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The SOE (DF) VAR Line |
Part 2 |
Finisterre – Morlaix, Guimaec and the beach at Beg an Fry |
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This page first posted 19 June 2023 |
There was no question of any further operations from the Plage de la Fresnaye after the failure of Operation Jealous III, and so Baker Street gave VAR two alternative sites to investigate. One of those was at Paramé (probably the same as Rotheneuf – see earlier), close to Saint-Malo but Aristide Sicot judged the site unsuitable, and so turned his attention to London's second suggestion,
more than 100 miles west of Saint-Malo, a place north-east of Morlaix in Finisterre named Beg an Fry. |
Sicot left his parents house at Saint-Cast-le-Guildo, and cycled through Morlaix and Saint-Jean-du-Doigt to arrive at Prajou, about a kilometre from the beach at Beg an Fry, on 7 January 1944. He left his bicycle at the cafe there and went to explore the coast on foot. He soon realised that the original beach proposed by London (known locally as Vilin Izella) was overlooked by a German gun emplacement on top of the Beg an Fry headland but then saw there was another beach, 300 metres further east, hidden by a rocky escarpment but easily reached from the land, which would be perfect for their operations. |
Peter Harratt (quoted by Foot) said that “the best landing points are near a German pill-box, as the garrison of these, knowing as they do that their opponents have photographed the coast, do not expect anyone to be such a fool as to attempt to land under their very noses. My best beach was within 40 (sic) feet of an occupied German pill-box, this beach was used on six occasions”. He has to be referring to Beg an Fry. |
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When he returned to collect his bicycle, Aristide was confronted by three gendarmes and a civilian. The gendarmes searched him, and although his papers were in order (his registered address at Saint-Cast was also in the coastal zone so he was quite entitled to be there), they said they would verify them at the brigade in Lanmeur, and that he could collect them the following day. Aristide knew that if the incident were reported to the German police, they would probably associate his presence in Finisterre with the incident at Saint-Cast, which would put his parents in danger, and so asked to speak to the gendarmes privately. |
He told them that he was as well known of the far side of the Channel as he was in Britanny, and that if any harm should come to him, retribution would certainly be visited upon anyone responsible for his capture – and his papers were returned to him immediately. To confirm his story, Aristide told the gendarmes that he could send a coded message to the BBC's French Service in London, and they agreed on the wording of the message. |
Sicot then returned to Rennes, where he told Deman that he had found a suitable beach, and of the narrow escape he had just had from the gendarmes. Deman drafted a signal to DF Section of SOE accepting Beg an Fry as the beach for the next operation by sea, and asking for Sicot's message for the gendarmes - “l'an 44 n'est pas l'an qui meurt” - to be broadcast by the BBC to confirm his bona fides as a British agent. |
However (as Richards notes), “The message from “Var” must have failed to make clear that the beach at Beg an Fry that Sicot wished to use was not the one London proposed but another 300 metres to the east of it. Sicot, who had not been trained in England and whose experience was thus far limited to a single successful landing, may have thought that the change was of little operational significance, as his light signals from the new position would be equally visible to the gunboat and would automatically bring the surf-boats to where he was waiting. He was to be proved wrong ..” |
The arrest of Felix Jouan |
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On 13 January 1944, Felix Jouan was arrested. He and Aristide Sicot were returning from the beach where they had collected some arms and supplies that had been left behind when the Saint-Cast site was blown at the end of December. These supplies would have to be taken over to the new organisation being established in Finisterre. |
They arrived at their destination in Rennes in the early evening. As they never stopped outside a safe house, they pulled up a short way off, and had the misfortune to stop behind two Feld Gendarmes. One of the Feld Gendarmes came up to the driver and demanded a fine as his number plate was dirty - Felix used to keep his number plate rather dirty on purpose so that it was difficult to read when the car was in motion. While Felix was paying the (20 franc) fine, Sicot got out of the car. The first gendarme had shone his torch into the back of the car and had not noticed anything inside. Unfortunately the NCO in charge came and inspected the car too, and immediately recognised the make of suitcase as that used by resistance movements. Sicot disappeared at once and was able to warn the others. |
Lecorvaisier reports that three quarters of an hour later, the group at Rennes were notified by Sicot , and precautionary measures were taken: evacuation of the Jestin house, and the four agents living at Jouan's house had to be moved elsewhere. |
Two of the agents at the Jouan house were Pierre Morel and Bernard Dubois (and the other two probably Georges Bourdet and Paul Gommeriel) who, like Rene Bichelot (see earlier), had worked with SOE agent François Vallée. They were first moved to Le Roc-Saint-Andre, and from there, Morel says it was Emile Guimard who sent the four of them to Paris, and a cafe called La Canebière on rue Brunel, with contact details for the owner, a man known as Marius, so they could be passed on to the BCRA Pernod organisation of Pierre Guillot and René Gerard. |
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Felix stuck to his story that he was working for the blackmarket, and that the cases belonged to Sicot – a man he said he had picked up on the road. However, Felix Marie Jouan (born 17 December 1892) was taken to Germany six months later, and died at Neuengamme in May 1945. |
VAR Headquarters moved from Rennes to Redon |
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Following his arrival on 2 December, Raymond Langard (with Marcel Jacq as his assistant) had been exchanging radio messages with London almost daily from either the Jestin home in Rennes, or from Bédée. At the same time, he had been looking for better locations at either Fougères (north-east of Rennes) or Redon to the south, where (according to Lecorvaisier) he was in regular contact with Mme Boudaliez. |
In early January 1944, Marie-Therese Stoffel (Lucie) was sent to Paris to expand the network, and Lecorvaisier went to Redon in order to meet with Anne (Ninon) de Beauchesne (alias Paulette). |
Anne de Beauchesne's apartment (address not given) first served as a safe house when she sheltered an airman (Louis Glickman – query), and on 15 January 1944, when the VAR headquarters was moved from Rennes to Redon, Erwin Deman and Louis Lecorvaisier lived there. Thanks to Anne-Marie Boudaliez, two other safe houses were already in operation in Redon. |
Anne-Marie Boudaliez (born 17 July 1920) lived with her widowed mother and maternal grand-parents, M et Mme Emile Wissel, at Mil Oustal, in the Beaumont part of Redon (where from summer 1943, two German officers were also living). She studied English at the Faculty d'anglais in Rennes (gaining her bachelor's degree in October 1942), where she met fellow students Marcel Jacq and Yvon Roy , and had joined a small group carrying out minor acts of rebellion against the Germans occupying the city. |
On 11 December 1943, Anne-Marie having finished her higher education and returned to Redon, says that she received a telegram from Marcel Jacq asking her to meet him that evening in Rennes at a house on Avenue Sergent Maginot. There she met Danielle (Ginette Courtois), Gilbert (Raymond Langard) and Paul (Erwin Deman), who explained that he wanted to relocate his organisation's headquarters to Redon. Next day, she contacted her friend from Redon, Marie-Therese Sillard, who was studying at Beaux Arts in Rennes, and asked if her family would be prepared to shelter a radio operator. |
Marie-Therese (born 14 April 1920) was the daughter of Charles and Marguerite Sillard, and they offered to shelter Raymond Langard in the apartment where they lived above their paint shop on Place Saint Sauveur. Langard stayed with the Sillard family for the next seven months, with Marie-Therese helping with his coding when he transmitted from the Boudaliez home at Mil Oustal.
