Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins & the Missing Agents of WWII (53 page)

In 2003 a raft of secret wartime documents were finally made public in the British National Archives, showing that senior figures in MI5, MI6, and SOE knew a great deal about the disaster in the Low Countries as early as spring 1943, yet Maurice Buckmaster and his staff were never warned that they might face the same threat in France.

The danger of the enemy “turning” SOE and SIS agents was “by no means hypothetical,” wrote Dick White, an assistant director of MI5 in March 1943, later head of MI5 and then MI6. “Perhaps the most important [example] of all is that of the SOE organisation in Belgium which ran for many months without SOE realising that it was almost completely under the control of the Germans. It is impossible even now to say how much damage was done by this,” wrote White, setting out plans for an “early warning system” to prevent a recurrence. Yet the same newly released files revealed that White's proposals for ensuring the deception did not recur were never acted on. There was no definitive explanation in the files as to why the warnings were ignored, but there was overwhelming evidence of self-serving, interagency wrangling involving SOE, MI5, MI6, and the Foreign Office, in the midst of which White's proposals were most probably buried.

Why SOE's own senior staff—Colin Gubbins and his European directors—failed to alert Buckmaster to the dangers exposed by the Low Countries disaster remains a mystery. One retrospective report by
security staff found a ready explanation for Buckmaster's own misjudgements, saying that country sections “were always full of understandable optimism and a natural unwillingness to regard an agent as lost, particularly if they liked or had befriended them.”

As SOE's official historian, Michael Foot, pointed out, however, those above Buckmaster in the hierarchy had no such excuse as they hardly knew the agents at all. “Yet they [the senior staff] were necessarily remote from the day to day business of running operations in progress and this hindered them from noticing anything was going astray in France,” wrote Foot.

Although F Section was never officially informed, rumours of the Low Countries disaster did reach F Section's floor in Norgeby House. As I had heard from Vera's friend and former colleague, Nancy Roberts, gossip about N and T sections was exchanged in the ladies' on the half landing. Staff, however, carried on regardless because they knew they were “not supposed to know.”

Although the Bishop playback in early 1943 had not worked, continued Dr. Goetz, Kieffer was determined to persist. Kieffer was a competitive man and wanted to pull off the same coup as his rival Hermann Giskes, the Abwehr officer who captured numerous British agents in the Low Countries by playing the Funkspiel. But to achieve anything like the success of Giskes, Kieffer needed to capture more radio operators. As Vera now knew, this was exactly what Kieffer then did. In June 1943 Frank Pickersgill and his wireless operator, John Macalister, were captured, and three days later Francis Suttill was caught, followed by his radio operator, Gilbert Norman.

“I remember the arrest of Prosper [Suttill] very well as I was away on leave in Germany,” Dr. Goetz said. “My wife was having a baby. I was called back and ordered to return just after the baby was born, which was June 25. My wife wept, but I had to go back. I was loyal to Kieffer.” When Dr. Goetz reached Avenue Foch on June 26, he found the place in a state of excitement over the arrest of Prosper. But Kieffer was equally excited about the capture of Gilbert Norman (alias Archambaud), the
radio operator, because he had his radio and crystals as well. The radio— with back messages—was seized when he was captured, and Gilbert Norman's crystals, with details of frequencies, had been found in a package brought to France by Pickersgill and Macalister, conveniently labelled by HQ in London. Using Norman's previous messages, therefore, Dr. Goetz's men set to work figuring out his codes, transmission times, and security check.

Kieffer's men brought Gilbert Norman to Dr. Goetz's room to see if he would help with a transmission, but Dr. Goetz got nothing out of him at first. Dr. Goetz's first message to London as Gilbert Norman (call sign Butcher) announced Prospers arrest. Only when London replied, “You have forgotten your true security check. Take more care,” did Norman go into a fury. He soon began to behave differently.

Among the secret files now placed in the National Archives were the SOE personal files, which I had first seen two years earlier on the SOE adviser's desk, awaiting declassification. The files were numerous, but it was pot luck if papers on a particular agent or a particular episode had survived.

Vera herself had been responsible for “weeding” many F Section files before SOE closed down. A fire in Norman Mott's office was also said to have destroyed files, although a note written by Mott to Vera on March 8, 1946, mentioning the fire, said that “nothing much of historical importance was lost.”

