Churchill's White Rabbit (24 page)

Only now, in the isolation of his cell, without Rudi or Ernst bellowing and punching him, could Forest consider himself and the many aches and pains of his body. There was not a part of him that didn’t seem to throb, and his head felt swollen, his jaw ached and his teeth seemed to rattle loose in his skull. All he could taste was blood and the handcuffs were slicing into his wrists.

Through the locked door of his cell he could hear the unlucky musician screaming as his interrogators resumed their abuse. Perhaps worse than watching the torture was hearing its sounds and letting the imagination run wild about what was happening. Forest heard what sounded like a body being flung against a wall, and soft thuds and cracks, interspersed with groans and cries. At one point it sounded as though Ernst was smashing furniture. Forest forgot his pain in his anger for the poor man and began yelling his own abuse at the Gestapo from his cell, but it was unlikely that they heard him over the noise of their own violence. Certainly no one came to punish him for the outburst and slowly even Forest’s energy for rage deserted him.

In the aftermath of torture there was only exhaustion. Forest’s body ached for sleep, but any time his head dropped forward the handcuffs bit into his wrists and brought him round violently. No doubt this was an effect that his guards were well aware of. Added to that was a desperate desire to urinate, brought on by the large quantities of water he had been forced to drink during his ‘bath’. Dreading the humiliation of wetting himself, Forest called and called for assistance, but aside from someone shouting ‘English swine!’ through his door, no one came.

It was long after midnight when guards eventually came to him and hauled him back to the interrogation room. Rudi had returned from inspecting the flat and was not impressed at what he had found. As Forest was thrust back into a chair he noticed a cowering figure in the corner of the room – the musician, who had finally lost Ernst’s attention. Battered and shivering, occasionally moaning softly, he was a broken figure. There was no knowing how permanent his injuries were, or whether any were life threatening. He was just one more Nazi casualty who would quickly be forgotten.

‘You sent me on another wild goose chase,’ Rudi snapped – the flat had thankfully been abandoned by Forest’s comrades. ‘No one has slept there for months. Where did you sleep last night?’

‘With a whore,’ Forest answered quickly. ‘It is what I always do, they keep their mouths shut.’

Rudi didn’t believe him, but both captors were, by now, feeling almost as exhausted as their victim. They sent for food and Forest had to watch them for what felt like hours as they slowly ate. All the time his bladder was fit to burst and he could barely contain himself, despite his determination not to humiliate himself before his captors.

Abruptly Rudi and Ernst ordered him back to his cell, seemingly frustrated by their prisoner and tired of the interview. At the threshold of his cell Forest took his chance to beg his guards to let him relieve himself, informing them that if they didn’t there would soon be a pool of urine trickling from under the door. Annoyed but clearly not relishing having to mop floors, the guards escorted him to a toilet and with immense relief Forest was able to empty his bladder. In the topsy-turvy world of the Gestapo prison it seemed an incomparable victory over the enemy.

Back in his cell he was once again set on the chair with his hands cuffed behind him. It was unbearable not to be able to put his head down and sleep for even a moment. With usual Forest stubbornness, he determined to free himself from the chair at least and by rocking and trying to stand he eventually flung himself forward and wriggled his arms from the back of the chair.

It was far from easy to struggle the chair back onto its feet and then to somehow position it so he could sleep on it, with his arms still firmly behind his back the whole time. Eventually he managed a position resting on the chair with his head propped against the wall, and even dozed. But his reprieve was all too short lived.

Notes

1
.  Marshal,
Op cit
.

2
.  Seaman,
Op cit
.

3
.  
Ibid
.

– 13 –

The Endless Nightmare

RUDI AND ERNST HAD tired of interrogating Forest and had relinquished their prisoner to two new officers, neither of whom felt inclined to reveal their names to him. They were new faces in the ordeal, but when Forest was brought before them he discovered that he was to endure the most horrific déjà vu as the two men repeated the process Rudi and Ernst had so generously initiated him into. First there was the firing of questions, and thankfully even a sleepy Forest could recall his cover story, but all too soon they were at an impasse, as once again he was demanded to tell them the location of the resistance arms dump.

Then it was a return to the bath, though apparently it was too late for the female personnel to attend, or perhaps they had lost interest in this particular victim. There was little that Forest could do but hold on to his stubbornness and his breath. He endeavoured to reduce the torment by kicking violently when his head was first immersed in the water and then, just as he felt himself slipping into unconsciousness, allowing his body to go limp making it seem he had blacked out a little sooner than he really had. Even so it was a nightmarish struggle: his body constantly fighting between life and death, his stomach filling with hastily swallowed water and his lungs burning from the effort to breathe. It lasted an hour, at which point he feigned complete collapse and was dragged back to the interrogation room, where he was forced to watch his anonymous questioners eating a leisurely breakfast of croissants and coffee. Despite his injuries Forest could still feel the pangs of hunger this induced, but for his breakfast all he received was another beating until he was virtually insensible, then the Germans left.

For a brief spell Forest was alone with his thoughts and his pain. Throughout the corridors of the building screams rang out as new victims received the Gestapo treatment. Forest could only close his mind to the sounds and hope there was no one he knew in those other rooms. He was still unaware that Brossolette had been a victim of the regime and had killed himself a mere hour before Forest had arrived at the house.

Then Rudi and Ernst were back and Rudi was feeling vengeful for the false errands he believed he had been sent on the day before. Perhaps Forest felt a tinge of amusement that Rudi failed to realise that he had stood in a genuine resistance safe house, before the usual round of beating and bathing continued.

