Spy Princess (14 page)

Noor progressed steadily at Thame Park. As she had already trained in Morse she had a head start over all the other trainees, who had to begin from scratch. Noor used the opportunity to improve her performance. Every week her speed was noted down, along with general remarks.

After 40 hours of training at Thame Park, she reached a Morse speed of sending at 16 words per minute and receiving at 19 words per minute. Her instructor noted that she was ‘in need of practice and tires quickly but is working well and should make progress’. A week later she had increased her speed to 18 wpm (sending) and 20 wpm (receiving). By 16 April, Noor’s Morse speed was 18 wpm (sending) and 22 wpm (receiving). This was noted with satisfaction by her instructors as it was the fastest for any trainee operator. She had also at this stage moved on to practical work on the A Mark II (radio used in the field). Her report said she was finding it a ‘little strange but making good progress on the whole’.

Clearly, Noor had settled in well. Her aptitude for radio transmission marked her out from the rest of the recruits. The only aspect of the training she did not enjoy was the physical work, including intensive weapons training. She was, however, determined to work at it, as her instructors noticed.

On 19 April 1943, another report from her instructor, Lieutenant Holland, praised her progress and attitude.

This student, like her two FANY companions of the 27X party, has thrown herself heart and soul into the life of the school. She has any amount of energy, and spends a lot of it on voluntary P.T. with the object of overcoming as far as possible feminine disabilities, very eager to please, very ready to adapt herself to the mood of the company, or the tone of the conversation, interested in personalities, capable of strong attachments, kind-hearted, emotional and imaginative. She is very fond of her family (mother, brother in the Fleet Air Arm and sister) and was engaged for about five years, but broke it off. The motive for her accepting the present task is, apparently, idealism. She felt that she had come to a dead end as a WAAF and was longing to do something more active in the prosecution of the war, something which would make more call on her capabilities and perhaps demand more sacrifice. This appears to be the only motive, the broken off engagement is old history, nor does she appear to have any romantic ideas of the Mata-Hari variety. In fact she confesses that she would not like to do anything ‘two-faced’, by which she means deliberately cultivating friendly relations with malice aforethought. The fact that she has already given some thought to preparing her mother for the inevitable separation and cessation of correspondence shows that she has faced some, at any rate, of the implication of the job. It is the emotional side of her character, coupled with a vivid imagination, which will most test her steadfastness of purpose in the later stages of her training.
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This detailed report shows how interested the SOE was in the background and psychological make-up of their trainees. Noor had clearly discussed her personal and family life, her anxieties and apprehensions, at some depth with her instructors. Though it was clear to them that she was emotional, they saw reserves of strength and courage in her. Her maturity and forthrightness had impressed her instructors but there was a lot more to be done. Apart from her radio and technical training, Noor had to learn the crucial art of becoming a secret agent and surviving as one. After the initial training at Wanborough and the specialist training schools, most F-section agents were sent to the Group A Special Training School Number 26 at Arisaig in Scotland. Here F-section had found an ideal training ground – a number of large houses in one of the most inaccessible parts of the Scottish Highlands. In these remote mountains, often battling severe weather, the trainees were taught how to blow up bridges using dummy explosives and to carry out other acts of sabotage. The training was intensely physical and the recruits had to learn how to handle arms, load slippery weapons in the dark, make their way across rough country and creep silently through the undergrowth. They learned how to wade through rock-strewn streams, how to avoid the skyline, how to live off the land and kill silently. They were made to cycle for miles in the mountains building their physical fitness to peak levels which would stand them in good stead in the field. There is no evidence from Noor’s training files that she went to Arisaig. As a radio operator, it was probably thought better to concentrate her training in her specialised field.

After the training at Arisaig (A-school), agents were sent to further special schools to specialise in their field of work. Some did courses in industrial sabotage, some learned the skills of choosing and describing outdoor zones and creating special reception committees for parachuted supplies, others learned the art of safe-breaking and lock-picking and the use of armaments. One of the final courses was for parachute training at Ringway Airfield near Manchester. From here, they were air-dropped into Tatton Park. The trainees usually did four or five practice jumps, one at night and one with equipment strapped to the leg. However, Noor did not go to Ringway as her instructors had already excluded her from parachute training.