Even where files survived, crucial paragraphs or whole pages were often blanked out under secrecy legislation. Among the reasons for these omissions, I was told, were “unsubstantiated accusations of treachery” or “personal sensitivities.” Yet slurs abounded, like the comment made by Roger de Wesselow, head of an F Section training school, who, in an official training report, called Marcus Bloom “this pink yid.” And “unsubstantiated allegations of treachery” were printed here with gay abandon—as in the case of Gilbert Norman, who was hanged at Mauthausen. A note appeared on Norman's casualty report, signed by Buckmaster in 1945, saying: “Probably fell for a Gestapo trap. Nothing ever proven against him.”

After a while I became familiar with certain voices in these files— like the voice of a distraught father battling tirelessly to clear his dead son's name. Mr. Maurice Norman, a prominent chartered accountant working in Paris, had been at first angered by the failure of SOE to tell him, until nine months after Gilbert's capture, that his son was missing. His wife fell critically ill from grief and never recovered.

When, in the months after the end of the war, Gilbert Norman, along with Francis Suttill, was accused in France of making a “pact” with the Germans and selling out the Prosper network, Maurice Norman refused to allow his son to become a scapegoat and called on the British government to stand up for him. It was Vera who advised on how to handle Mr. Norman, and her responses were often chilling. She had evidence by now that Norman had given away information to the Gestapo. But she also knew better than anyone what exactly had led him to break down: Buckmaster had blown the agent's cover by revealing the existence of a second security check.

But when asked for her views on the Norman case, Vera simply stated that he “probably fell for the German trick of you play fair by us and we'll play fair by you.” Of Norman's father, she said: “He is an awkward customer who for some reason has a grudge against SOE.”

Once Dr. Goetz had trapped London into revealing the existence of Gilbert Norman's second security check, his task of playing back Norman's radio became much easier, he told Vera. And Norman began to talk. Norman gave Dr. Goetz his first insight into the French Section and “had been quite helpful especially as regards the moral effect his appearance on apparently good terms with his captors had on agents later.”

Dr. Goetz paused again and observed Vera. He found her “haughty” but also beautiful.

“Go on,” said Vera.

“And once they [the agents] could see how much we already knew about their organisation they saw the sense in talking. They realised there was a traitor. You see,” said Dr. Goetz, “it was mostly down to the mail.”

Vera asked him to explain.

“Kieffer had copies of all the agents' mail, which was sent back to London,” said Dr. Goetz. He had their letters home, their reports to headquarters—everything. When captured agents were shown their mail, the effect on them was quite dramatic.

Vera had heard this story about the captured mail many times before, and always it was Henri Déricourt (Gilbert) who was accused of passing the mail to the Germans, but no SOE or MI5 investigation to date had found evidence strong enough to charge him. One theory, put about by Déricourt s defenders, including Buckmaster, was that the Gestapo had deliberately blackened his name to unsettle fellow agents or to divert attention from a genuine German double agent.

“Where had Kieffer got the mail?” Vera then asked Dr. Goetz.

Goetz said it came from an agent called Gilbert who worked for Karl Boemelburg, Kieffer's commanding officer. Boemelburg handed the mail to Kieffer, but Kieffer himself had never encountered Gilbert. He didn't wish to meet him, said Dr. Goetz. Kieffer didn't trust Gilbert. “He thought he was a double. But he found him useful.”

But on occasion Dr. Goetz himself had encountered Gilbert. Kieffer wanted Dr. Goetz to be present at meetings between Boemelburg and Gilbert in case any information emerged that would help him with his radio deception. Gilbert had “dark blond wavy hair and a sportive figure,” he said. Vera then showed Dr. Goetz a photograph of Déricourt, and Dr. Goetz recognised him as Gilbert. He also said that all the photostats—prints derived from photographs of the agents' mail—carried the marking “BOE 48,” which he understood to refer to the fact that Gilbert was Boemelburg s forty-eighth agent.

Vera asked Dr. Goetz when exactly the mail was first used in interrogations. Dr. Goetz had heard that the mail had been used in the Prosper interrogation, carried out by another German officer who was now dead. Dr. Goetz himself first used the mail in the case of Gilbert Norman. “He could see we knew everything already,” said Dr. Goetz. “It was not then hard to convince him that the best course for him was to save as many lives as possible by helping us.”

At first the Norman transmissions had been of only limited use, said
Dr. Goetz. Mostly London just sent questions back asking about Prosper: “Where is Prosper? Where has he been taken? What news of Prosper?” and so on. And then, he said, a request came through for a rendezvous address in Paris. London said that two officers were coming over from London and wanted a safe house for a meeting with Gilbert Norman. “I sent a message back with a rendezvous address at rue de Rome,” said Dr. Goetz. “We set up surveillance at the place for days, waiting for these officers to turn up. Eventually one did.”