Anne-Marie also found a second safe house for the organisation with another shopkeeper, a man named Cottin, whose daughter Emilienne was a committed member of the National Front. |
In addition, Lecorvaisier lists the names Peric, Cahour and Robert Roret (at Saint-Jean-la-Poterie, about 10 kms from Redon) as providing safe houses, with a coiffeur named Emery and PTT employee Mme Cheral providing “post boxes”, and M et Mme Queinnec providing a headquarters, although I'm not sure where that was. He also reports that in addition to the Boudaliez home (Mil Oustal), radio transmissions were also made from a farm at Rieux belonging to a M. Thibault. |
Robert Roret, who seems to have been the leader of a small group of young people in his area, was put in charge of finding suitable grounds to accept parachute drops. It was then one of Roret 's men, Fernand Cadio, who took over from Marcel Jacq helping Raymond Langard with his radio while Jacq was sent to Paris, and then Bordeaux, to investigate possible routes to Spain. |
Lecorvaisier reports that during the second half of January, and all of February, the agents were also busy organising themselves in Morlaix, Quimper and Paris. |
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The organisation at Morlaix included Dr Jean Le Duc and his wife Marie-Louise (of 20 Place Thiers), veterinarian Yves Baron and his wife Lucette (of 21 rue de Brest, with a rear entrance on rue Gambetta), and Doctor Leon Le Janne (born 5 March 1894 – he was the regional chief of Liberation Nord) and his family. There was also a girl named Marie-Therese Bederic (aka Claudine) from Quimper who took mail, and sometimes agents suitcases, between Morlaix and Quimper by bus. |
The link with Guemaec was via the Jacob family (see below), where Yves Baron sometimes delivered fabric bought from his sisters, and would stop off on his veterinary rounds to use the telephone at the Jacob's tabac. |
In Quimper, safe houses were established with the family of Marie-Thérèse Stoffel at 12 rue Bourg les Bourgs (now the site of Collège Auguste Brizeux), and with M et Mme Bederic (the parents of Claudine). |
In Paris, safe houses were established with Mlle Marthe Godfryd at 23 rue Desbordes-Valmore, Paris XVI; the Le Faou family at 41 rue Beaubourg, Paris III; the Moussat family at 53 boulevard Murat, Paris XVI and with Mme Cances at 66 rue Bonaparte, Paris VI. |
Sicot returns to Lanmeur with Deman – and establishes safe houses |
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The day after the BBC sent the radio message for the gendarmes at Lanmeur (amended to “44 n'est pas l'année qui meurt” to make the word “Lanmeur” less obvious), Sicot and Deman went to the gendarmerie, and while Deman waited outside, Sicot went in and found that everyone was satisfied and pro-resistance. Deman then went in and asked the gendarmes for their co-operation, requesting their silence and assurance that they would not carry out any arrests. In addition to promising that, the gendarmes also offered to provide any information they had on German troop movements, and gave Sicot the name and address of a family who were known to be well inclined towards the resistance. |
Two days later, Sicot went to call on the Jacob family. Mme Vve Jacob and her four daughters, Yvonne, Germaine, Raymonde and Alice, lived in a large house near the coast, and ran a cafe/grocery/tabac in the centre of Guimaec. Sicot told them that he had come on behalf of the gendarmerie and asked if they would be willing to house “refractaires”. They agreed at once, and next evening Sicot says that he took two men and one woman there who were being taken back to England. Part of the Jacob house had been taken over by the Germans and in order to be able to carry on with the clandestine work, the girls pretended to change their previously hostile attitude for a less patriotic one. Some people even thought they had become genuine collaborators. Two of the Jacob sisters, Yvonne and Germaine took care of sheltering and feeding agents while Raymonde and Alice worked as guides, and were part of the reception committee. |
"Mme Yvonne Jacob had been widowed early, and her only son was lost at sea in 1917 on board a ship torpedoed by the Germans. This valiant mother with quiet courage, did not hesitate to collaborate with us, despite the risks to which she and her daughters were exposed." In Guimaëc, the Jacob daughters were called "ar merc'hed butun" (the tobacco women in Breton).” (my translation of an interview given by Aristide Sicot, published in the “Le Télégramme” of 12 June 1969) |
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The Mlles Jacob also recruited a driver for the circuit. Louis Mercier, a fishmonger who had been in the cafe at the time of Sicot's interview by the gendarmes (he was the civilian who had accompanied the gendarmes when Sicot was stopped), was quite willing to help when Sicot approached him on the subject. He knew at once that it was not about refractaires, and his house “Rozen”, at Mareyeur en Guimaec (where he lived with his father-in-law, Francois Tocquer) was used as a first safe house as it was only 800 yards from the beach. He became known in the circuit as Joseph , and also worked with the reception committee. |
Sicot also found another safe house at Plouigneau (about 10 kms east of Morlaix), which had a station on the main Paris-Brest railway line, though it was some way inland. Robert Thomas was a blacksmith who was not only willing to provide shelter but had a trusted friend, a wine merchant named Barazar, who had a van that could be used to transport passengers from Plouigneau to the coast. |
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28-29 Jan: SOE (DF) Var Line Op Easement : MGB 502 (Williams with Birkin as navigator) landed two fol boats at Beg an Fry beach but missed the shore party who were waiting at the next beach along, behind a small headland. |
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MGB 502 (Williams) was again the vessel chosen for the job, this time with 29-year-old Lt David Birkin RNVR as navigator to find their pinpoint off a “distinctive group of rocks” called Les-Boeufs. Peter Harratt was on board as conducting officer for SOE, and Lt Kenneth Murray Uhr-Henry, the 32-year-old Australian officer who had been involved in so many of MGB 318's operations over the previous 15 months, was now 502's first lieutenant and boats officer; he took Harratt with him in the first boat, and an SOE agent (or agents) who were to be landed followed in the second. |
Tim Spicer (A Dangerous Enterprise) reports Lt Uhr-Henry as saying that the one agent they were planning to land elected to go on by himself anyway - but I have not been able to confirm this. |
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Deman says (in his report dated 1 Mar 44) that when London gave him instructions for this first operation from Beg an Fry, they included the request for him and radio operator Raymond Langard to be included in the party to be collected. |
Deman, Langard, Aristide Sicot and two (query) other would-be evacuees had been guided to the beach by the Jacob sisters and were waiting on the beach chosen by Sicot 300 metres to the east. Here they were effectively screened from view by one of the rocky spurs that separated it from the beach at the base of Beg an Fry (the Plage de Vilin Izella) on which the surf-boats landed. |
S-phones could not be used on the night due to the proximity of a German radio station on the headland at Beg an Fry but the misunderstanding was sorted out on the W/T link later. Meanwhile, the passengers who should have left on Easement on the night of 28-29 January were lodged in an empty house opposite the Jacob sisters' shop at Guimaec until the next operation could be mounted, which was not until 26-27 February. |
“London laid on an operation on the Beg an Fry beach, saying they would like to see Dinu and myself in this party. We went to the beach and waited there but nothing happened, so when the stand-by hours were over, we returned to the beach house and did not hear or see anything. We remained in the beach area until the end of the operational period because I was expecting some BBC message giving me an explanation of some sort [the last MGB operation of that period was the following night, BCRA Operation Flannelfoot]. We left the passengers in one of the beach houses [safe houses] and returned to Redon, where I had established my headquarters, as we had a full month before the next sea operation. |
I found a dropping ground and asked for an S/Phone, money and various equipment by air. The wireless was working very badly at the time, and I did not get the conditions suitable for the air operation until the very day arranged for it, so I was unable to ensure success. |
We went to the dropping ground and heard the aircraft coming. We lit our flare path, consisting of four red lights, as we had been instructed to do by W/T, and the aircraft flew over Redon, where a few machine guns opened up, turned and flew the entire length of the flare path four times and went home. I thought that perhaps the flare path was wrong and aircraft had not dropped anything, so we went back to Redon, but the next day a friend who had been watching told me that a package had been dropped 4 kilometres north of the dropping ground and against the wind. I thought this was rumour which had been spread because a low-flying aircraft had been seen. I found out later that a French peasant had picked up the package and taken it to the French authorities, and as he did so in broad daylight they had no alternative but to hand it to the Germans, although they were friends of ours. |
After that we got no contact for six days, and the sea operation period came closer. After the sixth day of silence, while Dinu was still trying hard to contact London, we heard an RDF aircraft and when we went into the town, we saw an RDF car outside the Kommandateur, so I decided that it would be safer for us to go to Quimper. When we arrived there I told Dinu to go over all the safe houses and find out which was most suitable for W/T work. He chose one, but was unable to get a contact. Then we went to a very small house on top of a hill, without electricity, so that we had to use our accumulators, which we had brought. He got a perfect contact, but just as the message started coming through the accumulator ran out. From there we went to a farm house with electricity, and as this was the fourth day of the sea operations period and no agreement had been received, I cancelled all messages about air operations, and sent a message giving my conditions for the sea operation and asked for a BBC approval. When I received it I went to the beach area. While we were waiting for the operational message I was told about an RAF pilot who had crash-landed in the area, so we picked him up for exfiltration too. On the operational message we went down to the beach, and everything went well.” (Deman Report dd 1 Mar 44) |