One of the last stages of training for all agents was the Finishing School. For Noor, this was Beaulieu (B-school) STS 36 in Hampshire. She was given instructions to travel with four other colleagues from Waterloo to Southampton on Sunday 9 May. From there they would go on to Beaulieu, the jewel in the crown of the SOE training schools.

Here, deep in the New Forest, in the spacious grounds of the Montagu family estate and the ruins of one of Britain’s oldest abbeys, built in 1204, agents learnt the art of surviving behind enemy lines. After the rigours of training in Arisaig, this country house with its log fires, views overlooking a lake and relative luxury offered the agents a chance to unwind. A plaque on the abbey ruins today commemorates the agents who trained for their dangerous wartime missions here.

The SOE had eleven houses scattered through the estate which served both as specialist training schools and as cottages to live in. Beaulieu Manor (now the National Motor Museum) was the headquarters of the Group B school. The Montagu family themselves lived at Palace House in the grounds. Palace House was also used as the local Air Raid Precautions (ARP) and Red Cross headquarters and was later earmarked as a stand-by headquarters for General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied Supreme Commander. The main classes took place in The Rings, a rambling 13-bedroom mansion (now demolished). All the houses had different names. Boarmans was favoured by F-section, and it was here that women agents like Noor were trained. Warren House, further down the river, near Needs Oar Point and the House on the Shore at Sowley overlooking the Solent, were used for training agents to fire a variety of weapons. Inchmery House on the east bank was used as a commando training school for Polish and French troops of the Free French Combat Parachute Company. Clobb Gorse was also taken by F-section.

The picturesque village of Beaulieu provided the base for some of the most clandestine work that would be done during the war. The tranquil surrounds of the New Forest with its wild ponies and ducks nestling along the riverbank was the setting for highly secret and dangerous missions. Preparations for D-Day saw components for the floating Mulberry Harbour being constructed in the oyster beds on the west bank of the Beaulieu river while over 500 landing craft and barges used the river during Operation Overlord. Units of frogmen and a secret underwater survey team were concealed in the grounds of the houses, along with SOE agents and commandos, while naval scientists experimented with new weapons. The whole area of Beaulieu and neighbouring Bucklers Hard were restricted areas during the war. On the east bank of the river was Exbury House, home of the Rothschilds, which was requisitioned by the Navy and came to be known as HMS
Mastodon
. Among its residents was the famous writer and engineer Nevil Shute, who experimented with a rocket-propelled pilotless aircraft called the Swallow, the precursor to the modern cruise missile.

Beaulieu had included among its list of instructors the flamboyant Kim Philby, later discovered to be a Soviet double agent. He taught propaganda at Beaulieu. Ironically, Philby had himself learnt his skills from the Soviets since he had been working for them since 1933. By Noor’s time he had left for his career in MI6 but he was remembered in Beaulieu as a brilliant instructor who taught agents to live under a regime they detested without showing that they hated it.

The training at Beaulieu was considered most crucial by the SOE. It was at Beaulieu that agents learnt to recognise their enemy and survive in the field. They were taught how to tell whether they were being followed and how to give the enemy the slip, how to contact a source, how to establish safe letter boxes, how to pass messages, and how to set up radio aerials. Agents were sent on field trips and often arrested to see if they could stick to their cover stories. Everything was a preparation for the final mission.

Maurice Buckmaster would often come down from headquarters to cross-question recruits and subject them to Gestapo-style interrogation in order to break their cover stories. Agents would be dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night by someone dressed as a Gestapo officer. They would then be taken to an interrogation room, have a strong light shone on their face, and made to face a panel of what looked like Gestapo officers. This was done so the trainees would get some idea about the ruthless nature of these interrogations. They would have to repeat their cover story so many times that by the end of the interrogation it would be ingrained in their minds. If they survived without cracking, their confidence would be greatly increased and they would be able to face the thought of a genuine German interrogation. The rehearsals were grim affairs and the recruits were not spared. They were stripped and made to stand for hours in the light of bright lamps and though physical violence was never used on them, they knew that the real interrogation would probably include torture as well.

