Sisters, Secrets and Sacrifice: The True Story of WWII Special Agents Eileen and Jacqueline Nearne. Susan Ottaway
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СКАЧАТЬ immediately if she lied to her. She didn’t want to lie but neither did she want to disclose what she had been told. She also realized with an uncomfortable jolt that if Didi discovered what the job really was, she too would want to return to France; and, while she was quite prepared to be put in such a perilous position herself, she was horrified by the thought of her young, unworldly sister being subjected to the same danger. Her dilemma occupied her thoughts throughout her journey home.

      When she reached Stamford Hill an anxious Didi was waiting for her. Wanting to know everything that had happened, she began firing questions at her sister. Who had interviewed her? What sort of a job was it? Had she been successful? Her final question was the one that Jacqueline had been dreading: was there a possibility that there might be another vacancy that she could fill?

      Taking a deep breath, Jacqueline told Didi that she had been interviewed by the man who had written the letter to her, Captain Selwyn Jepson, and that the job was as a driver for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. She said that she would soon hear if her interview had been successful but she thought it had. Jacqueline assured Didi that she had told Jepson about her and he had said that he would contact her if he felt there was also a suitable position for her with the FANY.

      Didi was puzzled and slightly disappointed. She was curious to know why Jacqueline had not, it seemed, emphasized her desire to use her language skills. Surely her ability to speak, read and write fluent French could have been used to better advantage than by merely becoming a driver. Knowing her sister so well, she began to suspect that Jacqueline was hiding something from her. Perhaps she wasn’t even going to work for the FANY. Had she just told Didi that to make her believe that it was important war work she would be doing when really it was just a way of making ends meet?

      Jacqueline herself could not stop thinking about the interview, and what it would mean to her if she was offered the position and accepted it. Jepson had told her to think very hard about what it involved and advised her not to rush into a decision, but she already knew what she was going to do. Although the role was not what she had imagined and she knew that it would be hazardous, she felt that she would be doing something that was really worthwhile, which was why she had come to England in the first place.

      Didi’s suspicion that her sister had been keeping something from her continued to trouble her. Then Jacqueline received the news that the interview had been successful, and within two weeks of her interview had passed a medical and completed the application form to join the FANY. In order to be accepted she needed sponsorship in the form of recommendations by two people; one had to be a woman, and both had to have known her for at least two years. Her sponsors were Lieutenant Prudence Macfie of the FANY and Captain Selwyn Jepson, neither of whom had known Jacqueline for more than two weeks.

      When Jacqueline appeared wearing the uniform of the FANY, Didi realized that her main worry hadn’t really been about Jacqueline joining the FANY. It was the driving job that had given her the nagging doubts and she was now sure that it was this that was the lie. She had wondered why the FANY would have picked her sister for a job that any English girl could have done, and she hadn’t been able to understand why even though the WRNS was unwilling to accept a driver who had no experience of the blackout, the FANY didn’t seem to have considered that at all.

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      Despite Jepson’s instruction not to discuss her interview with anyone, Jacqueline knew that she would have to disclose some details to Didi. So, impressing upon her that she mustn’t tell a single soul, she admitted that she had been selected to work for a new organization called the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the French Section. Enrolling in the FANY was a cover for what she would actually be doing. Didi, of course, wanted to know what that work was, but Jacqueline said that she had already told her too much and really couldn’t tell her anything else.

      While she waited to hear when she would be starting her SOE training, Jacqueline kept in touch with her friend Jimmie, mostly by post, as he had been sent on a training course, although they spent a day together in July, after which Jimmie wrote to Jacqueline expressing the hope that ‘you managed to get back safely on Monday and that your sister etc had not telephoned all the Police in order to discover the wandering one’. He later wrote to ask Jacqueline to

      tell me more about your life and your thoughts. I am very interested in your life and want to hear all about it, if you will tell me. How do you really like your new life?

      It is a pity your location appears to be a closely guarded secret – why I don’t exactly know – yours is certainly the first training centre that has not had a proper address … I hope that you will not forget me now that you are making lots of new friends. The F.A.N.Y.s had the reputation at the beginning of the war of being rather select and snobbish. It never pays to be like that and I hope very much that you won’t get that way – always remember that old friends are the best.2

      This letter appears to have been the last one that Jacqueline received from Jimmie. It may, of course, just have been the last one that she kept but, by the time she read it, she had already started her SOE training and she was determined not to let anything interfere with that.

      Frustrated that she was still unemployed and beginning to believe that she knew what Jacqueline was going to be doing, Didi was delighted when she too received a letter asking her to attend an interview at the War Office with Captain Jepson, a month after her sister’s.

      Jepson was a 43-year-old Army captain. A well-known playwright in peacetime, he was also the author of several books. When he joined the SOE as a recruiting officer in early 1942, he was found to be very good at picking the right sort of person for undercover roles within the organization. Calm and efficient, he managed to put prospective recruits at ease while asking questions that would reveal whether or not the person concerned would be good at the job. A report from the SOE to Military Intelligence placed on his file in March 1942 described him as being ‘far ahead of anyone as [a] talent spotter’3 and he himself said of his role: ‘I was responsible for recruiting women for the work, in the face of a good deal of opposition, I may say, from the powers that be. In my view, women were very much better than men for the work. Women, as you must know, have a far greater capacity for cool and lonely courage than men.’4

      When Didi attended her interview it didn’t take her long to realize that her suspicions about her sister’s new job were correct and she told Jepson that she wanted to do the same as Jacqueline. He felt that she was, perhaps, a little young to be sent to France as an agent but asked her to tell him about herself. She told him that she had been born in England but had lived in France since she was a baby. She talked about her parents and brothers and sister, and described how she and Jacqueline had escaped from occupied France to come to England and obtain war work. She said that she knew several areas of France quite well, and was fluent in spoken and written French. She also stressed that although she liked people and generally got along well with them, she also liked her own company and was sure that she would be able to work completely alone should the need arise. She simply wanted to do something worthwhile for the war effort.

      Jepson could see that Didi, although lively and enthusiastic, had a serious side as well. She was obviously intelligent and sincere, but he was still concerned that she might be too young. Being the baby of the family and having had a convent education, she had obviously led a sheltered life and he worried that she might not stand up to life in occupied France, alone and with no family support. He did, however, feel that there was about her a hint of the cool and lonely courage he was seeking. He told her that the SOE needed to recruit wireless operators who would send and receive messages to and from agents in France. There was also a requirement for decoders to interpret the messages, all of which had been encoded before transmission. СКАЧАТЬ