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The first MGB operation of the following moonless period was Operation Glover on the night of 23-24 February, when MGB 503 (Marshall) delivered stores to Ile-a-Canton (north-west of Lannion) for the Alibi-Maurice intelligence network. MGB 503 was also busy on the night of 26-27 February, when she visited the beach at l'Anse-Cochat on Operation Bonaparte II for the MI9 Shelburn escape line. |
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26-27 Feb: SOE (DF) Var Line Op Easement II : MGB 502 (Williams with Birkin as navigator) delivers François Mitterrand and Emile Minerault to Beg an Fry. Collects Erwin Deman, Raymond Langard, Aristide Sicot, Andre Hue and RAF evader F/O Waldo Mollett. |
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François Mitterrand (born 26 October 1916) had been captured in June 1940, and escaped from Germany towards the end of the following year. He spent some time working with the Vichy government before rejecting the regime following the German take-over of southern France in November 1942. He then became increasingly involved with the resistance, building up a group of mostly ex-POWs (and working with his friend George Levin on setting up VIC line safe houses in Paris) until narrowly avoiding arrest by the German SD in November 1943, and as already mentioned, escaped to London by air (Operation Conjurer). He was returning to France as an agent for the BCRA (Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action), and using the name François Morland. |
Emile Minerault (aka Raymond), the French-born, naturalised American agent who returned to England the night of 1-2 December 1943 on Operation Jealous II, was brought back to take up the post of second-in-command of the VAR circuit under Louis Lecorvaisier while Deman was away, and was in charge of reception committees for dropping stores. |
In addition to Erwin Deman and radio operator Raymond Langard, who were returning to England as requested, Deman brought Aristide Sicot along so that he could go through formal SOE training as an agent. Also brought back were RAF evader Waldo Mollett, future SOE agent Andre Hue, and a man referred as either Roy or Roland. |
F/O Waldo Vaughan Mollett (1793), a 21-year-old clerk from Salisbury, Rhodesia, was the pilot of 266 Sqn Typhoon JR387 from RAF Harrowbeer (near Plymouth in Devon) on a sweep mission to Lorient on the morning of 15 February 1944. As he flew over Morlaix aerodrome, he was hit by flak, and with no time to bale out, crash-landed his aircraft about 12 miles south of Morlaix. |
As he climbed out of his aircraft, Mollett was met by a group of local people, and when some of the girls in the crowd saw the blood running from a cut over his eye, they took him to a nearby farm. A few minutes later, some Frenchmen arrived and exchanged Mollett's uniform for old trousers, a shirt and coat, and three of them took him across the fields to a cave about half a mile away. The cave entrance was then covered in branches, and the men returned periodically to bring cigarettes, bread and wine for the rest of the day. That evening, they brought straw to make up a bed before leaving him for the night. |
Mollett was woken early the following morning by a young boy who told him to put his belongings in a sack, and then led him to a nearby farm. There were four Frenchmen there, one of whom spoke some English, and Mollett stayed at the farm for the rest of the day. That evening, two of the Frenchmen arrived in a car, and after giving Mollett a new suit of clothes, drove him to Morlaix. One of the men took Mollett into a bar, and after a drink, the barman followed them outside and spoke briefly with Mollett before he was taken to another bar, and after another drink, to a private house from where his journey was arranged. |
One of the men who had driven Mollett to Morlaix asked him for some money, and when Mollett handed over his escape purse, took 1,200 francs before handing back the rest. The house he was taken to was the home of Doctor Leon Le Janne. Mollett had dinner that evening with the doctor, his wife (who spoke English) and family, and the doctor told him that he had helped many American airmen before. Later that evening, Mme Le Janne took Mollett to a house next door, which was owned by two elderly ladies, where Mollett spent the night. |
The two elderly ladies were the desmoiselles Fanny and Madeleine Le Boetté, who ran a haberdashery in Place Thiers (now Place des Otages) in Morlaix. They worked there during the day and owned a house on rue Louis le Guennec. They had been obliged to accommodate a German non-commissioned officer on the ground floor of their house and had taken in this airman, brought to them by the daughter of Dr Le Janne. Mollett was staying on the first floor of their house, and caused them great distress by smoking English cigarettes (with their distinctive aroma). A member of the Le Boetté family noted that "as quiet grannies, they found that the presence of a Teuton in the house gave them good cover against possible searches". (Autret) |
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Next day (17 February), some people arrived to give Mollett cigarettes and food, and that evening, a Frenchman took him to his house where Mollett met a man who had taught English at a local school, and was a member of the organisation (Aristide Sicot). The man said that Mollett would be taken back to England by boat, something the doctor had also told him, and Mollett was returned to the two elderly ladies. |
On the afternoon of 19 February, one of the doctor's daughters took Mollett to her house, and that evening, she and her mother walked Mollett through Morlaix to a house belonging to three elderly ladies, where Mollett stayed until 24 February. |
At about mid-day on 24 February, a French couple arrived. They gave Mollett a bicycle, and told him to push the bicycle and follow them to another house, where they left him. Mollett met Doctor Jean Le Duc at the house, and he took Mollett to another “address”. This would seem to be the doctor's own house, at 20 Place Thiers (now Place des Otages), as Mollett says that while he was in the doctor's study, he pointed out two girls (Raymonde and Alice Jacob, who were both in their early thirties) standing on the opposite pavement, and told Mollett to follow them. The two girls led Mollett to the village of Guimaec, where they arrived at about four that afternoon, and a room where he met three Frenchmen, and an Englishman called “Paul” – described by Mollett as being about 23 years old, 5 foot 8 inches tall and of slight build. Paul (Erwin Deman) gave Mollett an ID card (with one of his issue photographs) and a permit to allow him to enter the prohibited (coastal) areas. Paul also told him he would be taken to the UK by boat as soon as the weather was calm enough. |
On 26 February, the owner of the house where Mollett was staying, took him to a farmhouse about 45 minutes away where he saw the two girls who had guided him from Morlaix to Guimaec. They took him to another farm (probably “Rozen”, home of Francois Tocquer and his son-in-law Louis Mercier), and fifteen minutes later, Paul and two Frenchmen arrived, and at eight-thirty that evening, they walked to the beach. Mollett says that “after some time” two rowing boats came up to the beach and he got into one, which was manned by two British naval ratings and an officer. An hour later, he transferred to a British gunboat. |
Mollett also reports that Doctor Leon Le Janne's brother Charles had given him some papers with military information about the Morlaix area defences, which were carried by his guide, and that one of the girls gave them to the naval officers manning the two rowing boats. |
I am using the opening chapter of André Hue's own book “The Next Moon”, originally published by Viking in 2004, as my main source for the following section. The book is largely based on notes Hue made at the end of the war, and edited by Ewan Southby-Taylor. Unfortunately some of the finer details of this first chapter are not to be relied upon. |
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André Hue was born in Swansea on 7 December 1923 to a Welsh mother and French father, and as a sixteen-year-old, was almost drowned on 17 June 1940 when the liner SS Champlain (on which he was a junior assistant purser), hit a mine whilst anchored off La Pallice. The following year, Hue found himself in Britanny, working at gare Guer (Morbihan), which served (amongst other places), a large French military camp at Coetquidan-Saint-Cyr, which had been taken over by the Germans. Hue became responsible for copying the manifests of trains despatching men and materiel from Guer, and he got into the habit of making an extra copy that could be passed to his friend Charles Touzet, and so to “Oscar” - SOE agent François Vallee, who had parachuted into Britanny in June 1943, and as organiser of the Parson circuit, was based in Rennes. Later, Oscar asked Hue if he could find suitable fields that could be used as parachute landing grounds. Eventually, the Germans seem to have realised that too many of their trains originating from Guer were being attacked, and Hue was fortunate to escape when four car-loads of German police came to the station. |
Hue made his way to Charles Touzet's house, and Charles advised him to go to Rennes, where he decided to stay with a friend, a dental student named Rene Bichelot. Unfortunately, Bichelot (see earlier) was also wanted by the Germans, and after a week, Bichelot suggested that Hue go to Messac, where he could work with Emile Guimard (sic) – a man that Bichelot had passed evaders to, and who Hue claims to have met whilst working with Oscar. Next day, Hue made his way to Messac, where he helped Guimard by bringing evaders that Bichelot had found into Guimard's care, to be passed on to other organisations. It was while doing this work that Hue says he came into contact with Felix Jouan, whose camionette was used for transport. |
There seems to be some confusion here - it was General Marcel Allard who lived at Messac (Ille-et-Vilaine), while Emile Guimard (who makes no mention of Hue is his file) lived some 70 kms away at Lizio (Morbihan). |
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Hue says it was 26 February (1944) when his long wait (to get to England) finally came to an end but then confuses details from the failed Jealous III operation - “six American pilots” and “a capacious hide dug beneath the dining room” and Emile Guimard giving them a detailed briefing - with his departure from the beach near Guimaec. |