If the recruits cracked badly under the strain, they were unlikely to be sent into the field. Buckmaster recalled later that the cruel jibes, the repeated and shouted questions and implacable persistence broke a man’s spirit, but he could console himself with the fact that this cracking at a rehearsal might well have saved his life – and others’ – by preventing the possibility of his doing the same thing with the enemy. It was no game.
¹⁰

Noor is said to have been terrified during her mock Gestapo interrogation at Beaulieu and became practically inaudible as the officers shouted at her. Dragged out of bed at night and rounded up by men in Gestapo uniform terrified her. Joan Sanderson said later that she found Noor’s mock session

almost unbearable. She seemed absolutely terrified. One saw that the lights hurt her, and the officer’s voice when he shouted very loudly. Once he said, ‘Stand on that chair!’ It was just something to confuse her. She was so overwhelmed, she nearly lost her voice. As it went on she became practically inaudible. Sometimes there was only a whisper. When she came out afterwards, she was trembling and quite blanched.
¹¹

At Beaulieu the agents were also taught to acquire French mannerisms, as this was crucial to their survival in France. Everything the agent did had to be done in a French style, whether it was combing their hair or leaving their knives and forks on their plates, answering the telephone or calling for a waiter. Often a man could give himself away by using an incorrect idiom in French, even though his accent and the individual words of a phrase might be perfectly correct.

Trainees were told about the experiences of returning agents so they could learn from them. They were told how an agent once went into a café in France and asked for café noir (black coffee). This surprised the waitress as there was no other coffee available at that time in France. Such small slips, however insignificant, could arouse suspicion.

Noor was told off in France for pouring her milk in her tea first in the English manner. The smallest indiscretion could give you away as there were informers everywhere.

Maurice Buckmaster noted that another small example was telephone manners. The French never say
Tenez la ligne
(hold the line) as the English do. Instead they say
Ne quittez pas l’écoute
(literally – don’t stop listening) or more simply
Ne quittez pas
. The use of any other phrase would automatically make a Frenchman suspicious and could lead to the death of an agent if the Frenchman was a Vichy supporter.
¹²

The agents were taught how to coordinate with Baker Street from their stations in France through a series of postboxes which took messages from Paris all the way down to the Spanish border, over the mountains and to various agents in neutral capitals.

Though Noor had lived in pre-war France, it was a very different place now it was under the Germans. Her rigorous training prepared her for survival in a city that was occupied by the enemy. She learnt about the conditions of life in France, what identity card she would need and hundreds of other relevant details. She was taught to recognise the uniforms of the different police forces and learn how closely the local police worked with the Germans. At classes in The Rings and Boarmans she was shown photographs and taught to recognise the faces of the enemy: the German soldiers and the French Milice (pro-German French police). She was taught to look out for the Abwehr, the military arm of the Germans, based at the Hotel Lutetia on the Boulevard Raspail in Paris, and the SD or the Sicherheitsdienst, the intelligence wing of the SS based at 82–86 Avenue Foch. She attended lectures on the Nazi party, the German army and the Gestapo and heard returning agents describe how to deal with interrogations.

There were also lessons on codes, map reading, micro-photography and how to recognise and make forgeries. Agents were taught how to use and arrange messages on the BBC which would alert them in the field. The French service of the BBC was used regularly by the SOE to send coded messages to the agents. Before each drop, reception committees in France would listen for news of an expected delivery of agents or arms and supplies. After the evening news bulletin read in French, the announcer would give a series of personal messages called
avis
. These would be broadcast every night at 7.30 p.m. and then again at 9.15 p.m. from the BBC World Service headquarters on the Strand in London. Among the items of trivia and poetry in the programme were scattered lines in prearranged codes which would tell the agents on the field about arrangements for a drop. So the announcer in slow clear tones would say ‘
Moïse dormira sur les bords du Nil
’ (Moses will sleep on the banks of the Nile), which could mean that an agent was arriving by Hudson aircraft.