Sisters, Secrets and Sacrifice: The True Story of WWII Special Agents Eileen and Jacqueline Nearne. Susan Ottaway

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ effective in either role and asked her which she would prefer.

      Although disappointed that she would be staying in England, Didi decided that of the two positions offered, she would rather be a wireless operator and Jepson recruited her as such. She also decided that she would continue to press for a job as an agent whenever an opportunity arose. It had occurred to her when making her decision that the training she would need to be a wireless operator would be more beneficial to her than becoming a decoder, should she manage to persuade Jepson at a later date to send her to France.

      Satisfied that she wouldn’t be remaining in England for long, Didi was also enrolled in the FANY, joining what was known as Bingham’s Unit. This unit had been established by a member of the FANY, Phyllis Bingham, at the behest of her friend Major-General Colin Gubbins, Vice-Chief of the SOE Council, because of the necessity for absolute secrecy in the SOE; those who joined Bingham’s Unit were the SOE women selected to serve as wireless operators and decoders in the United Kingdom. One of the sponsors who recommended Didi to the FANY was Mrs Bingham herself. This was done, of course, as with Jacqueline’s sponsors, to keep the paperwork straight and believable, and the undercover roles secret; Mrs Bingham did not know Didi personally and at the time she recommended her to the FANY they had not even met.

      Didi then went off to learn how to receive and send Morse code. She proved to be quite a good student and passed the course satisfactorily.⁵ She then settled down to life in the listening station.⁶ Although she had a flair for the work, she found it tedious and longed for the day when she would be able to do something more exciting. With the impatience of youth, Didi began to send in requests to be transferred to the French Section of the SOE so that she could train to become an agent like her sister.

      When she had told Jacqueline that she had guessed what her real role with the SOE was to be and that she intended to join her as soon as possible, Jacqueline had responded with a lie, saying that Didi wouldn’t be allowed to go to France until she was 25 years old. Didi was still only 21, and Jacqueline hoped that the war would be over by the time Didi reached this fictional minimum age. But knowing Didi so well, she also knew that the small detail of an age limit would not stop her from asking to be sent overseas. She worried that Didi might discover her lie and, worse still, manage to persuade someone to allow her to go to France, so she asked to see Colonel Maurice Buckmaster, head of the French Section of the SOE.

      A meeting was arranged that was also attended by Buckmaster’s assistant, Vera Atkins. Jacqueline explained to them that she was worried that her sister Didi wanted to go to France as an agent and that she had told her she was too young. She asked if there was some way that her lie could be kept up so that when Didi applied she would be told that she was too young. As well as explaining that Didi had led quite a sheltered life, she wanted them to know that Didi was unworldly but very strong-minded, impetuous and stubborn, so they could expect several more requests from her if her first request was denied. It was obvious to Buckmaster and Atkins that Jacqueline was very worried about Didi, and since she was in the middle of the training herself they agreed to go along with the story so that she could concentrate on her work and not worry about her sister.

      Just as Jacqueline had predicted, Didi began to put in requests to be transferred as an agent to France. Each time she did so her request was refused. Buckmaster kept his promise to Jacqueline but Didi had no intention of giving up; determined to follow in her sister’s footsteps, she repeated her requests at regular intervals.

      Although some individual female agents had been sent to France before, Jacqueline was one of the first to be trained with a group of other women. This group was known as training party 27.OB.6⁷, and Jacqueline’s fellow students were Odette Sansom (code name Lise), Lise de Baissac (Odile) and Mary Herbert (Claudine). It was fairly clear that the whole training programme for this women’s group had been rather rushed and haphazard. Although the men being sent to France were given a strenuous paramilitary course in the wilds of Scotland, these women were simply sent on a parachute course at Ringway near Manchester, and then on a finishing course in the New Forest. There seemed to be a misconception that, as women, they were not in the same danger as the men and that if caught, the Germans would treat them in a better, more gentlemanly way; training them in subjects such as unarmed combat and silent killing would not, therefore, be required. It took the SOE only a short time to realize that it was mistaken, and courses in these skills were soon made available to both male and female agents.

      Jacqueline proved to be a good shot and had no trouble at all with a pistol. But parachuting was another matter. Wearing protective clothing, which included overalls and a large, round, padded hat, the students were attached to ropes as if on an enormous playground swing so that they could become used to the motion of a parachute descent before making an actual jump. This didn’t give Jacqueline any problems, but she was less than enthusiastic about her first parachute jump, which was made from the specially adapted basket of a hot-air balloon. She was frightened by it and felt very insecure, as the basket had a hole, large enough for an adult to pass through, in its base. It was also very quiet, which she and her fellow students found disconcerting. When she finally made a jump from an aircraft she declared it to be much better, even quite exciting, attributing this to the sound of the aircraft’s engines, but parachuting wasn’t something she ever really enjoyed and she wished that there was some other way to get to France so that she didn’t have to use a parachute at all.

      It was while undertaking their parachute training that Jacqueline and Lise de Baissac became friends. Lise was 37 years old when she joined the SOE. She had lived in France since the age of 14 but came from a Mauritian family and had been born in Curepipe so, as the island of Mauritius was a British possession, she was British. Like Jacqueline she had escaped from France and, as an intensely loyal British subject, come to England looking for war work. Her brother Claude, two years her junior, had also escaped to England and had preceded her into the SOE, becoming the head of the Scientist circuit in south-west France. Maurice Buckmaster described Claude as being ‘the most difficult of all my officers without any exception’⁸ and it seems that this was a family trait, as Lise herself was thought to be ‘difficult but dedicated’.⁹ But despite this, and their 11-year age difference, Lise and Jacqueline became firm friends. It was a friendship that would last for the rest of their lives.

      When they had successfully completed the parachute training the four women went on to the finishing school at Brockenhurst. Hastily set up in January 1941, this was housed in several requisitioned large homes built amongst the trees of the New Forest on the isolated Beaulieu estate of Lord Montagu. The section to which the women were sent was known as STS 31, which comprised two houses, the Rings and the House in the Wood. These facilities soon proved to be too small for the large number of administration staff, lecturers and students, and the students were moved to other buildings in the complex, while a third house was also requisitioned. The chief instructor at this time was 50-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Stanley Woolrych, a First World War veteran, who was soon promoted to commandant of the school, a post he held until the end of the war. Subjects taught included evasion techniques, recognition of German military uniforms, escape techniques in the event of an agent being apprehended by the enemy, coding and decoding of messages, wood craft, living off the land, shooting with a pistol, and security and propaganda warfare. The instructors were a varied bunch and included convicted criminals, a former gamekeeper from the royal estate at Sandringham and a man who would later be disgraced for his spying activities, Kim Philby.

      When the course was over, the four women parted company. Lise was the first to leave England, parachuting into France at the end of September 1942 with another agent, a Frenchwoman named Andrée Borrel (Denise). They were the first two female agents to arrive in France this way. Lise went on to Poitiers, where she was tasked with setting up a new circuit to be called Artist, СКАЧАТЬ