Louis Lecorvaisier says that Lucie (Marie-Therese Stoffel) was in charge of organising safe houses in Paris, and that an English student he refers to as “Roland” (Huguen calls him “Roy” and describes him as “un professeur d'anglais” who had left Rennes for Paris), was supposed to be helping her. However, when Lecorvaisier went to the capital, he found that Roland was of very little use, and he was returned to Rennes. Roland claimed that his movements had been observed by enemy agents, and as he knew the locations of some of the safe houses, he was sent to Redon to await his departure to England. |
Lecorvaisier also says that before Deman left for England, he established a system of messages that would allow Lecorvaisier to receive information from London while their radio operator, Raymond Langard, was away, and whilst not giving any details (I think this was via Loyola in Paris), reports that it worked well. In addition, when Emile Minerault arrived, he brought information for future operations. |
Operation Easement III - two nights later .. |
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29 Feb: SOE (DF) Var Line Op Easement III : MGB 502 (Williams with Birkin as navigator) lands SOE agents Alphonse Defendini, Lt Alexandre Swatschko and Henri Frager. |
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Ange Brand Defendini was born on 4 December 1904 in French Guiana to French parents of Corsican descent. After the family returned to Corsica, Ange attended the Lycée de Bastia before following his father into the military. From 1930 until the outbreak of war, he worked for the Deuxième Bureau, first in the espionage service and then from 1934, with counter-espionage. When war was declared, he joined the French army at Bastia, and went with them to the mainland, where he was wounded in northern France in June 1940. He returned to Corsica, and the counter-espionage service, now under Vichy French control, but at the same time he and his wife Marie became heavily involved in the BCRA organised Gaullist Resistance. Defendi became wanted by the Italians, and in April 1943 left the island on board the French submarune Casabianca, and made his way to England. |
Defendini joined SOE in late June 1943, where his previous experience with the Deuxième Bureau meant he could skip some of the basic training but (as Alphonse Defoe) injured his back on the parachute course. |
Defendini had the code name Priest, and his mission, also named Priest, was to organise a new circuit around Verdun, and to attack railway lines in support of the invasion. He was given a rendezvous at a safe house in Saint-Quentin, supposedly arranged by SOE agent Frank Pickersgill but Pickersgill and his radio operator John Kenneth Macalister had been captured soon after landing in June 1943, and the Germans had been playing radio games (funkspiel) with their set, and so Defendini walked into a trap. Ange Defendini was executed at Buchenwald on (about) 10 September 1944. |
Alexandre Schwatschko (born 19 July 1919 in Transylvania to a Russian father and Hungarian mother) spent much of his youth in France, and was educated at Metz and Chalons-sur-Marne where in 1939, he received a diploma in engineering. During the first two years of the war he was able to live a life of leisure but in 1942, a chance encounter with a pre-war friend in Paris, SOE agent Denis Rake, encouraged Schwatschko to make his way to England, finally sailing from Gibraltar, and arriving at Gourock on 5 June 1943. Later that month, he was recruited into F Section SOE, where he was trained as a landing officer (injuring his knee on the parachute course), and in February 1944, sent to joined Maurice Southgate's Stationer circuit, with the field name Olive. |
Schwatchko organised two successful Lysander landings (Chauffeur and Organist) before his boss, Maurice Southgate was arrested on 1 May, after which, Southgate's radio operator, Amedée Maingard worked with Schwatchko on a new circuit called Shipwright. They received several parachute drops of weapons but on 7 June, during a reconnaisance mission of the hydro-electric dam at Eguzon (Indre), Schwatchko was trapped in a hotel, and with no prospect of getting out alive, shot himself rather than be taken prisoner. |
Henri Jacques Paul Frager (born in Paris on 3 March 1897 to parents from Alsace) served in the French army in 1915 until demobilised with a serious leg wound in 1917, which left him with a pronounced limp. He completed a degree in architecture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, and developed his architectoral career in Nice. He retained contacts in Paris with the White Russian community, and married a Frenchwoman of Russian descent named Lioubow (Louba) Mouromsky. He was mobilised for the Second War, and with the fall of France, went to Algeria. |
Frager returned to France in early 1941, where he came into contact with SOE agent François Basin; and Andre Girard, founder of the Carte circuit, and Frager became Girard's second-in-command. When London urged Girard to come to England, he sent Frager instead, who was duly collected by felucca, probably Seawolf (Krajewski) on Operation Goblin II the night 11-12 June 1942, and taken to Gibraltar before being flown to England. |
Frager was returned to France once more on 30 July 1942 by the felucca Seadog (Buchowski) on Operation Sassafras, with Nicholas Boddington, Yvonne Rudellat and radio operator H M R Despaigne, before being brought back to England again, this time by Lysander (Verity) the night of 23-24 March 1943, on Operation Jockey/Playright, with Peter Churchill. |
On the night of 14-15 April, Frager was flown back to France on a double Lysander operation Salesman (already mentioned) arranged by Henri Dericourt. Frager's mission was to establish armed groups in north-eastern France, with Peter Churchill as his liaison but Churchill and Odette Sansom were arrested in Saint-Jorioz (near Annecy) the following day, leaving Frager to try and cover Churchill's extensive designated areas of responsibilty as well. It was probably the enormity of this task that led Frager to trust a man named Roger Bardet, who had by then been taken in by Sgt Hugo Bleicher of the Abwehr, and would eventually lead to Frager's downfall. |
Frager returned to England on the night of 21-22 October 1943, flown out by 161 SD Hudson (Affleck) from “Achille” field near Soucelles on Operation Mate, again organised by Dericourt, who Frager was by then convinced could not be trusted. He told London the main reason for his return was to denounce Dericourt, and as he flatly refused to return to France by air, it was the VAR line that delivered Frager back to his homeland. |
Henri Frager was arrested by Hugo Bleicher on 2 July 1944, and died at Buchenwald, executed by firing squad along with three other F Section agents, Pierre Louis Mulsant, Denis Barrett and George Wilkinson, on 5 October 1944. |
Lecorvaisier reports that a parachute drop took place near Redon at the beginning of March, and says that later that month, he went to Paris to see Marthe Godfryd at 23 rue Desbordes Valmore, before returning to Guimaec for the next operation. |
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The moonless period of March 1944 saw three “Septimus” operations for VAR, two by MGB 503 (Marshall) and one by MGB 502 (Williams). David Birkin was the navigator for MGB 503 at this time, including the night 21-22 March when she visited the nightmare beach on Ile-a-Canton for the second (of seven) SIS Glover operations for the Alibi intelligence gathering group - the two gunboats leaving Dartmouth together that evening. |
17-18 Mar: SOE (DF) Var line Op Septimus : MGB 503 (26-year-old Lt Robert Mike Marshall RNVR - with David Birkin as navigator) to land 6 SOE agents, including Gilbert Vedy, Courson de Villeneauve, Jollinon (sic) and Charles Entier (sic), and to embark up to 10 SOE agents. |
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The agents landed included Erwin Deman and Raymond Langard for VAR plus Gilbert Mederic-Vedy and Courson de Villeneuve - I don't yet know if the other two were Pierre Jollinon and Charles Akoun. Richards goes on to say that rather than the ten agents expected, only one passenger was collected, an airman named Gerald Racine but that is an error (see Operation Scarf later). |
Gilbert Mederic-Vedy (born 16 February 1902) had been in involved with various resistance activites from the very start of the war, and in 1942, worked with the CDDL (Ceux de la Liberation) organisation. He and his wife were flown to England the night of 12-13 September 1943 (on triple Lysander Operation Battering Ram), but when news reached him that Roger Coquoin (head of CDDL) had been shot dead in January 1944, Vedy returned to France. Three days later, on 21 March, Vedy was arrested in Paris, and on being positively identified, promptly chewed and swallowed his L-tablet. |
Alexandre de Courson de la Villeneuve (alias Pyramid) (born 19 October 1903) had been serving with the Free French in Algeria until coming to London in October 1943, where he joined BCRA. He was destined for Clermont-Ferrand to organise resistance groups prior to the D-Day landings but was arrested on 2 July 1944, and died the following month. |
Another man who seems to have been landed on this operation was an agent called “Stanislaus”. Suzanne Dufayel (named by Pat O'Leary as a courier between him and Vic Farrell in Switzerland) says that she first met Stanislaus in Marseille in December 1942; he was also associated with O'Leary, and escaped to England in about March 1943. She says that in March 1944, Stanislaus had been landed back in France by sea to a place near Morlaix - his mission being to “find pin-points for parachuting for Lieutenent Robichaud”. |
Suzanne had been staying with her parents in Toulouse but in February 1944, was notified of Stanislaus' imminent arrival, and went to Paris to find an apartment. She says that Stanislaus contacted her as soon as he arrived. She states that Stanislaus was landed before “Robin” (Albert Robichaud, who arrived on Operation Septimus II), so if the dates are right then Stanislaus himself would have to have been on this first Septimus operation. |
I don't know if there was an outbound passenger on 18 March - Lecorvaisier says that among the last group (sic) evacuated in March was “Colonel Gérard, of the Belgian Army, who was recalled to London and who was to be appointed a few months later as a member of l'Armée Blanche”. Colonel Ivan Louis Gérard (born 16 March 1899), who was by then being hunted by the Gestapo, had been replaced that month as head of the Belgian Armée Secrète by General Jules Pire. Whilst I am confident that Colonel Gérard was brought to England by VAR, I have not been able to confirm the actual date. |
Lecorvaisier: “Paul leaves immediately for Paris with Gilbert [Langard], after having left Yves with the instructions for the two other operations that will take place in the next six days. These operations take place without any hitch. About ten (sic) people are evacuated, twelve (sic) returning, as well as a good quantity of material (radio sets, etc.) and mail to be distributed to various networks for which a precise contact is given. |
