The Spy Net (12 page)

On 12 October they were transferred to Lille, where they were not surprised to find the rest of their band in prison. As they had surmised, their comrade had betrayed them.

The prisoners were quickly brought up for trial. In the face of the overwhelming evidence, it was clemency alone that they could hope for. Against Léon Trulin the following charges were filed:

• Military espionage.
  
• The recruitment of five members.
  
• Possessing a pocketbook that contained:
   –
  The reports of the five members from 20 to 27 September
  .
   –
  Thirty-three photographs of trenches
  .
   –
  Plans of aviation fields, munitions depots, and trenches
  .
  
• Attempting to cross the Dutch frontier.
  
• Having made several illegal journeys to Holland and England.
  

On 7 November the following judgment was rendered by the court martial: Léon Trulin, eighteen years of age, was condemned to death; Raymond Derain (eighteen years of age), and Marcel G. (fifteen years of age) were both condemned to hard labour for life; Lucien D., Marcel L., and André H., all under eighteen, were sentenced to fifteen years' hard labour. The man who betrayed them was acquitted.

Léon's mother was prostrated with grief. T00 ill to leave her bed, she was unable to be present at the one and only interview which the Germans permitted, the day before the execution. It was Léon's three little sisters who came to say farewell to him. He received them with calmness and dignity. It was he who extended comfort and tried to dry their tears. Returning to his cell, he wrote the following letter – touching in its simplicity:

A postscript was attached to this letter; in it Léon bequeathed
to his mother, his sisters, and his brothers, various small souvenirs which belonged to him at home.

He was executed at dawn on 8 November. Refusing to have his eyes bandaged, he faced the firing-squad unflinchingly as he had promised in his letter.

Léon Trulin was the youngest spy shot on the Western Front.

Today, if one passes a small grey house in the rue aux Gades, in Lille, one will notice a large white marble plate on its wall, bearing the following inscription:

The lot of Raymond Derain was no less sad. Three years of prison life left their mark. Released in Germany at the time of the Armistice, he died at Strasbourg towards the end of November 1918 before he could reach his parents who were waiting to welcome him home.

There were many young agents employed in the Allied secret services during the war, but the service Léon 143, or Léon Turpin as it was sometimes called, was the only secret service organisation composed entirely of minors. There were many Allied spies, but none was braver than Léon Trulin.

W
HAT I HAVE
already written must have indicated that some of the spy’s greatest dangers came from note-books and stool-pigeons. Those who employed note-books often thought they were safe in using codes, false names or abbreviations, but they forgot that these secret notes would call for an immediate explanation if they fell into the hands of the Secret Police, and that German third-degree methods, if given a definite objective, had been known to break the strongest will.

Not only did the guilty suffer, but the innocent were often involved. Any person whose name was found in the possession of a spy was immediately arrested; they remained in prison until they had proved their innocence. To illustrate my point, even
though it may be a digression from the main objective of this chapter, I shall tell, very briefly, the tragic story of Sister Xavéria.

Sister Xavéria’s brother was Alexandre Franck, the friend and companion of Backelmans (both of these men were eventually arrested by the Germans and shot as spies). One day, quite by accident, she met Backelmans on the street-car. Surprised to see him, for she knew that together with her brother he had left for England at the beginning of the war, she had 101 questions to ask; but she had arrived at her destination and had to take leave without all the information she wanted. When she got back to the convent she decided to get into touch with Backelmans again. She sent him a note asking him to call on her, and not being sure that he knew her convent name, she signed the message ‘Sister of Alex’.

In the meantime, Backelmans had been arrested, and his tell-tale memorandum book was in the possession of the Secret Police. In it Backelmans had noted down the name of Sister Xavéria as a reminder to tell Franck about the encounter. To make matters worse, the innocent Sister’s note fell into the hands of the Secret Police.

Here was a person whose name not only figured in Backelmans’ note-book, but who used a false name. Sister Xavéria was promptly arrested and, in spite of her protests, was confined for weeks in prison. At the trial, the German Prosecuting Attorney demanded a sentence of ten years’ hard labour; it was only the skill of her Belgian lawyer which eventually secured her acquittal.

We will now see how a foolish entry in a memorandum book led to the breaking up of the Biscops Service, which, although in no way to be compared with the ‘White Lady’ in size or importance, ranked next to it.

An Antwerp oculist, Dr ‘X’, a member of the Biscops Service, was arrested as a suspect in an affair which had nothing to do with his espionage activities; in fact, the worthy doctor was entirely innocent of the charges which had been levelled against him. The Secret Police had already realised their mistake, and were about to release him when they noticed in a memorandum book, which they had seized on him, the date of a rendezvous with ‘W’. The Secret Police wanted to know who ‘W’ was.

