Spy Princess (23 page)

Meanwhile, a meeting was organised by Gieules at his flat at 66 rue de Pontieu between Antelme, his friend William Savy, Paul Arrighi, Arthur de Montalambert and Noor. William Savy was a lawyer who helped Antelme raise money for F-section activities in Paris. He had a withered arm and it was therefore extra brave of him to go into the Resistance. Savy was hiding at Gieules’ flat because the Gestapo had raided his apartment. Antelme informed the meeting that it was dangerous for him to stay on in Paris and that he would return to London and take Savy with him.
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Once during this turbulent period Savy and Antelme spent the entire night sitting in armchairs at Savy’s office in order to evade detection by the Gestapo.
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On 1 July, while the Gestapo was making further searches, Noor returned to Grignon. She wanted desperately to transmit to London and thought she could do so from there. But the moment she reached the school she realised the building had been occupied. She withdrew quietly, abandoned her bicycle and took a bus back to Paris. There are some reports that there was a clash with the Gestapo at Grignon, and Noor’s French citation for the Croix de Guerre says that she shot and either wounded or killed some of the Germans who pursued her. But this is not corroborated. Noor filed a report about the incident to London but did not mention anything about firing on Germans. She sent the details of the arrests to London by the Lysander that left on the night of 19 September.
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This was probably the detailed report that was submitted later, as her message about the arrests had been transmitted much earlier.

Noor reported that about sixty German plain-clothes policemen had arrived at Grignon and reproached the director for his anti-German sentiments. They asked him a lot of questions which he refuted. His son-in-law Robert Douillet was also interrogated. The Gestapo then arrested the director and six older students and the gardener Maillard.

After this the Germans staged a show of shooting in a forest close to the college. They rounded up the students and demanded to know everything, threatening to shoot them if they did not cooperate. They marched them in groups of ten and fired shots in the air and then came back for more students, telling them they would be shot like the rest. But this yielded no results. The shooting exercise was a sham and the next morning the director was brought back to his office. The Germans told him that they knew he was not a Germanophile but he was not to spread his ideas if he did not want any problems. The Germans had claimed that the English officers arrested in Paris had talked.

On 2 July, the day after the incident at Grignon, Professor Balachowsky was arrested at his flat in Viroflay. After breakfast, there was a knock on the door and the maid answered it. Madame Balachowsky saw a tall broad-shouldered man entering and asking for the professor. The professor was led away by the Gestapo but Madame Balachowsky, to her surprise, was not arrested. She and the maid were left behind in the flat. Madame Balachowsky immediately set out to warn other members of the circuit not to come to their house. Noor was told about the arrest by the maid when she telephoned the flat at 11 a.m.

On 10 July, at 5 p.m. the Germans returned to Grignon and arrested Vanderwynckt again. As he was leaving he told his wife, ‘Don’t worry about my fate. I want to serve my country.’
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Meanwhile Professor Balachowsky must have told the Germans where Noor had buried the wireless set because they went straight to the lettuce patch and dug it out.
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He was the only one who knew where she had buried it as they had done it together.

During the following week, hundreds of French agents were rounded up and arrested as the Germans infiltrated the circuits. Arthur de Montalambert, a friend of Antelme’s who worked with Octave Simon and the Satirist circuit, was arrested along with other members of the circuit. He died in Germany.

While the few left in the Prosper sub-circuit – Antelme, Noor and Garry – tried to warn others and relocate, the Germans tried their best to extract as much information from their prisoners. Suttill was subjected to the harshest of Gestapo interrogations, being questioned for three days continuously without being allowed to eat, drink, sleep or even sit down.
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Despite this, he infuriated the Germans by refusing to reveal anything. Suttill had apparently ‘been very “English” and haughty under interrogation, and had just sat in a chair and smoked cigarettes’.
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But there is evidence that Norman cracked and gave a full deposition. Later, Norman told a fellow agent, Marcel Rousset, at 3 bis Place États Unis prison, that the Gestapo knew everything and that Suttill and he had admitted everything to save their lives.
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Through Norman and the documentary material available the Germans gained a clear insight into the French section.
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It was also after Norman’s arrest that they learnt of the existence of ‘Madeleine’.
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They now had a personal description of her and knew she was a radio operator in the Prosper circuit. Immediately they set up a wireless detection station to observe traffic for the French section.