From Paris, Paul sent agents (Jean Macron, Marie-Therese Bederic and Marcel Jacq) to organise a line in Bordeaux and Biarritz which will pass through Spain. |
He sent Robert Roret to the south of the Massif Central and to the Cote d'Azur, where he was in charge of organising a network to collect airmen in the south-east and to identify, if possible, embarkation beaches. |
Meanwhile, Emile [Minerault] organised the collection of airmen in Normandy and in the Paris region. He found several who were evacuated at the third operation in March [none recorded on Septimus III], at the one in April [Gerald Racine] , and after that, they were passed to VIC. |
As the Paris area became increasingly important, it became necessary to find convenient and secure meeting places in the capital and as many safe houses as possible for the agents. From the end of March, the flat of a teacher (Mlle Vachon) who gave private lessons at her home and therefore received quite a few visitors, was used as a “maison de rendez-vous” (until mid-May 1944). |
From the beginning of May, M. Gilbert, a Belgian who had been living in France for many years, and whom Emile had met when he took in two airmen who had been in hiding for several days, made his workshop at 48 Boulevard Sebastopol available to the network, which served as a meeting place almost every day until the end of June. The workshop had three exits on two streets, one being on rue Quincampoix." |
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21-22 Mar: SOE (DF) Var line Op Septimus II : MGB 502 (Williams) lands six (sic) agents including Virginia Hall, Henri Lausucq, Charles Rechenmann and Yvonne Fontaine. |
Richards suggests that the other three (sic) may have been “Nubien”, “Oronte” and “Pacha” for BCRA but they (René Cornec, Roland Pré and Henri Guillermin) were landed a few nights later on Operation Septimus III. |
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Agents landed were Virginia Hall, Henri Lausucq, Charles Rechenmann, Yvonne Fontaine (both mentioned earlier) and Albert Robichaud - I don't know if there was a sixth person. |
Virginia Hall (born 6 August 1906) was an American journalist reporting from France, with her articles published in the New York Times - and had been an SOE agent (with the field name Marie Monin) since February 1941. After first working from Vichy, she moved her operations to Lyon, where Ben Cowburn said of her apartment that “If you sit in her kitchen long enough you will see most people pass through with one sort of trouble or another, which she promptly deals with”. Eventually she became too well known, and her description, which included the fact that she had part of lower left leg amputated (following a shooting accident in 1933) and replaced with a prosthetic (which she named Cuthbert), was widely circulated - and she crossed the Pyrenees to Spain in November 1942. |
After a frustrating period working for SOE in Madrid (as a correspondant for the Chicago Times), she was recruited by the American OSS (Office of Stategic Studies - predecessor of the CIA) in January 1944, and with the field name Diane, tasked with returning to France as the radio operator for a new circuit called “Saint”, with Henri Lausucq as her boss. |
Henri Lausucq (field name Aramis) was a 62-year-old OSS officer sent in with Virginia Hall to organise the new “Saint” circuit but according to Sonia Purnell, this was not a situation that the vastly experienced Hall was going to tolerate for long. She soon took charge, and used her own contacts in Paris, who refused to deal with the “pompous” and “overly loquacious” Aramis .. |
Charles Theophile Rechenmann (born 24 August 1912 in Moselle) was technically of German birth - his father had served in the German army - but when Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France in 1918, the Rechenmanns took French nationality, and settled in Sarreguemines. After leaving school in Sarreguemines, Charles qualified as an electrical engineer at the Electro-technical Institute of Grenoble, and began working for MECI (Matériel Electrique du Contrôle Industrial) in Paris. He undertook national service with the French army, and was called up in August 1939, only to be captured in June 1940, and subsequently released because he was originally from Lorraine. |
On his release, Charles moved to stay with his family, who were then living at Angouleme (Charente), and in 1942, to the small village of Lamerac. Having failed to leave France via Tarbes, he established himself as a company representative for MECI, liaising with the Hispano-Suiza works in Tarbes. It was in this capacity that he met SOE agent Ben Cowburn, who he had known in Paris, and when Cowburn returned to France in May 1942 for his second mission, he recruited Rechenmann into his Tinker circuit to liaise with Virginia Hall in Lyon. Rechenmann's work expanded to include active sabotage, which he continued under Maurice Southgate when he arrived in January 1943 to set up his Stationer circuit. Rechenmann was flown to England on the night of 15-16 November 1943 (Operation Conjuror - mentioned earlier) for formal acceptance into SOE and further training, where it was judged he should form his own circuit, called Rover, to organise resistance around the Angouleme district. |
Rechenmann was captured at a hotel in Angouleme on 12 May 1944, reportedly betrayed by his assistant René Bochereau (who, along with his wife, was subsequently killed), and executed at Buchenwald on 12 September 1944. |
Yvonne Fontaine (born 8 August 1913) began her resistance work in 1943 as a courier (Nenette) with SOE agent Ben Cowburn's Tinker circuit until she, like Rechenmann, was brought to England on Operation Conjuror. After formal training by SOE, she was returning to join the new Minister circuit of her friends Pierre Louis Mulsant (her initial contact with Cowburn) and radio operator Denis Barrett, who had both had been delivered back to France earlier that month by parachute on the night of 3-4 March. Despite the arrests of Mulsant and Barrett in July 1944, Fontaine continued her work until returning to England by air in September 1944. |
Albert Robichaud (aka Robin), although born in Canada on 18 Feb 1916, was a naturalised American citizen, recruited into the OSS, and loaned to SOE D/F Section in January 1944. His mission was to test an escape route to the Iberian Peninsula from “the VAR circuit” and on to the “Cherub and Celine Lines”. He describes being landed, along with four others that he did not know, and comments that a captain he had met in London had sent his lieutenant to act as head of the reception committee. Having landed shortly before two in the morning, they walked to a small house near the beach, where they discarded their weapons, and then walked to a larger house, home of the man who also owned the first house, where Robichaud at least, changed his clothes. At about six o'clock, all five agents were taken by truck to Morlaix, where they they boarded an eight o'clock morning train to Paris. |
From Paris, Robichaud went by overnight train to Bordeaux, where he took a tram from the station to 11 rue de Surson (sic) (Cursol - query), to meet his Cherub line contact, François Renard. His journey was then arranged via Bayonne and Biarritz to Saint-Jean-de-Luz, crossing into Spain on foot to Irun and on to San Sebastien, then Bilbao. He was taken from there to Lisbon, arriving on 17 April, and flown back to the UK the following night. A memo dated 28 April 1944 from D/F to DR/US confirms Robichaud's return to UK on 18 April “having completed his mission to our entire satisfaction”. |
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26-27 Mar: SOE (DF) Var Line Op Septimus III : MGB 503 ( Marshall ) (with Birkin navigating) lands four SOE agents at Beg an Fry. |
What Richards doesn't mention is that they also collected one agent, Leonidas Savinos. |
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The four agents landed were Henri Guillermin, René Cornec, Josef Jakubowski and Roland Pré. |
Henri Guillermin (born 3 August 1920 at Prissé) held a pre-war pilot's licence, and had been a captain in the French Air Force until he was demobilised in August 1940. He began his subversive work in 1942, and in 1943, acted as departmental chief for COPA (Centre d'Opérations de Parachutages et d'Atterrissages en zone libre) and Combat in Saône-et-Loire, including active sabotage against the Saône dam at Gigny-sur-Saône on the night of 22-23 July 1943. That autumn, Guillermin was ordered to the UK, and on the night of 21-22 September 1943, was one of 8 passengers collected from “Junot” field near Arbigny (Ain) by 161 SD Hudson (Verity) on Operation Peashooter. |
In England, at the request of the French, Guillermin underwent special training with SOE, and was badly injured during the parachute phase in November but still volunteered to return to France as soon as he was fit enough. With the alias of Alain (and the training name of Pacha), his mission was to take over parachute operations in the Toulouse region, where he was responsible for “the successful reception of 100 parachute sorties” and also “arranged clandestine aircraft landing operations enabling 60 agents to be sent into France and 20 agents and allied airmen to be sent back to the UK”. These included two Hudson operations near Garlin in August (Poignard) and early September (Failsworthy). Guillermin was recommended for an MBE (Military Division) by Colin Gubbins. |
René Jules Hippolyte Cornec (born in Nantes on 25 March 1917) was a French army sous-lieutenant who arrived in the UK from north Africa (where he had been attached to British 1st Army) on 15 September 1943. He is described as being “an outstanding and a highly experienced radio operator with both the French army and Fleet Air Arm”. With the training name of Nubien, Cornec was being sent back to France as wireless operator to “the head of air operations reception organisation for six departments in south-eastern France” where he worked until the liberation of Lyon (in September). His recommendation for a KMS (later upgraded to KMC) by Colin Gubbins in November 1945, describes him as “one of the best, if not the best, operator working with the French Resistance”. |
Josef Jakubowski was born on 20 March 1922 in Weglewice, Poland but moved to France with his parents when he was about three years old. He grew up in Troyes, and when he was seventeeen, enlisted in the Polish army in France, and in 1940, was evacuated to England with them. Jakubowski trained as a wireless operator, and was recruited into SOE in October 1943 to be the wireless operator for a Polish organiser in France - that organiser being Konstanty Popiel (Loyola), who had been delivered to France by VAR the previous December on Operation Jealous II.
