Andrée's War (23 page)

Meeting up in public places was not without its risks but, as Alain explained, it was unavoidable this time. He told his sister about the money he had received from the OSS, and how he needed her help to get the funds to Paris safely. Most of the dollars were still at the château, but he had some of the coins with him now to pass on to her; she would need to make several later trips to Orion to collect the rest over time. Andrée was worried. She knew the risks involved and the responsibility for carrying Orion's money felt like a big weight on her young shoulders, even though she always wanted to help her brother. She told Alain she needed some time to think. In the end, it was well past three o'clock in the morning before they finally went to bed.

The following day, after breakfast, they went for a walk, hoping a short stroll in the fresh air would do them good. As they wandered past a lingerie shop, Andrée stopped and stared at the window display, with its array of mannequins wearing girdles. Alain was restless but Andrée smiled to herself and told him she had the answer. ‘I will buy a girdle and sew the coins into it. No one will suspect that and unless someone had a very good reason, they would be very unlikely to strip-search me.'

Alain couldn't understand how she could possibly manage to fit the coins into the girdle but he trusted his sister's judgement and they went
into the shop. Andrée tried one on for size and pronounced it a good fit, so they bought it. That afternoon she spent several hours in her hotel room, sewing the coins securely into her new piece of lingerie. It was laborious work but she enjoyed sewing and liked a challenge. She managed to fix twenty of the coins into the girdle but, try as she might, could not fit the last one in. Instead, she put it in her purse, figuring that if she was searched, it was not likely that suspicion would fall on her for possession of just one coin.

The following morning Andrée awoke to strong sunshine filtering through the shutters. There was no soap in the bathroom for her shower. Soap was a luxury item in France during the war – one of the things most missed by the majority of the population. Andrée had hoped that this symbol of luxury might be available in the hotel, but it was not to be. She picked up the girdle and began to wrap it around her body. The small hooks had been securely sewn on and as she attached them, one by one, she felt confident that it would remain in place. Even though the weight of the coins was minimal (each one weighed approximately 6.45 grams and so in total, it was 129 grams,
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the girdle was heavy and uncomfortable and she was not looking forward to the constraints it would make on her movements. She wore a thick, woollen navy pin-striped suit, which would hopefully cover up any bumps the coins might make in the girdle material. Once she was ready she went down to the hotel's dining room, where Alain was already eating breakfast.

The pair acknowledged each other formally. Andrée nodded to her brother to reassure him that all was well. Quietly she murmured as they sat at the table that her plan had worked, but that there was one coin left over. Both knew that the day ahead would be a challenging one. Keeping the conversation light, Andrée began talking about what she would buy if she had money of her own. ‘I would love to buy a new pair of shoes. I am so tired of walking around in wooden-soled shoes. If only I had some money I would buy the shoes I saw yesterday in the rue St Catherine.'

‘Well let's go and have a look at them if you can walk that far in your girdle,' answered Alain.

They found the shoe shop and Andrée gazed longingly into the window. ‘Let's go in and buy them,' said Alain, to her astonishment.

‘But I have no money.'

‘We can use the coin you couldn't fit into the girdle.'

‘But it belongs to OSS and we need it to keep the group going.'

‘Andrée, I do not think the OSS will know or mind if we spend a small amount on shoes for you. Besides, I think you deserve them in view of the risks you are taking for us.'

Andrée was happy to be persuaded by her younger brother. The sales assistant approached the young pair with a smile and asked how she could help. Andrée pointed to the black suede shoes with a high, thick heel and straps, which she had seen the previous day. The sales assistant took them out of the window so that she could try them on. She walked across the shop floor and twirled back, smiling with pleasure. ‘They are simply wonderful, so elegant and so comfortable.'
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Alain paid the shop assistant in cash, muttering under his breath to Andrée that she could pay him back when she had converted one of the coins into hard currency. The pair then walked back to their hotel to pay their bill and collect their cases. They were to travel separately to Paris, as Alain was much more likely to be stopped at some point; Andrée would take the first train.

