of the year, and on the estate we had miles of it all to ourselves. He sometimes became a bit sentimental, but one only had to say, ‘Oh, stuff it, Jock,’ and he never insisted. However, after the war I saw a film which had been made for the archives in 1943, and I’m sure I recognized Jock. He was a specialist in ‘silent killing’. They had filmed a demonstration. It was both horrifying and fascinating at the same time. And I couldn’t help wondering whether, had I known about his ‘speciality’ at the time, I would have tripped off so happily with him for a walk in the deserted forest. Or even whether, had I done so, I would have had the courage to resist his amorous advances!

  When in training, the prospective agents were referred to as ‘students’: they became ‘bods’ once behind enemy lines, only reverting to human being status when they returned. They lived in about a dozen houses dotted in the woods on the Beaulieu estate, out of sight of our HQ, which had all been requisitioned in 1940 for the exclusive use of SOE. There were the French, Polish Norwegian, Czech, Belgian, Dutch, Danish, Greek, etc. houses. Those destined for work in France were often billeted at ‘Boarmans’, the ‘Orchard’ or the ‘Vineyard’. The women usually stayed at the ‘House on the Shore’.

  At Beaulieu there were no ‘unisex’ houses. As at HQ, segregation was strictly enforced, not only between men and women, but also between the different countries. The maxim ‘the less you know, the less you can reveal’ was rigidly adhered to, even at Group B. Students destined for different countries in Europe never mixed in houses or classes, or even came across one another. That way, if captured and questioned, they could not disclose under torture that prospective agents from other countries, being prepared for infiltration into occupied Europe, had followed the same training course. Such information would have alerted the Germans to the fact that training was not limited to one or two countries, and could have led to a total collapse of the entire European network. As with the réseaux, and the different country sections at HQ, students from different nations were kept strictly apart.