Jakubowski returned to the UK from Paris on 25 October 1944. |
Roland Charles Louis Pré (born in Renazé, Mayenne on 26 December 1907) was a pre-war civil servant who had studied law in Paris. He did his military service with the air force until released in October 1931. He came to England in 1932 before returning to Paris to study for his law doctorate, and took a variety of jobs until being mobilised in August 1939. He was demobilised in August 1940, after which he returned to Paris, where he was made a Professor of Political Economy. In January 1943, Pré escaped to England, crossing the Pyrenees to Barcelona and on to Gibraltar, arriving in Liverpool on 15 May 1943. |
With the field name Orontes, Pré's mission was described by BCRA as being a “civil mission in connection with the Secretariats Nord and Sud”, and VAR's responsibility ended once they had directed him to the nearest railway station. |
Leonidas Savinos was of Greek descent but born in Alexandria, Egypt on 25 August 1905. He and his German-born wife Emmy Helene (née Sirius 31 January 1903 in Bautzen, Saxony but also of Greek descent) had been involved with helping evaders since 1940, and worked with the Pat O'Leary organisation in both Paris (where Leonidas had a chemical and minerals import-export business) and Marseille until Leonidas was arrested in Paris (along with Pierre Lanvers) in June 1942. After their (conditional) release, O'Leary insisted that Leonidas and his wife leave the country, and they were collected from Port d'En Vau, near Marseille, on the night of 13-14 July by the Polish-crewed felucca Seawolf on Operation Lucille, and taken to Gibraltar. They left Gibraltar on board the SS Llanstephan Castle on 28 August, arriving in the UK on 10 September 1942. |
Savinos found work at the BBC, broadcasting in Greek but in October 1943 was asked by SOE D/H (Mediterranean Group) to carry out a “special mission” for them to Paris. |
A memo dated 12 November 1943 from DHA/GR to D/H109 reports him having lunch with Savinos that day, and Savinos saying that he was prepared to go to France forthwith and establish himself there, leaving London to notify him later, when the decision had been made, whether he was to evacuate the General or not. Savinos made light of the risk of living in France, and said that he was anxious to save time by getting in on this moon (he presumed delivery by air) so that if a favourable decision regarding the General's avacuation was arrived at, he could set about it immediately. |
There are hand-written notes added to the memo commenting that “Getting him [Savinos] into France is one operation (which may later encounter difficulties due to weather). Getting General P
[the exiled General Nikolaos Plastiras]
out is another, and could be tackled by Savinos as soon as we give him the O.K. by W.T. or BBC.” |
A memo dated 9 December 1943 from D/H109 to D/Fin (Finance) acknowledges an increase in funds to 250,000 francs for Savinos, who was “about to proceed abroad”. |
Five Lysander operations were attempted in the December moon period (with the loss of several pilots and passengers) and none in January 1944 due to the weather conditions. The next moon period began on the night of 4-5 February with four operations, two by Lysander and two by Hudson. One of the Hudson operations, Operation Bludgeon, failed due to the reception party being at the wrong field but was completed four nights later, with, according to Pierre Tillet (but not Verity), an agent called Elvire [Savinos] as one of the several passengers delivered to landing officer Paul Rivère at “Orion” field near Bletterans (Jura). |
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A memo dated 14 April 1944 from A/DH (Mediterranean Group Director) passes on appreciative thanks to D/F for both the infiltration and exfiltration of Savinos. |
A memo of 18 April 1944 from D/F to D/H109 reports their agent Daniel (Erwin Deman) bringing back a number of letters that had been left with VAR by Savinos (as agent Elvire), and goes on to say that unfortunately, other parcels left by Elvire had not been brought back as Daniel travelled without any personal luggage whatsoever (on Operation Scarf – see below). D/F goes on to say that they were not laying any further sea operations for a time, and so other, bulkier parcels that Elvire had left with Daniel, should be considered as a “write off”. |
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15-16 April: SOE (DF) Var line Op Scarf : MGB 502 (Williams with Birkin as navigator) and MTB 718 (Lt Ronald Seddon with Lt Michael Salmond as navigator) lands Maurice Rouneau (Belgian), Felix Duffour (Amedée), Lt Col Elie (Algebre), Lezare Racheline (Socrate - ex- Vic line) and F Section WTO A Watt. Collects Erwin Deman, Suzanne Warenghem, Blanche Charlet, RAF evader F/Lt Gerald Racine, USAAF evaders 1/Lt Kenneth Williams and Sgt Richard Faulkner - plus others, including Mme Gerard (wife of Colonel Gerard) and their two sons. |
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“MGB 502 sailed from Dartmouth on Operation Scarf in convoy with a new D-Class addition to the 15 MGB Flotilla - MGB 718 (Lt Ronald Seddon RNVR). On this, the first such mission she had undertaken, she carried, in addition to her normal complement of officers and men, Lt Jan McQuoid Mason, the commanding officer of MGB 318, as commanding officer of the expedition. Since Peter Williams of MGB 502 was the most senior of the Dartmouth gunboat captains, and the record shows that 718 was under his orders on this occasion, Seddon must have been under instruction from Mason, who had brought with him one complete boat's crew from 318 as well.” (Secret Flotillas) |
Note that “MGB 718” (commissioned on 24 February 1944) was actually an MTB but her four torpedo tubes had been removed before completion. |
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Maurice Henri Rouneau (born 24 March 1904) (aka Martin Rendier) had worked in France with several SOE circuits, along with Roger Duffoir (see below) until crossing the Pyrenees to Spain and on to London in 1943, where he was officialy recruited into SOE. Foot describes him as “the Belgian organiser of Racketeer to take over where Parson stopped [mentioned earlier, Parson organiser François Vallée and Henri Gaillot had been arrested on 3 January 1944], and get something moved in that [Breton] peninsula”. |
Pierre Roger Duffoir (Amédée) (born 3 February 1912), who had worked with Maurice Rouneau in France, came to England in October 1943, and for this mission, was again working with Rouneau. |
Colonel Paul Elie (Algebre) (born 17 December 1897), who had been brought out of France on double Lysander Operation Canari the night of 8-9 February 1944, was now being sent back by Charles de Gaulle to be one of the commanders of the newly decreed FFI (Forces francaises de l'interieur) in the old Occupied Zone, “to replace .. Colonel Rondelay (Sapeur), who was shortly captured and shot - silent”. (SOE in France) |
Lazare Racheline (Socrate) (born 25 December 1905) had been involved with the mass escape from Mauzac in July 1942 (mentioned earlier) and in setting up the main VIC line structure but in late 1943, had been withdrawn from France as too well known to the Gestapo of Lyons, and crossed the Pyrenees with the VIC line. Now Racheline was on a one-man mission for de Gaulle called “Clé”, with his principal task “to help Alexandre Parodi (Quartus) in securing as much decentralisation [of resistance units] as possible. He was particularly charged with ensuring that Parodi and his principal military assistants .. all understood the folly of any attempt to precipitate a national uprising the moment the allies landed.” (SOE in France) |
In a post-war report, held at the French Archives Nationales, Racheline describes their reception committee on the beach as “magnificent: a large Breton and two girls who welcomed the passengers, shivering with cold and fear, with open arms”. He says that after being sheltered for two days in a house a few kilometres away, guarded by men with machine guns, Racheline and Paul Elie decided to travel to separately, and meet up again in Paris. |
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Adher Pierre Watt (alias Swineherd alias Geoffroy) (born 1 June 1914) had been landed by Lysander on the night of 16-17 October 1943, as radio operator for Henri Dercourt's Farrier circuit, with Dericourt's friend M R Clement (Marc) as second-in-command. Following a security alert (which turned out to be a false alarm), the Farrier circuit was closed down, and Watt, along with contacts Julienne Aisner and her future husband Jean Besnard, left Paris for Troyes, where Maurice Dupont, organiser of the Diplomat circuit, arranged to have them collected on the double Lysander Operation Umpire from “Grippe” field near Azay-sur-Cher on the night of 5-6 April. With the explanation for the false alarm in Paris soon made clear, Watt was now being returned to work with Dupont, taking over from Denis Barrett. |
Suzanne Angele Warenghem (born 22 November 1921 at Journs-Pontchartrain) first became involved in resistance activities in May 1941 when she helped four British soldiers escape from the Val-de-Grâce hospital in Paris. In June, she helped another two, taking them (Tobin and Edgar) to Marseille. When Ian Garrow sent Bruce Dowding to take the two soldiers over, he recruited Suzanne to work with their guide Harold Cole. She became engaged to Cole that September, and stayed with him even after he was denounced by the Marseille organisation in November, and arrested by the Abwehr (German military intelligence) in December. After escaping from his German handlers in Paris, Cole and Suzanne were married on 10 April 1942, only for them both to be arrested in Lyon the following month by the Vichy French DST (Direction de la surveillance du territoire). |
Cole was convicted and sentenced to death but Suzanne was acquitted and released in August, after which she went back to Marseille, and on 30 October, gave birth to Cole's son, Patrick (who died on 12 January 1943). In February 1943, Suzanne was again arrested in Lyon, this time on suspicion of having helped SOE agent Robert Sheppard to escape from L'hopital de la Croix-Rousse two days earlier (Sheppard had parachuted in June 1942 only to land on a roof next to a police station, and Suzanne had met him at the Depot Saint Jean in Lyon - she had been writing to him and her address had been found). In March, Suzanne was sent to Castres prison, where she shared a cell with SOE agent Blanche Charlet, and she and Suzanne were among a group of prisoners who escaped from Castres on 16 September 1943. |
Blanche Charlet (aka Christianne) (born 23 May 1898 in Belgium) had been an art gallery owner in Brussels until the invasion of her country, when she fled to England. She was recruited into SOE, and landed in France from the felucca Seadog (Buchowski) on 1 September 1942 (Operation Watchman to Rade d'Agay, about half way between Antibes and Saint-Tropez). On 24 October 1942, she was arrested, along with SOE radio operator Brian Stonehouse, and in November, sent to the “secret prison” at Castres. |