The girdle was heavy and uncomfortable and she was hoping to find a corner seat where she could settle down for the whole trip. The hotel had prepared a little food for her journey, so she went straight to the platform and onto the train.

It was late as the train arrived in Paris. Andrée moved swiftly and purposefully through the station and onto the
métro
. Spot checks on the street were increasingly common in Paris and she didn't want to be accosted so close to the end of her journey.

She reached her apartment block just before curfew and climbed the stairs up to the flat. She phoned a colleague straight away to tell him she had bought some shoes in Bordeaux; she made no mention of who her mysterious visitor had been. He understood on hearing her words that she had returned safely from her trip.

Andrée was pleased to find she was alone in the flat that night. Her parents and sisters had gone to Mesnil-le-Roi for a few days and she was thankful she would not have to lie about where she had been. Alain had made her promise not to tell anyone about their meeting but she was allowed to tell their parents that he was safe, and she knew they would be desperately relieved to hear it.

She went into her bedroom and undressed. She unhooked the girdle carefully, knowing she would need it again. Her skin was very red where her body had been restricted. She unstitched the coins from their hiding place and put them one by one into a smart silver-laced purse. They would be safe in her room until the morning, when she could hide them in the apartment cellar until needed.

 

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The Louvre moved most of its paintings out of Paris during the war. Safe storage proved challenging: they were transferred to a number of châteaux and museums. The ‘Mona Lisa' was apparently moved five times – first to the Château de Chambord in the Loir-et-Cher, then to the Ingres Museum in Montauban to avoid damp, before being moved again later in the war.

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In 1944 gold was worth approximately US$33.85 an ounce; in 2013 gold was worth approximately US$1,250 an ounce. A twenty-franc gold coin would today be worth approximately US$272 in today's rates.

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The shoes were still in Andrée's belongings in London in 1996. As part of an interview for a school project, Andrée told her eleven year-old granddaughter: ‘I will never forget how comfortable those shoes were.'

B
ack in Paris, Alain wanted to go home to his family but he remained concerned that to do so might jeopardise their safety; he decided it would be better if he stayed for the moment with one of his couriers, Marthe Dramez, from where he could get back into the swing of things with Orion. Alain's ability to meet and endear himself to a wide range of contacts was already impressive (and only improved with age). One of his friends worked for Jean Bichelonne, whom Alain later described in his memoir as Vichy Minister for Communications and Industrial Production. Alain visited him regularly, and his friend passed on anything he had picked up, including data on the condition of the French road network, the number and location of blown-up bridges, the timetable of barges travelling the canals, up-to-date information on the condition of the railway network and details on the movement of German troops around France.

He was especially pleased to be reunited with his close friend, Orion's Deputy Leader, François Clerc, who with Andrée's help had kept the group going throughout 1943 and early 1944. It had been a difficult period for François, who had received no news from Alain or d'Astier and had been hit hard by the arrests of Escartin, Biaggi and Alliot. But despite the setbacks, he had continued to recruit new agents: in 1943 he met Patrick Dolfus, whose father was deeply involved with the Resistance despite having been forced to supply cars to the Germans from his manufacturing company.
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Dolfus supplied Clerc with economic intelligence on Germany's industrial requirements throughout the country. François also met Claude Arnould, head of the Resistance group Jade Amicol. Under his assumed name of Colonel Ollivier, Arnould was one of SOE's agents. François's links with Ollivier and the ORA meant that both organisations allowed Orion access
to their transmitters in order to forward on to British Intelligence certain time-critical information.

Andrée had matured considerably since 1940 and with her increased confidence she understood that, with Alain back in Paris and the group operating at full tilt once again, their new role supplying OSS with intelligence meant heightened risks for everyone. As lead courier she was now undertaking a trip every two weeks – mostly to Orthez or Marseilles. This must have been extremely difficult – to gain permission for each trip, obtain an
ausweiss
and to get any necessary time away from work without arousing the suspicion of her colleagues. Yet Andrée managed it somehow. Civil servants were not allowed to leave the country, but her diaries show that she travelled to Brussels at least once.