By the afternoon however, his captors were getting a little desperate at the stubborn silence Forest maintained. He was driven to 84 avenue Foch with two SD men. This was one of three houses acquired in the grand residential boulevard connecting to the Arc de Triomphe by the Gestapo. They used it for various operations, including counter-intelligence and the orchestration of the ‘wireless’ game they played with SOE.
¹
It is one of a few places in Paris synonymous with the dark secret police, but its fame was of little comfort to Forest as he was escorted to a first-floor interrogation room.

Awaiting him in the room was a bespectacled, humble-looking man at a typewriter and an SS giant, watching over him like a chained bear. They were a bizarre match, but this was a trick the Gestapo had learned from the British and tried to use to their own ends. For a long time the modest fellow at the desk studied Forest, giving the agent a chance to study him back. As no names were offered, Forest began to think of him as ‘Professor’, as his appearance gave him the semblance of an intellectual. Slowly, Professor inserted paper and carbon into his typewriter and the interview commenced.

‘I am not like the others,’ he confided in very correct French. ‘I shall not hurt you. If you are sensible we shall be good friends. Come now, you will do yourself no good by obstinacy. You’ve had your flutter and you’ve lost. Now all you’ve got to do is answer my questions.’

The unnerving calmness of the man and the lack of the violence Forest had come to expect when he failed to answer questions disturbed him more than the torture Rudi had inflicted and with good reason. It was British intelligence that had first used the ‘subtle’ method of interrogation. They were helped by early German propaganda that was distributed to troops, which inflated ideas of extreme British torture. This was designed to make Germans so desperate not to be captured that they would die first. It backfired. German soldiers, sailors and airmen were taken and after they had stewed for a while over the idea of being horribly tortured they were brought before a man like the ‘Professor’ who would talk to them as a friend, a comrade, a fellow soldier and almost invariably they would be so relieved that they would break.

So now Forest sat before an interrogator using the ‘British method’ and asking quiet questions and typing up whatever was said without comment. He later wrote: ‘I found his calm way of examining me much more disturbing than the brutal methods of “Rudi”. His very calmness and detachment seemed much more ominous. He was more subtle, maybe less brutal, but quite possibly more cruel. It was like being in the presence of a big spider, and feeling a web being coiled around me.’
²

It was while he was calmly typing that the Professor dropped his first bombshell.

‘You know Cadillac?’ he enquired smoothly.

Forest froze for a second, having thought he knew all that the Germans wanted from him (arms dumps locations and contacts), he was shaken by this new attack. Cadillac, as he was well aware (and as the Professor seemed to be) was one of Bingen’s codenames. It shouldn’t have surprised him, knowing the insecure methods his French colleagues were using, that the Germans should be aware of such a significant figure by his alias, but it still unsettled Forest. He feigned ignorance. The Cadillac was a type of American car, wasn’t it?

The Professor, typing diligently, was unimpressed.

‘And Pic? Do you know him?’ he asked.

Pic was one of the less imaginative codenames for Pichard, who had also provided Forest with the services of Antonin. Knowing Antonin was in the clutches of the Germans and experiencing the same ordeal as he was, Forest was certain the young man had talked and the Professor was already well aware of the connection between himself and Pichard. Lying was pointless; instead Forest ventured to misdirect his captors.

‘Yes I know Pic.’

‘Describe him.’

Forest gave an imaginative and completely fictitious account of Pichard’s appearance, making every detail the complete opposite of what it really was. The Professor typed quickly.

‘It’s just as well you told us the truth,’ he said as his fingers moved. ‘You see, we arrested Pichard yesterday.’

Forest had to resist smiling; if that was the truth his interrogator would have been well aware that he had just lied to him. But it was a brief triumph as the Professor turned his attention back to the ‘Cadillac’ issue. Once again Forest denied any knowledge and the Professor issued a weary sigh. The German patience for the ‘British method’ was depressingly short and with a single telephone call the Professor abandoned Forest back into the world of torture.

A giant German thug appeared, punched Forest without a word and then dragged him from the room. The relatively peaceful reprieve was over, and the next torture he was to experience was one of the worst the Germans had in their repertoire.

He was escorted to a room with a hook on a chain hanging from the ceiling via a pulley. His handcuffs were fixed to the hook and then the giant hauled on the pulley and Forest’s arms were brutally pulled back and up as his feet left the floor. The handcuffs instantly bit into his wrists, but it was the agony in his shoulders that consumed his mind, and for the first time Forest let out an involuntary groan, much to his torturer’s amusement. Unconsciousness came blessedly quickly, but was not total, and throughout the next few hours he hovered between reality and oblivion, the pain overtaking him far greater than he had previously experienced.

It wasn’t until nightfall that he was released from the hook and collapsed onto the cell floor. As he awoke from his pain-induced daze, he could only think of the blistering agony in his shoulders, almost dislocated by the ordeal, and the burn in his wrists where the handcuffs had bitten into his arms and cut off his circulation. The long-term effects of the hanging torture could be horrendous: previous victims had lost the use of a hand or arm, sometimes both, and if nerve damage had occurred the mutilation would be permanent. Forest didn’t know it, but he would be one of the lucky ones who did not suffer such debilitating long-term effects, though it was little consolation at the time.

Forest was close to defeat. There was only so much a man’s body could endure and the fact that he had come this far was remarkable, but he was well aware that he was at his lowest point, and that he could not take much more. He wanted to talk and it was only because no one asked him a question at that moment that he remained silent.

Yet again his stubbornness had worn out his interrogators and a rest interval was necessary. Forest persuaded his guards to take him to the toilet, where he had to endure the humiliation of being watched while he struggled with his numb hands to perform his ablutions. Finally he was taken to another room and chained to a settee.