Following their escape on 16 September, Suzanne Warenghem and Blanche Charlet, found shelter at Dourgne (about 20 kms south-west of Castres), via the Benedictine Abbaye Saint-Benoit d'En Calcat, in a guest house called “Bethanie”, where the two women were housed for the next three months. |
Attempts to help them finally came to fruition in December, when resistance contacts put them in touch with capitaine Paul de la Taille (born 1914), who organised their travel to Paris. The two women worked (separately) with the resistance until news came that arrangements had been made to get them to the UK, and they travelled to Finistere. |
F/Lt Gerald Racine (1885), a 23-year-old commercial artist from Montreal, Canada, was the pilot of 263 Sqn Typhoon MJ119, and on the evening of 31 March 1944, had set out from RAF Predennack (on the Lizard Peninsula, Cornwall) to patrol the Isle de Groix area, south-west of Lorient. He was near the Isle de Batz, just north of Roscoff, at about 21.00 hours when he was attacked by a night-fighter, and after “an engagement”, after which Racine says he believed he shot the other aircraft down, he himself was forced to bale out. |
Racine landed hard in a field about 3 kms north of Plouézoch (about 10 kms north of Morlaix), knocking himself out. When he came around, found he could not walk and so crawled to a ditch where he spent the night, using his parachute and inflated dinghy as a make-shift tent. |
Next morning, Racine buried his dinghy and parachute, and after watching for a while, approached a farm where the only inhabitants seemd to be an elderly (sic) couple - this was 47-year-old François-Marie Jégaden and his 39-year-old wife Marie - and Racine, with help from the Jégaden's 16-year-old daugter, also named Marie, managed to get the message across that he wanted to find someone who spoke English. After giving him a hot drink, and trying to dry some of his clothes in front of the fire, the old man gave Racine a coat and beret, and then took him about half a mile to a farm known locally as “Madagascar”. This was the home of his cousin, Jean Jégaden, his wife Maryvonne, and six of their seven children, where daughter Marguerite's fiancé Joseph Colleter, acted as translator. |
Once Racine was shown on a map where he was, he asked if would be possible for him to be taken out by boat. He was in luck - two of the Jégarden sons, 26-year-old Yves and 23-year-old Emile, were members of the Lanmeur section of Liberation Nord, with Yves working directly with the regional chief, Leon Le Janne. |
The following evening (2 April), Dr Le Janne and Marie-Louise Le Duc came to see Racine, and Mme Le Duc “gave him to understand” that he would be taken into Morlaix within the next two or three days. On 4 April, Racine was given an ID card and a box of farm produce, and taken to a nearby deserted farm. An hour later, Dr Le Janne and Mme Le Duc arrived in a car and took Racine to Le Janne's house in Morlaix, passing scouts posted along the way who nodded to confirm the route was clear. |
That afternoon, Doctor Jean Le Duc came to Doctor Le Janne's house, and asked Racine why he wanted a boat. Having satisfied himself about Racine's identity, Dr Le Duc led him back to his own house, at 20 Place Thiers and then that evening, took Racine on the back of his motorcycle to be sheltered at the home of Alexandre Marzin (address not known). |
At about one o'clock on 9 April, M. Marzin's sister led Racine back to Dr Le Duc's house, where Raymonde and Alice Jacob were waiting. They provided Racine with a bicycle, and then cycled ahead of him to their grocery shop (tabac) in the village of Guimaec, where Racine was sheltered. |
On 13 April, Erwin Deman came and asked Racine several test questions before telling him they were waiting for a boat. On the evening of 15 April, Racine was taken by bicycle to another house (presumably Rozen, home of François Toquer and his son-in-law, Louis Mercier), where he waited until nightfall, and at about eleven o'clock, he was taken “with some Americans”, to the beach. At 0200 hrs on 16 April, Racine (and others) were “taken off by boat”. |
Includes additional information from Francois Autret, using research done by Pascal Messager of the Association du musée maritime de Carantec. |
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1/Lt Kenneth R Williams (#555), a 21-year-old student from Cleveland, Ohio was the pilot of 354FS/355FG P-47 42-8443 Witch Hazel (query), on an early morning raid to Chateaudun airfield on 26 March 1944. He strafed the field but was then caught up in the explosion of a petrol dump, which shattered his windscreen and damaged the right wing and rudder. Then the engine failed, and Williams crashed, just missing a house and high-tension wires to come down in open ground. |
Williams climbed from his wrecked aircraft and ran to a hide in a ditch but a French couple came over and had him follow them to their farm, where he was given some “rather large” clothes to put on over his uniform. They also gave him a bag of food, and showed him on his escape map, where he was. When Williams tried to give them money from his escape kit they refused, and offered him money instead. Williams left the couple's farm and followed a river (the Loir) until he found a cave to hide in while he decided what to do next. An hour later, he continued along the river, crossing it at a railway bridge and then settled down to watch the village he could see. About half an hour later, he approached three French women, who realised he was an American airman, and took him to a house where he was fed and given some “excellent” civilian clothes. From there, he was taken to a place where his journey was arranged .. |
In his post-war memoir, Williams says the it was two older women and a younger neice of one of them who took him back to a house in a village that he names as Tre Marboue. The neice, who spoke English, was named Suzanne Mathieu, and early the following morning, she took Williams from Marboué station where they boarded a train for Paris. In the capital, Suzanne took Williams to her small third-floor apartment, where Williams celebrated his twenty-second birthday a couple of days later. |
After about a fortnight, Suzanne and Williams walked to his next shelter in the capital, the home of Mme Nahon (assume Mme Jeanne Marie Louise Nahon of 24 rue Henri Heine, Paris XVIII) and her son Guy. Two days later, Suzanne returned to tell Williams that she had arranged for him to be passed on to the “underground”, and she led him to a park, Place de la Nation (Paris XI), where she passed Williams over to Miss Odette Ernest, an older lady who spoke perfect English, and was very much in charge. |
Miss Odette Marie Ernest was a British subject, born on Mauritius on 28 October 1893. She lived at 37 ru de la Tour, Paris XVI, and was a Professor of Languages. She is credited by IS9 with helping at least thirty Allied evaders, both sheltering some herself and finding accomodation for others, as well as organising guides for their onward journeys. She was recommended for an MBE - the award being gazetted on 16 October 1945 but not delivered before Miss Ernest died on 18 December 1946. |
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The following day, Miss Ernest took Williams to a park where they waited on separate benches until a man walked by, and she indicated that Williams was to follow him. The unnamed man led Williams all over Paris for several hours before taking him to a boarded-up restaurant, and leaving him there. |
It was dark when two men came to the restaurant, one being the man who had brought Williams there earlier, and were joined shortly afterwards by another man (who spoke some English, and was apparently in charge) and a woman. The English-speaking Frenchman asked if Williams had any injuries, and on learning that Williams had trouble with his knees, called in a doctor to examine him. The doctor's opinion that Williams was in no fit state to walk across the Pyrenees caused some problems but eventually the English-speaking man suggested he could go with a British Intelligence Officer providing Williams was prepared to help him if necessary, and Williams agreed. |
After leaving Williams alone for a some time, the second Frenchman returned with some “rural appearing clothes”, false papers identifying Williams as a farmer from Brittany, and a young woman. The young woman (Ginette Courtois - query) was to take Williams to Brittany where he would meet the British Intelligence Officer, and that night, they took a train to Rennes, where they changed for a morning train to Morlaix. |
The young woman took Williams on foot some distance into the countryside before leaving him by the side of the road, and an hour or so later, a young man came and led Williams to small village. Williams was sheltered in the loft above a shed, where he stayed overnight, and next day, another young woman arrived with two bicycles. Williams and the woman cycled to another village (Guimaec), where the young woman (one of the Jacob sisters) left him with an older woman (her mother). Williams was taken to an upstairs room where he met the British Intelligence Officer (Erwin Deman), who Williams says seemed to be suffering a nervous breakdown, and another “Brit” (assume Emile Minerault) who had apparently been sent to bring the first man back to England. Williams says that the household was the older woman and her three daughters. |
Eventually a man came and took the British Intelligence Officer away in a small truck, and then two young women arrived. One woman went with the Englishman and the other, his guide from the previous day, walked with Williams to a farm, where he rejoined both Englishmen. Then two “big” Frenchmen arrived with a young man who claimed to be an American gunner from a B-17 but had been unable to answer any of the standard questions put to him, and the British agent asked Williams to interrogate him. |
The story quickly came out that the young airman had only recently arrived in England from the States, and within twenty-fours hours, was on board a B-17 with a crew he had never met before, so he had little knowledge of England, and couldn't name any of his crew. He could however describe his training in America, and knew the name (but not the location) of the base he had taken off from. Williams explained the situation to the British officers, and they had a new companion, Sgt Richard Faulkner. |
Sgt Richard J Faulkner (#556) from Mottville, New York, was the 21-year-old ball-turret gunner of 100BG/350BS B-17 42-39830 Berlin Playboy (Martin) on the way to Augsberg on 18 March 1944. This was Faulkner's first mission, and he was added to the crew at the last minute. As they crossed the French coast, the mission was cancelled, and when the formation turned back for England, the Playboy collided with another B-17 (42-37913) and both aircraft were lost. |
