Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins & the Missing Agents of WWII (13 page)

Another officer, Anghais Fyffe, employed in SOE's security directorate, gave an even more graphic account of the prejudice Vera faced from anti-Semitic officers at the most senior levels of SOE. One day in December 1942 Major General John Lakin, then head of the security directorate, came to him and said: “Morning, Fyffe.” Fyffe replied: “Morning, sir.” Lakin then asked: “Have you heard of a woman called Rosenberg?” and the conversation continued until he said: “That damn fair-haired Romanian Jewess has applied to be naturalised. I've put a stop to it.”

In February 1944 Vera's renewed application for naturalisation came up for decision by the Home Office, and she hoped that a long letter from Maurice Buckmaster backing her claim would bring success this time. Buckmaster, whose second wife was part Jewish, did not tolerate anti-Semitism in his section and openly criticised anti-Jewish prejudice in other sections when he encountered it. Many of F Section's most motivated agents were themselves Jewish exiles.

Furthermore, Vera's lack of British nationality had been inconvenient to Buckmaster in the office, not least because her origins had to be kept strictly secret in case SOE's detractors got to hear. MI6, always ready to do SOE down, might well have made much of the fact that F Section's intelligence officer was an enemy alien, as might de Gaulle's fractious Free French. It was an SOE rule that, for reasons of security, only British subjects by birth should be employed in HQ.

By February 1944 Vera's nationality had become more than inconvenient: it was now standing in the way of Buckmaster's D-Day plans. As he told the Home Office in his letter supporting her application, Vera had been chosen to run a forward station in France to coordinate post-D-Day operations. “If Miss Atkins goes overseas as a Roumanian subject we
fear that she will be both obtrusive and much restricted in her movements.”

Buckmaster's letter explained: “In as large a city as London we hope that the true nationality of Miss Atkins might not be known, but in any move overseas where papers will have to be shown such a fact could not be concealed. This consideration is one of great delicacy, but one of tremendous importance if enemy penetration is to be successfully resisted.”

On February 25 Vera was interviewed at the Home Office, where she said: “It is essential that many of the people whom I meet should not know that I am a Roumanian.” The fact she was not British continued to be “a great hindrance,” she told her interviewer, and “a point has now come in the work she is doing when it would present even greater difficulties.”

The officer wrote: “Miss Atkins impressed me as being a woman of intelligence and discretion, well able to keep her own counsel” and finally added: “Nothing detrimental recorded at New Scotland Yard.”

During the month of February SOE's air operations over France suddenly expanded at a rapid pace. Churchill himself had given orders that the arming of the resistance was now a priority, and no longer could the RAF hold back the supply of planes for F Section drops. Among the F Section agents to be dropped by parachute in February was a team of three led by France Antelme, who had so luckily escaped the Prosper roundup. A man who, according to his instructors, had “plenty of guts, stalks well and uses his head” was evidently wasted in Baker Street, and Buckmaster wanted him back on the ground to fulfil his pivotal role of overseeing supply lines for the Allied forces after D-Day.

Antelme was given the finest courier Vera had in training, Madeleine Damerment, a remarkable young woman who had escaped from France after being involved in the highly dangerous work of rescuing Allied prisoners. A devout Catholic, she had made her home in England, at a French convent in Hitchin. “She does not know how many prisoners she handled but said it was a considerable number,” said an official who interviewed
Damerment on her arrival in England. “She was modest and looked upon the whole matter as something very natural. She said many French women are willing to do this sort of work every day.”

Antelme s radio operator for the mission was an experienced man named Lionel Lee. As always, the agents were told before departure that their task was a risky one, but nobody told Damerment or Lee of the most immediate and potentially catastrophic risk they faced. They were to be dropped to a reception committee organised by Nora's circuit, now called Phono. Furthermore, the plans for the drop had been made over Nora's radio, despite yet further fears—now shared by several staff officers, including Gerry Morel and Penelope Torr—that she might be in German hands.

If Vera had her own renewed doubts about Nora, she made little obvious attempt to make them known. Buckmaster was in no mood to change his mind about the planned drop, and her personal relationship with him had never been more delicate. While Antelme, Damerment, and Lee were waiting to fly out to France, her own naturalisation application was being decided, and at no time since joining SOE had Vera been more determined to maintain Buckmaster s support.

Yet somebody did instruct Antelme, in a note on his mission statement, to “cut completely with the Phono circuit on landing,” which suggested an attempt by a hidden hand to warn him of possible penetration. And in the days before the drop Vera certainly invited Antelme himself to look at Nora's recent wireless messages and make up his own mind as to whether she was free. After all, Antelme knew Nora as well as anyone and was widely believed to have developed an intimate affection for her when they were thrown together, hiding out in Paris the previous July. Had Vera been entirely sure of Nora's fist herself, no consultation with Antelme would have been necessary. In any event, Vera made it very clear to anyone who asked later that Antelme was reassured when he saw Nora's messages, and it had been his own personal decision to go.