The doctor, having forgotten about the entry, was taken completely unawares. Disconcerted because ‘W’ stood for the name of the Biscops’ ‘letter box’ in Brussels, and not being able to think fast enough, he took refuge in refusing to answer. The Germans concluded that he had something to hide. They threatened to keep him in prison until the point had been cleared up. The doctor was taken back to his cell, and there found a companion installed in it. It was the stool-pigeon, Delacour.

The stool-pigeon told an appropriate story which completely won the confidence of his victim who, in turn, feeling in need of sympathy, gave an account of what had happened to him. In the course of his story he not only revealed that ‘W’ was Mademoiselle Marguerite Walraevens, residing at 128 rue Medori at Brussels, but that having had difficulty in finding the number, he had chalked a ‘W’ on the wall next to the door.

It was Captain Goldschmidt, in charge of Secret Police Bureau ‘A’ at Brussels, who undertook the investigation. He sent his agent, Jean Burtard, to the indicated address. There, finding the ‘W’ marked on the wall, Burtard was convinced the information was correct. Ringing the bell, he asked to see Mademoiselle Walraevens. With all the cunning which we have seen him employ
in ensnaring his other victims, he tried to win her confidence by giving himself out to be a courier from one of the Allied secret services in Holland. But Marguerite Walraevens was on her guard; she knew of the doctor’s arrest; besides, Burtard appeared suspect to her; and so with a show of righteous indignation, she conducted him to the door. Taking no chances, she immediately burned all compromising papers in her possession; and when Burtard returned a few minutes later with reinforcements to arrest the inmates of the house and to make a thorough search, he found the ashes still warm in the hearth.

The Secret Police, as usual, took possession of Mademoiselle Walraevens’s house and arrested everyone who presented himself there. In this way, they not only caught several members of the Biscops Service, but also arrested a woman courier, when she arrived to deposit her reports.

Stool-pigeons were once again called in to play their roles. Time and again, the reader has seen them at work, and has no doubt wondered how it was possible that prisoners, whose lives were at stake, could have been so foolish as to compromise themselves with strangers, however trustworthy they might have appeared. But those who have been worn out by endless interrogations and third-degree methods, and who have been kept in solitary confinement for days, even months, need human sympathy, and someone to talk with. The stool-pigeons were invariably compatriots who claimed to be in the same cruel situation that they were in; the prisoners felt that surely they could be trusted. In many cases, they were actually fellow prisoners, whom the Secret Police by threatening with the death sentence had forced to work for them.

Louise de Bettignies was betrayed by a woman who was arrested in the Cavell affair; and now in the Biscops investigation, unbelievable as it may seem, the Secret Police employed the woman ‘Z’ whose husband had actually been shot by the Germans for espionage. To save her own skin, she proceeded to betray her fellow prisoners.

Having won the confidence of one of the principal members arrested – whom I shall call ‘Spelier’, for although criminally indiscreet he acted in good faith – the woman ‘Z’ cunningly laid her trap. She volunteered the information that she had means of communicating with the outside through her daughter, who had permission to come and see her once a week. ‘Spelier’, anxious to warn Léon Deboucq, the chief of the Biscops Service, as to what had happened in Brussels, wrote a letter to him, and communicated his address in Charleroi to the woman.

The letter, of course, was handed over to Goldschmidt who, after photographing it, sent three members of the Secret Police off to Charleroi to arrest Léon Deboucq. When they arrived at Deboucq’s house, in the early hours of the morning of 16 September 1917, the whole family was away at Mass. The governess, Emilie Fenasse, was the only one at home. Declaring themselves as members of the Secret Police, the three agents took possession of the house, and sat down to wait for the return of the family. They did not notice, however, that Emilie Fenasse had turned on the porch light. This was a warning signal which Deboucq had arranged. When Deboucq turned the corner into the street where his house was located, he immediately noticed the light. Sending his family home, he precipitously fled to Brussels.

By allowing Deboucq to slip through their fingers, the Secret
Police had momentarily lost the thread of the organisation. Marguerite Walraevens, ‘Spelier’, and the other members of the Biscops Service who had been arrested in Brussels only represented a small section of it. Deboucq had been clever enough to organise his service on the basis of separate and independent nests; the sections at Malines, Namur, Charleroi, Mons, Maubeuge, Valenciennes, Tournai, and in Belgian Luxembourg still remained intact.

Deboucq, a man of about forty, an engineer by profession, extremely intelligent and resourceful, was neither a coward nor a man who would give in easily. Although his wife and one of his daughters had been arrested, he was determined to get his service working again, and to re-establish the connections with Holland, which had been severed by the arrest of Marguerite Walraevens. From his hiding place in Brussels, at the house of his aunt, Anna Verhegge, an old lady of seventy, he started spinning the thread again. He found a new ‘letter box’ in Brussels, in the person of Madame Descamps, another lady well advanced in years; and at Turnhout, close to the Dutch frontier, he enrolled Abbé Dierckx as a relay ‘letter box.’ All that now remained was to connect up these ‘letter boxes’ with a trans-frontier courier.