Faulkner says that after crossing the French coast, flak broke up their formation, and as they were pulling back into position, another ship came down on them. He was unable to stand after opening the door of his turret and so “crawled over the side”, passing the (rear) stabiliser, and opening his parachute. Reports say the aircraft turned over and broke in half - Faulkner, who was helped soon after landing, and his journey arranged, was the only survivor. |
After being sheltered in a farmhouse near Haudricourt (Seine-Inférieure) for two or three days, Faulkner was moved to Le Vergenet (south of Haudricourt and about three kms east of Conteville), and the home of M. et Mme Georges Dubray. Faulkner stayed with the Dubray family for about 15 days until 5 April before being taken to Le Caulle-Saint-Beuve, where he was left with a butcher. Next day, he was moved to another house, where he stayed the night before being returned to the butcher. Then a man on a motorcycle took Faulkner to Bully, where he was sheltered with the man's sister. He was then taken, again by motorcycle, to Neufchatel-en-Bray, where he stayed in a lumber yard - he mentions a man with a wooden leg - before being returned to Bully, where he joined Sgt Norman Pero (#851) and S/Sgt Richard Elliott (#852), who were being sheltered by Mme Jeanne Dumont. |
USAAF evaders Sgt Norman V Pero (#851), left waist-gunner of B-17 42-31672 (Turk), and S/Sgt Richard H Elliott (#852), left waist-gunner of B-24 42-64447 (Wahnee), who after being brought from Rouen, were taken on a similar route to Faulkner via Le Vergenet, Le Caulle and Neufchatel before being sheltered for ten days at Bully with Mme Jeanne Dumont, during which time they were joined by Faulkner. Jean Macron then came from Paris and took the three Americans back to the capital, and his house at 3 boulevard Voltaire, Issy-les-Moulineaux. |
I think that Macron took Faulkner to Morlaix the next day while Pero and Elliott missed being taken out on Operation Scarf because their ID cards were found “not suitable” and needed new photographs (Macron had taken Faulkner to have his photograph taken the morning after they arrived in Paris), and it wasn't until the following day that the two sergeants had their photos taken at a department store, and met “Capt. Raymond, U.S. Intelligence Officer” (Emile Minerault). They were taken to a fourth floor apartment where they stayed with two elderly ladies, Germaine and Madeleine, and received new identity cards. After about 23 days with the elderly ladies, Lucie (Marie-Thérèse Stoffel) took them by train to Toulouse, where they were sheltered by Joseph Corraza at 30 rue Dinetard for the next three weeks. They were then taken across the Pyrenees, reaching Spain on 6 June; and eventually flown overnight from Gibraltar, arriving back in the UK on 31 July 1944. |
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Unfortunately, on the way out from the beach, the two gunboats spotted three ships, identified by Peter Williams as either LCTs (Landing Craft Tanks) or armed coasters, about half a mile ahead, and after a brief exchange of signals, the enemy vessels opened fire. |
As stated in “HM MTB 718”, most published accounts say that 502 did not return fire because the SO (senior officer) considered that complete silence might mislead the enemy into thinking the gunboats might be friendly after all but in private communication with the authors, Ronald Seddon (father of one of the authors) stated that the SO did in fact order return fire but that it was not acted upon. This was confirmed by 502 signalman, George Colledge, who says that as soon as the enemy began firing, the captain (Williams) ordered emergency speed and ordered open fire but nothing happened. Colledge discovered later that their gunners had been blinded by enemy tracer, and by the time their eyesight returned, all firing had stopped and the boats were clear. There was however one casualty; on MGB 502, 20 year-old Able Seaman William Alfred Sandalls was mortally wounded in the brief action, and died shortly afterwards. |
Obviously after this encounter, the beach at Beg an Fry was compromised (the nights were getting too short anyway), and Scarf was the last maritime operation carried out for the VAR organisation, although two American PT Boats did land four OSS agents there at the end of June. |
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Erwin Deman, who was awarded a Military Cross “in recognition of his very valuable services in this exceptionally dangerous work“, was returning to England, again as requested, where it was noted “ .. that he was in a nervous state. He was ordered to the country for a complete rest .. he was shown copies of operational telegrams exchanged with his Chief Lieutenent Yves [Lecorvaisier] .. and at the end of a few weeks .. appeared to have recaptured to a great extent his original enthusiasm. He proceeded with DF/Plans and an SOE trained agent (Aristide) to Spain. On 4.6.44 DF/Plans handed Dent over to our representative for the peninsula, V.M. and after a most satisfactory interview, Dent left for Bilbao, accompanied by V.M. on 5.6.44.” |
On 29 May 1944, Erwin Deman and Aristide Sicot (by then a fully trained SOE agent) left the London for Gibraltar, on their way to the field .. although they didn't get any further than the Pyrenees before returning to Gibraltar and London, arriving back in the UK on 18 July 1944. |
Raymond Langard was arrested (along with his 21-year-old assistant Fernand Cadio) on 26 June 1944, caught at his radio whilst transmitting to London from an apartment on boulevard Suchet, Paris XVI. |
After the Beg an Fry operations were abandoned in mid-April, Raymonde and Alice Jacob had moved to Paris where Raymonde became a courier and Alice helped Langard with coding and decoding his messages. On 26 June, Alice was watching the apartment building from across the road, and reported later to Louis Lecorvaisier that two or three cars sudddenly arrived, with several German police officers going directly to the seventh-floor apartment where Langard was operating his radio set. It was thought that he had been denounced by a woman living in apartment on the floor below. |
Langard and Fernand Cadio were taken away in separate cars and later transferred to Compiègne and sentenced to 10 years hard labour. Raymond Langard (at least) was subsequently deported to Germany, and is reported as dying at Buchenwald on 3 February 1945. I don't know what happened to Fernand Cadio but there is now a rue Fernand Cadio in Saint-Jean-de-la-Poterie. |
Following Raymond Langard's arrest, all the houses known to him were evacuated and VAR used either the VIC network or Loyola wireless operator Josef Jakubowski for their communications with London. |
In July 1944, Emile Minerault, Marcel Jacq, Ginette Courtois and Georges Bourdais (born 22 November 1923 in Rennes, he had previously worked with François Vallée), were living in a second-floor apartment at 52 rue des Pres-au-Bois, a small four-story building on the corner of rue de l'Ecoles des Postes, in the south-western Paris suburb of Virolflay. |
A report compiled by Andre Gilbert (the Belgian helper mentioned earlier as recruited by Minerault - he and his French wife lived at 3 rue Lentonnet, Paris IX), and passed to London in December 1944, describes how at two-thirty on the afternoon of 9 July (Ginette Courtois' eighteenth birthday), the Gestapo, one of them in uniform, arrived by car and promptly guarded the two exits to the building whilst others went directly to the second floor (first floor in English), and the right hand apartment where the four agents were staying. Minerault wasn't there at the time but Marcel Jacq, Ginette Courtois and Georges Bourdais were taken away at about five o'clock that afternoon. |
Next day, Emile Minerault arrived on his biicycle, and being unaware of what had happened the previous day, went up to his apartment where the same policemen were waiting to arrest him. Neighbours report Minerault being taken away shortly after lunch-time. |
The fact that the Germans went straight to the agents' apartment without speaking to anyone, meant they had precise details, and further investigation revealed that one of the other tenants in the building had been a notorious collaborator, identified in the report only as “Simon F.M.” . |
Simon was an apologist for Germany, with a hatred for all things Anglo-Saxon. He had worked at the Etablissements Truffaut in Versailles, and some months earlier, quit his job on the pretext that he had received his deportation papers for Germany, but that he had a choice between Germany and Paris. Those around him believed he never left Paris and that he returned home to Virolflay every evening. He also claimed to be a close friend of Jean Luchaire (head of the collaborationist press), and neighbours said that in his spare time, Simon wrote articles for the collaborationist publications "Je Suis Partout" and "Les Nouveaux Temps". |
The four VAR agents were deported to Germany, and only Ginette Courtois returned, repatriated to France via Odessa on 13 February 1945. Marcel Jacq and Georges Bourdais were sent to Erich (Ellrich), a subcamp of Mittelbau-Dora, where Georges died of pneumonia in January 1945, and Marcel on 15 February. Emile Minerault died at Buchenwald where his date of death is given as 4 March 1945. |
Louis Lecorvaisier was never arrested. |
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In May 1944 .. after the VAR line ceased operating .. Peter Harratt was sent to be second-in-command to Nicolas Bodington, organiser of the SOE Pedler circuit, tasked with operating in the area around Rheims and Epernay .. His exploits with Pedler earned him a DSO and a posting to the staff of Prince Bernhardt of Holland where he was involved in the capture of Hugo Bleicher of the Abwehr, who had himself been responsible for the arrest of so many SOE agents. Harratt retired from the army in October 1945 to join the fledgling British Frontier Service in Germany, in which he rose to become Assistant Commissioner in Oldenburg, where he died of a brain haemorrhage in March 1956. |
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Contributers: David Harrison, David Hewson, Francois Autret (without whom this article would never have been attempted), Paul McCue, Steven Kippax, Pascal Messager, Jean-Claude Bourgeon, Michael Moores LeBlanc, John Howes and Franck Signoril. |
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Authors: Brooks Richards (1996) “Secret Flotillas”, M R D Foot (1966) “SOE in France”, Roger Huguen (1976) “Par les nuits les plus longues”, Sonia Purnell (2019) ”A Woman of No Importance”, Gordon Young (1959) “In Trust and Treason”, Hugh Verity (2000) “We Landed by Moonlight”, Milner, Hamilton & Seddon (2014 ) “HM MTB 718 – Something Special”. |
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