By May 1944, Andrée was relying on a group of women, some of whom had become agents in a sister group in Bordeaux named Cauderon. In Paris, her close friends Marthe and Margit shared courier duties with her, as did Ninon Pagezy in Orion (Madame Labbé's daughter and sister of Paul). Twenty-one-year-old Guy Mangenot had created the Cauderon Resistance group with a team of eight agents under his command. Mangenot
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gathered intelligence on the naval movements in the port of Bordeaux and details of how much fuel the German navy was stockpiling and where their sailors were stationed. He discovered the defences the Wehrmacht had installed on the coast surrounding Royan and the timetables of the planes landing and leaving the airport at Mérignac. He was supremely impatient, as was evident when, after the US landings on the Mediterranean coast in August 1944, he got so frustrated while awaiting Andrée's arrival that he impetuously decided to give some gathered intelligence to a passing US Army Officer rather than waste more time waiting.

With the increased dangers agents now faced, Alain instructed the entire group – by now over forty agents – that they were to carry a cyanide pill with them at all times. The suggestion (and it is assumed the supply) had
come from OSS, who were concerned that if one of them was interrogated by the Gestapo, they might incriminate the others.

These lethal pills had an important psychological value for Andrée and her colleagues. The main advantage of carrying them was that they could be concealed more easily than other methods. They were small (about the size of a pea) thin-walled glass ampoules, covered in brown rubber (to protect against accidental breakage) and filled with a concentrated solution of potassium cyanide. They were never swallowed whole. Instead, the user had to crush them between their teeth to release the fast-acting poison. Brain death occurred within minutes and the heartbeat stopped shortly after. Field Marshal Rommel committed suicide with such a pill following his implication in the July 20th plot against Hitler, and Pierre Laval, France's Vichy prime minister, attempted to use something similar when awaiting execution after the liberation.
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Biaggi, Alliot and Escartin had not been carrying pills at the time of their arrest but managed to withstand their interrogation without giving anything away. Most people in the group, however, were unlikely to be able to endure prolonged torture, as Andrée often explained: ‘It would not have been easy if they started to pull out your finger- and toenails.'

Andrée and Alain were particularly vulnerable because of their knowledge of the other agents operating in the group – although Andrée always insisted that she was ‘merely' a postman who knew nothing of what the others were up to. In her typically unassuming way, she said after the war that she merely typed the reports she was given without reading them, though she must have retained some of the information. There were other central figures within the group who also knew a certain amount about other Orion agents.

Sometime in late June 1944, Andrée went to Marseilles on a courier trip to pick up some documents from a man named Albert Paoli. She was surprised and delighted when she arrived to find that her contact was none other than her old friend Biaggi, who now held a new ID card since his
escape from the train to Germany. In Vergèze, a town on the Mediterranean coast, Biaggi had met up with Monsieur Joel, the manager of the French water company Perrier, whose son Rodolphe had been arrested by the Wehrmacht. On his release he had been made to work at a building company making cement used to build garrisons along the coast. Biaggi never missed an opportunity and brought Rodolphe Joel into his espionage network. At great personal risk he supplied Biaggi with details of the garrisons the Germans were installing along the coast, information which Biaggi passed in turn to Andrée.

François de Rochefort had not been idle in Alain's absence either. He was a good friend of General Verneau, head of the ORA, and the relationship between the two men enabled close cooperation between the two groups. Following the sudden arrest of Verneau,
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de Rochefort subsequently became close to a new group of former army officers who, having left the army after the fall of France, were willing to supply him with military intelligence they thought might be of interest to OSS. François's flat continued to be Orion's informal Paris headquarters – a place for the collection of intelligence and occasional meetings. It was risky though: ten years older than most of the others, François moved in a sophisticated circle of wealthy Parisians and his discreet friendships within Paris's gay community brought him into ‘unusual' circles, including contact with Wehrmacht officers willing to exchange information for bribes.