In his search for a frontier passage, one of his agents, Abbé Amceaux, of Namur, put him in touch with Dewé, Chauvin, and Neujean, of whom Abbé Anceaux had heard through a Namur priest, one of the ‘White Lady”s agents. Deboucq travelled to Liège and there met the three men, who were presented to him under the false names of Gauthier, Bouchon, and Petit.

The ‘White Lady’, which was hiding Deboucq at this time, realised that he was now compromised from two distinct
directions – the Walraevens group, and through Siquet. Wisely the organisation decided, for its own safety as well as his, that it would have to get him out of the country at all costs. A frontier guide was found who took Deboucq through the high-voltage electric wire into safety.

Had Deboucq been able to come to the War Office service, all would have been well, for we had a number of reserve frontier passages which we could have placed at his disposal. But instead, on his arrival in Holland, he reported immediately to B’s representative, for it was to this group of the British GHQ service that the Biscops organisation belonged.

The two ‘letter boxes’ at Brussels and Turnhout being intact, Deboucq and the B. Service immediately attempted to establish connection with them. At this period, the B. Service had just organised a new frontier passage on the Dutch–Belgian frontier, opposite Turnhout. The helpers at this frontier passage consisted of smugglers, who were working in conjunction with some German soldiers on frontier duty. I am sure neither the representative, nor Deboucq, knew that these German soldiers were involved in the combination, otherwise they would never have risked sending through this frontier passage messages which contained the names and addresses of two members of the Biscops Service.

Strange to say, however, the German soldier who was handed the messages enclosed in a shaving-stick, faithfully carried out his part of the undertaking. He carried the shaving-stick to a man called Verschueren, residing between the frontier and Turnhout, and requested him to carry it farther to Abbé Dierckx, at Turnhout. Verschueren, alarmed at having these instructions handed
to him by a German soldier, refused to accept the shaving-stick; and the soldier, not knowing what to do with it, buried it. Shortly afterwards the group of German soldiers smuggling at the frontier were caught; it was then that the soldier in question told the Secret Police about the shaving-stick which he had buried.

It was dug up. In it were found two rolls, each the size of a cigarette, one was marked Turnhout, the other Brussels. In the Turnhout roll, Abbé Dierckx was requested to get in touch with the man whom Deboucq had nominated to succeed him as chief of the Biscops Service; this man was referred to as the ‘White Negro’ and Abbé Dierckx was informed that he could contact him by presenting himself at the house of Anna Verhegge, 44 rue Philippe de Champagne, in Brussels. The Brussels roll was addressed to the ‘White Negro’. In it he was told to start the Biscops Service functioning again, and that he could communicate with Holland through Abbé Dierckx, whom the representative had obviously intended connecting up to the frontier passage by way of Verschueren.

Goldschmidt of the Secret Police Bureau ‘A’ once again took the investigation in hand. Abbé Dierckx was immediately arrested. The German secret agent Coulon (the man who had arrested Parente), armed with the Brussels roll, which Gold-schmidt had previously photographed, and disguised as Abbé Dierckx, was sent to call on Anna Verhegge.

The old lady could not help but have confidence in him, for she had never seen the real Abbé Dierckx; besides, on the roll which Coulon showed her, she recognised the handwriting of her nephew. She confessed that she could not put Coulon in touch with the ‘White Negro’; but she knew someone who
probably could, and so she sent him to Madame Descamps, the Brussels ‘letter box’.

Coulon was a French subject, and so was Madame Descamps. The old lady, whose hearing and eyesight were already impaired by age, had complete confidence in him; in fact, she took quite a liking to this priest who hailed from her own country. She regretted, however, that she did not know the identity of the ‘White Negro’, but she assured Coulon that he could get in touch with him through her nephew, Father Bormans, at Charleroi, to whom she hastened to give him a letter of introduction.

Immediately after Coulon’s visit, a friend of Father Bormans happened to call at the house, and as he was returning to Charleroi that same evening, Madame Descamps gave him a verbal message for her nephew to the effect that a priest with a communication from Holland was on his way to see him. When, therefore, Coulon arrived in the guise of an ordinary civilian, instead of that of a priest, Father Bormans was immediately suspicious; as soon as Coulon broached the subject of espionage, he showed him the door.

Coulon, who probably had not felt sufficiently sure of himself to parade in clerical dress before a real priest, returned to Brussels somewhat crestfallen. However, he soon devised a suitable story to tell Madame Descamps: he explained that having come from a town so close to the frontier he was a natural object of suspicion to the Secret Police, and having no excuse to go to Charleroi, he had gone there in disguise. The old lady apologised for her nephew’s lack of faith, and promising to take the matter in hand herself, post haste, she sent Bormans a letter explaining matters, and asking him to arrange a meeting in Brussels between the ‘White Negro’
and Abbé Dierckx; to the letter she joined the Brussels roll, which Coulon had brought back with him.