It was probably through Norman that the Germans got to know about the Juggler sub-circuit and made their arrests. Worms was arrested on 1 July while eating at his regular black-market restaurant, Chez Tutulle, in the rue Pergolese. He never kept his appointment with Antelme. Guerne and his wife Jeanne were also arrested with him. His second-in-command, Jacques Weil, saw him being arrested and fled to Switzerland. Their radio operator, Gaston Cohen (Justin) fled to the countryside and made his way back to England via Spain. The courier to the Juggler circuit, Sonia Olschanezky, managed to survive till January but was then arrested and sent to Natzweiler concentration camp where Andrée Borrel and she were both executed by lethal injection in July 1944.

After a few days of torture, during which they beat him insensible and broke his arm, Suttill too is said to have caved in and accepted a bargain made by the Germans. The bargain was that Suttill’s leaders would order their subordinates to reveal to the enemy all their dumps of parachuted weapons and explosives in return for a promise that nobody but themselves would be executed. The details of the pact are revealed in Vogt’s account to Jean Overton Fuller.
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But it is disputed in many quarters. It was Norman who visited the houses of the Resistance workers, carried out most of the bargaining with the sub-agents and asked them to surrender their arms. Suttill was taken away to Berlin almost immediately for further grilling and was not seen by any prisoners after the first three days. It is, therefore, unlikely that he signed or even knew about the pact. It is clear from the SOE files that the chiefs at Baker Street regarded Norman as the traitor and had little doubt that he had cracked under Gestapo interrogation.
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When Armel Guerne met Norman at Avenue Foch prison, Norman told him that the Gestapo knew everything about the Prosper organisation since they had arrived but had let it run on.
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In jail, Guerne was shown photocopies of SOE orders for the bombarding of workshops where engines were repaired at Nantes. He also saw 8–10 photos included with the order which had been sent in 1943. Guerne said he saw a letter from Prosper to his wife and three reports, one with Prosper’s signature. He saw radio messages in code in English and German and a message in Antelme’s own handwriting, all of which made him think that the Germans did indeed have a fair knowledge of SOE activities.

Norman also told Guerne that he had agreed to a proposal made by the commandant of the Paris Gestapo that if Norman and Guerne surrendered all the arms depots, the Germans would spare the lives of all members of the group except the chiefs, and would stop their files reaching a military court. Guerne confessed to giving out names of a few agents and also identifying some depots.

The skilful mind games played by the German police officers – Ernest Vogt and Josef Goetz – probably sapped Norman’s resolution. The number of arrests following this alleged pact ran into hundreds. Members of the Resistance – mainly farmers on whose lands parachutes had been dropped – were told that they would be treated as soldiers, not as traitors who would be executed, if they cooperated. In the confusion many farmers and labourers, who thought they were going to be discovered anyway, cooperated. When the Gestapo had the information they needed, they predictably broke the pact. An unknown number of Resistance workers, estimated at between 400 and 1,500, were arrested. Their treatment left many French families very bitter. The smashing of one network led to the infiltration of another. To his horror, a jailed leader of a Prosper sub-circuit was shown a Michelin map belonging to the F-section with clearly marked dropping zones. The map was presented to him by SS Hauptscharführer Karl Langer, who followed this up with a file of photocopies of reports to London of sabotage operations. Langer recited the dates and locations of parachute drops and then added: ‘We know that your network has just received someone called Madeleine. We have not found her yet. We will.’
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Once the Gestapo had visited his flat, Antelme knew he was in danger. He burnt any compromising papers that he had, contacted Robert Benoist and moved to Benoist’s estate at Auffargis near Rambouillet at the beginning of July. Here he stayed at the house of Robert’s brother, Maurice Benoist. We know from Robert Benoist’s files
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that Noor accompanied him to Auffargis but do not have definite dates – apart from 17 and 18 July – that she stayed there. Other circuit members hiding in Auffargis were Maurice Benoist, his wife Suzy Benoist and their maid and Grover Williams and his wife. It is possible that Noor was transmitting from there and making the final arrangements for Antelme’s return to London. Antelme remained in Auffargis all of July and left with William Savy by Lysander on a flight organised by Déricourt and Noor on the night of 19/20 July. Before leaving he made sure that Noor had a safe address and enough money. He had already given her 6,000 francs for her current expenses when she first went into hiding on 25 June. Any money she had was with Garry at the time. Before leaving he gave her 40,000 francs and then sent her a further 1,000 francs through Déricourt.

