The Secret Ministry of Ag. & Fish (10 page)

All hell broke loose. ‘Get on to the Air Ministry immediately and tell them we must have a Lysander tonight,’ Buck shouted. The rest of us scattered in different directions to try to
find an available plane. I still don’t know why one of the ‘Lizzies’ from our own squadrons wasn’t used. Perhaps they were all already booked for other operations that
night. But our crisis coincided with the period during which the RAF was heavily engaged in intensive bombing raids over Germany’s principal towns and cities, organized by Air Marshal Arthur
‘Bomber’ Harris. ‘Bomber’ Harris has often been severely criticized for what some considered his ruthless bombing of German cities. His critics seemed to have forgotten that
enemy bombers reduced London, Coventry, Hull, Liverpool and other important British towns to a heap of rubble. But the Air Marshal held firm, replying to them: ‘They have sown the wind, so
they shall reap the whirlwind.’ But no one dared tell Buck that there was not one plane available for the next two or three nights. Finally his assistant approached him with the news.

‘I don’t want a bomber,’ Buck exploded. ‘I want a Lysander.’ As I mentioned, Buck could be very choleric and often blew a fuse, and when he did, it was best to keep
out of his way. Yet as quickly as he boiled over he simmered down. ‘Oh, get hold of the Yanks,’ he said at last. ‘They won’t let us down.’ They didn’t. That
night at ten o’clock there was a Dakota on the airfield waiting to take off, manned by an experienced pilot, all set to pick up his ‘Joe’.

The following morning the rescued agent arrived at Orchard Court to be debriefed. He was as cool as a cucumber. It was impossible to even imagine the nightmare he must have lived through, yet he
seemed to have taken it all in his stride and showed no immediate signs of stress or ‘nerves’ after his terrifying experience.

In 1944, another agent found himself in the same situation. His return was less dramatic, but his arrest and escape were remarkable. Francis Cammaerts, codenamed ‘Roger’, had been a
schoolmaster and a pacifist. As a conscientious objector at the outbreak of war he was sent to work as a farm labourer. When his younger brother, an RAF fighter pilot, was killed during the Battle
of Britain he was so incensed at his brother’s untimely death that he laid down his pitchfork and joined the Army. Cammaerts’s father was a famous Belgian poet, and he was bilingual, so
he was approached by SOE, trained and parachuted into France.

The Gestapo had also been searching for ‘Roger’ for several months. He remained one step ahead of them until, through a stupid mistake, they finally tracked him down. They arrested
not only ‘Roger’, but also two other agents who were with him at the time, a considerable coup for the enemy and a massive blow for SOE. All three were imprisoned in an impregnable
fortress and sentenced to death, with the executions set for the following morning. Once again the whole of F Section was in despair. We knew them all and, apart from the personal anguish, the loss
of three important agents at once was devastating. The following morning the Section was again like a morgue. You could have heard a pin drop when once again there was a loud commotion. There had
been another last-minute miracle, and a signal arrived announcing their escape.

It had been orchestrated by their amazingly courageous and audacious courier, Christine Granville, with the help of a large sum of (fake) money parachuted in by SOE from North Africa, combined
with a great deal of persuasion and many threats from Christine. She also managed to persuade one of the senior prison officers to help her. He had realized that the war was almost over, that the
Allies were advancing and taking village after village and that it was to his advantage to be on the Allies’ side now that Germany was doomed to defeat. The three agents, together with
Christine, who had been waiting for them a short distance from the prison, were driven to a point just outside the Allied zone. From there they drove themselves to a neighbouring town in time to
join in the festivities celebrating its liberation after the German retreat. They did not immediately return to London, but when after a few months they arrived in the office they too appeared, on
the surface, to have suffered no ill effects from their terrifying experience.