The flight was delayed for several days owing to bad weather, but on the evening of February 29 the skies suddenly cleared. The prearranged BBC message was broadcast to the reception committee, who then knew
that they were to prepare to receive agents on the ground near Rambouil-let. The flight was cleared to go, and Vera was on the tarmac at Temps-ford to see the agents off.

The Halifax, due to take off at 2100 hours, was even able to leave a little early. On his return the pilot reported that the lights from the reception committee on the ground had been particularly good.

Penelope Torr told me that Antelme was by no means reassured by reading Nora's messages. “He knew he would not be coming back. You see, by this time we were engaged—well, anyway, he had been talking to me of things we might do after the war. He took me out to dinner on Valentine's Night, before he was due to go. That was when he told me he would not come back. He had a premonition.”

“Yet he still wanted to go?”

“I know,” she said. “I can't explain it. There was a very unreal atmosphere in the office at that time.”

By early March nothing had been heard from Lionel Lee, Antelme s radio operator, but strange messages had come over from Nora's radio saying that, on landing, Antelme had fractured his skull. Subsequent messages gave bizarre medical reports on his worsening condition. London sent messages back giving Antelme s medical history for the French doctors and cheering him with the news that he had won an Order of the British Empire (OBE). Antelme was “very pleased and touched by the award,” said one reply from the field. Then a week later he had “deteriorated,” and on May 2 it was announced that he “died after an attack of meningitis.” He was “buried by moonlight,” and “deepest sympathy” was sent to his family.

Penelope Torr produced an analysis of these messages and even sought the opinion of a doctor, who said the position of the head fracture as described in one message was “very unusual for a landing accident.” Penelope's analysis, however, went unheeded, and the next time she
raised questions about messages from the field—by taking her concerns to an MP—she was removed from her job for “letting sentiment override her duty.”

In April 1944 the date of the Allied landings was still not known, but SOE's role in the runup to D-Day was now clear to every agent: all circuits were to organise the destruction of German lines of communication in order to prevent enemy troops reaching the landing beaches. D-Day action messages directing circuits to blow up railways, telephone lines, fuel depots, and dams could now go out at any time.

The briefing of agents going out to the field at this moment demanded the utmost calm, and so Vera's presence at Orchard Court was often required; she was now at the height of her powers. On March 24 she had been issued her certificate of British naturalisation. Just two weeks later, on Buckmaster's recommendation, she secured a promotion and was at last officially designated F Section's intelligence officer, with the symbol “F Int.”

Among the agents whom Vera was now briefing for their first mission was a spirited, attractive young woman by the name of Violette Szabo. Born in Paris, Violette was the daughter of a British First World War veteran, Charles Bushell, who had met and married a Frenchwoman after serving in France. The Bushell family had returned to live in England, and Violette had grown up in Brixton, south London, where as a teenager she worked at Woolworth's and gained a reputation in shooting galleries as a talented shot. In 1939, soon after the outbreak of war, Violette married a French Foreign Legionnaire named Etienne Szabo, and by the time she walked into Vera's room at Orchard Court, she was, at twenty-three, a war widow with a baby. Violette's instructors said she was “mature” in certain ways “but in others very childish.” Vera was impressed.

“You have probably not met this young woman who is a new and fairly promising trainee,” Vera wrote to the SOE finance department. “Mrs. Szabo has a one-year-old child and is very anxious to know, at once, what pension arrangements would be made for her in the event of her
going to the field. Provision for her child is such a primary consideration to her that I am sure she feels unsettled about her training and future until this question has been dealt with … I wish we could give more precise assurance to our women agents with children.” A note on Violettes file from a FANY officer read: “This girl has a young baby. I wonder if she fully realises what she is doing.”

Sorting out the affairs of women agents such as Violette was now taking up much of Vera's attention, but if she didn't do it, nobody else would. Suddenly there was so little time. In March alone six women were infiltrated into France to work for F Section circuits, the highest number in any month so far. Vera had guided each through training and preparation and seen each of them depart. In April six more women were dropped or landed in France, including Violette, who landed by parachute with her organiser on April 5, with the cover story that she was Corinne Reine Le Roy (taking her French mother's maiden name), a commercial secretary. Her mission was to find out if a suspect subcircuit had indeed been penetrated. After ascertaining beyond doubt that it was blown, Violette flew back to England three weeks later.

As D-Day became imminent, doubts arose again in the signals room about certain F Section wireless operators, and by the end of April senior staff officers felt such concerns could no longer be ignored. Gerry Morel and Major Bourne-Paterson had analysed back traffic, and together they told Buckmaster precisely how far they thought the penetration had spread. Nora was captured—of that Morel was now certain. Anyone who flew to her circuit must have landed directly in German hands. Many other connecting circuits must have been contaminated, and Marcel Rousset was one of several further wireless operators who had clearly been in enemy hands for some time. Also now suspect, said Morel, was the Archdeacon circuit set up by Pickersgill and Macalister.