He also left 30,000 francs with Raymond Andres, in whose safe house Noor was living when he left. The amount, he said, would cover her costs and any other expenses Andres may have to incur on behalf of the circuit. Antelme later reported to London that ‘Madeleine proved very useful to me during this disturbed period’
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and said he had suggested to her that she should be attached to Déricourt, who would need his own wireless operator. He arranged for Robert Dowlen, wireless operator to Grover Williams, who was based in Pontoise, to lend her a set (since Noor’s own radio set was still in Le Mans) and told Noor to stand by pending confirmation from London.

It was Noor on Poste Madeleine who broke the disastrous news of the destruction of the Prosper circuit to Maurice Buckmaster. She had managed to get her radio set from Le Mans with the help of Dutilleul and Simon and returned to Paris to her safe house. Buckmaster also received reports about its demise from Cohen and Dowlen (before Cohen had to flee and Dowlen was arrested). All the leaders and their equipment had been captured. Circuits in Gisors, Grignon, Falaise, part of Le Mans and L’Eporcé (the estate of de Montalambert) were blown. Noor’s circuit leader, Garry, had left for Le Mans. There was now only one transmitter in Paris. It was Noor’s.

Buckmaster replied that it was too dangerous for her to work and she should return to England. He would arrange a plane to fly her back. But Noor refused and said she would rather stay if she could. As the last wireless operator left in Paris, she felt it was crucial for her to remain where she was so that London would know what was happening in Paris. She said she would slowly try to organise another circuit and rebuild the old one.
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Buckmaster was in a dilemma. He knew that Noor’s life was in danger and it was only a matter of time before she was arrested. But Poste Madeleine was now the last link with Paris and it had a crucial role. He accepted her offer as the sacrifice of a soldier and allowed her to remain. Buckmaster told Noor that since all the listening apparatus of the Germans would now be trained on her, she should not transmit for a while. He warned her that since hers was the only wireless operating in Paris, it would be easy for the Germans to track her with their direction-finding vans.
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She could, however, receive transmissions, which could not be detected.

Virtually alone now in Paris, Noor agreed to lie low and transmit with extreme caution. Poste Madeleine’s dangerous game was about to begin.

W
ith Antelme gone, Noor felt terribly alone in Paris. She was still staying at Raymond Andres’ flat at 1 Square Malherbe with Germaine Aigrain keeping a maternal eye on her. Noor had her radio set with her, though she was not transmitting from her flat at this time. Antelme had given her some assignments before he left and on 20 July she had a rendezvous with Robert Gieules at the RAC Place Vendome, where she handed him 400,000 francs.
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Antelme had also asked Noor to report regularly on the progress of plans for the financing of invading troops.

Noor’s clandestine work now involved keeping in touch with three French agents – Robert Gieules, Paul Arrighi and Charles Vaudevire. The four met several times a week through the summer at a bench in the Tuileries gardens. In this circle she was known by the code name Raymonde. Vaudevire was the peacetime director of the French Société Radio Electrique, who serviced her transmitter when it broke down. Arrighi was a barrister who lived on rue de Miromesnil, Paris. Vaudevire also introduced her to Viennot, a Paris businessman who had employed members of the Resistance on his staff to provide them with cover. Viennot played a dangerous double game. Outwardly he was friendly with the Germans and tried to get information from their headquarters at Avenue Foch. He often smuggled attractive women into the German ranks to attempt to find out vital secrets. He also used a regular ‘gang’ of criminals to counter the Germans. These gangs undertook daring rescue jobs when required.