Once the war ended, Francis Cammaerts settled down with his wife and young family and resumed his teaching career without, on the surface, having any dire repercussions from his close brush with
death. He said afterwards that, during the night before his scheduled execution, he didn’t remember feeling any particular fear, merely a sense of regret. He thought, ‘What a
pity,’ and left it at that. But who knows what after-effects he may have suffered without showing any outward sign of stress or pain? We only see the outside: the face people wish to show us.
The mistake is to think that an outer calm represents what is going on inside. Many agents carried with them inner scars for a very long time, some for ever.

Recently I met ‘Roger’s’ eldest daughter, Joanna, and asked her about her father. ‘Roger’ had died at ninety, and, after his wife’s death a few years earlier,
Joanna had cared for him. ‘I heard that he was very restless,’ I ventured. She looked surprised but assured me that his restlessness was due to the fact that, as he gradually rose to
the top of his profession, it had involved the family moving a great deal, at one point spending several years in Africa. But that as far as she could see he hadn’t appeared to have had any
serious after-effects as a result of his wartime experiences. ‘He drank a lot,’ she smiled. ‘But then they all did. And,’ she added with a twinkle in her eye, ‘he was
a great womanizer.’ ‘Roger’ was extremely attractive: I was not surprised that women fell for him like ninepins. ‘My mother was a wonderful woman,’ Joanna ended.
‘She understood him, and they had a very happy marriage. When she died a few years before he did, my father seemed to go to pieces and lose interest in life. He adored her right till the
end.’ ‘Roger’ has now almost become a legend, and his story is very ably told in Clare Mulley’s recent book
The Spy Who Loved
on the incredible life and adventures
of his Polish courier, Countess Krystyna Skarbek, alias Christine Granville.

Attending those Y9 debriefing sessions, I grew up . . . fast. When I was recruited I had been a happy-go-lucky, starry-eyed teenager with, so I thought, the world at my feet. But, listening to
the often harrowing stories of these returning agents, some of whom had lived closely with death, torture and betrayal and yet were not very much older than I, and some of whom were shattered by
their experiences, brought me down to earth with a bump. Witnessing their courage and devotion to the task in hand, one could not help but be affected. It changed me almost overnight from a
starry-eyed girl into a woman: and perhaps prepared me for the suffering which later I myself was to encounter. I slowly came to understand and to accept that life is made of hills and valleys,
highs and lows and that suffering is part of it. Everyone suffers at some point in life. No one escapes. Some suffer more than others and there doesn’t appear to be any reason why. I also
learned that torturing oneself in an attempt to find an answer or a reason for this seeming injustice is the road that leads to madness. There is no answer. I wonder if this questioning of why some
suffered while others escaped was not the beginning of my search for a meaning to life, and the road which led me to faith.

Until the war I had been sheltered, protected from the blows and buffetings which daily life inflicts. I hadn’t questioned the whys of suffering because I had not experienced it: my
questions about life began during the Y9s, where I was face to face with men and women who had suffered both mentally and physically and survived. So when my turn came, remembering their different
reactions, I realized that it is the way a person reacts to suffering which shapes them and forms their character. I could either let the pain dominate me and make me bitter, or I could use the
pain to my advantage, learn from the experience, albeit a painful lesson, but through it grow and become a more rounded, more mature person. Watching these returning agents’ reactions and
hearing their stories I realized that people are not jellies; they cannot be poured into a mould, left to set then turned out – all equal. We are individuals with our individual characters,
and sensitivities. And some are more resilient than others. I learned not to judge, certainly not by outward appearances, and not to criticize, but to accept people as they are.

Those Y9s gave me a mental picture of what it was like to live in an occupied country, showed me what many were enduring under the Nazi jackboot: and I realized how very near we had come to
being an occupied nation. Their often down-to-earth recounting of their experiences gave me a great insight into the terrible psychological strains and pressures the agents were subjected to. Their
life in the field was a journey through fear and darkness, often treachery, and they lived with great loneliness. Even before their departure, and certainly once back in England, they were
isolated. They could tell no one outside the small F Section circle what they were doing, share with no one but us their doubts, their anxieties, their fears. I also realized that, in order to
carry out their difficult missions, courage was not enough. They needed more than the quick burst of adrenaline required for a ‘hit and run’ mission; they had to possess a special kind
of courage: a cold-blooded nerve which endured for days, weeks, sometimes months, even when doubt and exhaustion almost overwhelmed and drowned their spirit. They needed endurance and, usually, a
passionate belief in a cause. Living so near the edge of death, they were more aware of life than the rest of us are. Many of us tend to take life for granted. They didn’t.

The agents I met during interrogations at Orchard Court were nearly all people of unusual sensitivity, able to make quick decisions and accurate assessments of a person’s character, but
possessing the inner strength to kill or order the execution of a comrade who had betrayed them. SOE seemed to draw officers of exceptional quality who would have been considered outstanding in any
form of warfare. They were not military geniuses, who fitted neatly into the British forces’ organization charts. They were individualists, self-reliant people who preferred to operate singly
rather than in large groups, happy to be their own master and make their own decisions, rather than being obliged to obey orders made by others, which they often considered futile.

In those sessions I also learned that we each have a different pain threshold, that point at which, in spite of oneself, the body succumbs and gives in. Listening to the agents’ often
harrowing stories, I came to understand that it is easy to think, even to boast when in the relative safety of a free country, that one will never crack, never give in, never talk, never betray
one’s comrades. But no one can know their breaking point in advance. That moment, perhaps transitory but often devastating in its consequences, when, faced with terror, threats and
insinuations that one has been betrayed or that the enemy knows all the secrets anyway, a person reaches the end of his tether. His body and his spirit can no longer endure the torture, the pain,
both mental and physical, and he will crack and thereby betray not only himself, but his comrades, his fellow résistants and the cause for which he is fighting. Perhaps that is why SOE
advised departing agents to swallow the L pill if ever they were arrested, so that they would never have to discover what their breaking point might be
.
In Gestapo hands an agent who
cracked was as good as dead. I never met one who did. But perhaps they were the ones who didn’t return!

Orchard Court was not only the place agents returned to after a mission. It was also the last place they saw before departing for the field. Arthur Park’s firm handshake, his warm smile of
encouragement and his friendly pat on the back as they left Orchard Court were precious memories for many agents long after the war was over.

Departing agents were driven to Orchard Court in the afternoon prior to leaving to change into their ‘made in France’ clothes. These outfits were specially designed for them by a
Jewish refugee tailor from Vienna who had a workshop in Whitechapel. The cut of a jacket or the way a shirt collar is set or the buttons and zip fasteners are placed differs from country to
country. Had they been infiltrated into France wearing British tailored clothes, even with the original labels removed, and ‘Galeries Lafayette’ or ‘Printemps’ sewn in their
place, it could have betrayed them. When they got to the flat, their new outfits would be waiting for them. After changing, their uniform and their personal effects were packed into a suitcase and
placed in a locker to await their return – or, should they not return, to be sent to their next of kin. In 1943, when things began to ‘hot up’ for SOE, and more and more agents
were being trained and sent into the field, the facilities at Orchard Court, though considerable, became rather strained, and the overflow of agents was taken to another SOE flat, at 32 Wimpole
Street.

Towards the end of the afternoon, Buck or Vera Atkins would arrive at Orchard Court to accompany the departing agents, now togged out in their new clothes, to Tempsford or Tangmere. If they were
flying from Tangmere, on arrival they would be taken to Tangmere Cottage just across the lane from the airfield (there were similar facilities at Tempsford, a converted farm named
‘Gibraltar’) and given a slap-up dinner with wine flowing freely – but not too freely – after which they would be taken to a small hut on the airfield. Here they were
searched to make sure they had not left something compromising in a pocket. Every possible precaution was taken before the agent climbed into his flying gear to make absolutely sure that during the
journey down from London he had not inadvertently slipped into one of his pockets a box of Swan Vesta matches, a cigarette end with ‘Player’s Please’ written on it or a London bus
ticket. It seems unbelievable but even the turn-ups on men’s trousers were unfolded and carefully brushed in case they had collected some British dust between Orchard Court and the
airfield!