Churchill's White Rabbit (25 page)

The long night was almost unbearable. Aside from a glass of water, his guards provided him with no sustenance and any time he dozed off a menacing NCO shook him awake. Sleep-deprivation was yet another torture and his guards knew it, though it was as much a hardship for them as for Forest, and eventually they submitted to sleep themselves, giving their prisoner a chance of forty winks. But sleep was far from easy when surrounded by the horrors of the Gestapo. Forest was cold, hungry and in bitter pain. He wished for Barbara and he wished for freedom, even if it came after the release of death. He knew he was virtually broken, and there was no point pretending to himself that he could endure any more suffering. As the darkness slowly ebbed into dawn he felt his dread of the next day almost engulfing him as his tormented imagination summoned nightmarish images of what the Germans might do to him next. There was only one solution.

Morning found Forest in another office, battered, bruised, bloodied and facing another interrogator. This one did not have the charm of the Professor and the usual round of assault and questions began. He wanted to know about Cadillac and revealed that he knew Cadillac was really Bingen. Realising there was no point maintaining a pretence that was so obvious Forest finally admitted he knew Bingen but that he did not know of his codename Cadillac. The German was surprised, but they quickly moved on to how to find Bingen. Again Forest denied that he knew. He was amazed that despite thinking he was about ready to give in, his stubbornness still wouldn’t let him talk. He lied and denied, but his usually quick mind was muddled and he stumbled on his own half-truths and gave the interrogator too many opportunities. Even so he managed to keep from revealing anything important.

He was always aware that time was running out for him; he was finding it harder to play dumb and was giving too much ground. Forest’s eyes slipped longingly to the window and, like Brossolette before him, he contemplated leaping out. They were on the fourth floor, so a fall might not kill him, but he would be badly injured and would have to stay in hospital for some time. Hopefully, by the time he was sufficiently recovered his comrades in the resistance would have filled the gap he had left and the Germans would have no further use for him.

It took all his remaining strength to throw himself from the chair and headlong into the window. Somehow he managed to miss the table in his dive and smashed the bottom pane of glass with his head. His shoulder slipped through the opening but his momentum had been curtailed and a pair of muscular hands grabbed his ankles and pulled him back. His interrogator only seemed amused by Forest’s efforts and he was secured to the chair by chains.

‘You’re scared,’ mocked the interrogator. ‘So now you will talk.’

But Forest didn’t, he didn’t even dare open his mouth, because he knew if he did the words that would stumble out would be pleas for mercy and he desperately didn’t want to beg from a German. The interrogation ended abruptly and Forest was driven back to the site of his first torments. Rudi was waiting for him.

‘Now you are going to talk. You’re scared – it’s now or never.’ He grinned, but Forest resolutely remained dumb.

Infuriated, Rudi sent for five Gestapo thugs. They hauled Forest onto the table, chaining his ankles apart and to the table legs, then they beat him with rubber coshes, concentrating on his exposed genitalia, though not ignoring his head and body. The new pain was horrendous and Forest screamed but to no avail, as there was no mercy in the minds of his tormentors. His only relief was when unconsciousness overtook him.

Several hours later he awoke in another unfamiliar cell. His body was racked with pain and he retched drily, only causing more stabbing agony to shoot through his system. Tears finally came to Forest’s eyes and he sobbed miserably. His mind was no longer sharp or even coherent – that was a penalty of torture, victims became muddled and confused. For Forest everything was a jumble in his head, he could no longer think clearly or understand what was happening. The next few hours fell into a perpetual fog in his memory and with only snatched moments of lucid thought.

One of these moments involved the interrogator Ernst Misselwitz,
³
the man who had been with Brossolette and Bollaert on their journey from Rennes to Paris. The new Ernst was more inclined to cunning than cruelty and opened his interrogation by pointing out that he already knew where Forest lived. Forest disbelieved him.

‘I’ll prove it. Just circle the district of Paris you live in on this map and I will point out your address.’

Forest grudgingly outlined a circle on the map with his finger that took in a quarter of Paris. Ernst laughed.

‘You live at 11 rue Claude Chahu, and you aren’t the only one.’

Forest was stunned; the address was that of Suni Sandoe’s flat. Tucked beneath the floorboards of that apartment were the identity discs of ‘Kenneth Dodkin’, and if these were found they would only implicate him further as an enemy agent.

‘So you see I know a lot about you. If you tell me the names of those who sheltered you I promise no harm will befall you on my word of honour as a German officer.’ Ernst spoke casually, ‘Perhaps you don’t believe me. There’s an English prisoner here who’ll tell you that we keep our word.’

Marched into the room was fellow SOE man Captain John Starr. Starr has come to be remembered as a controversial figure. After his arrest in 1943 he was a permanent resident of 84 avenue Foch, where he was regularly wheeled out to talk to new prisoners and convince them to talk. It was never obvious which side Starr favoured, and, heavily inclined towards his own self-preservation, he came dangerously close to collaborating.
⁴
But whatever later generations chose to believe about Starr, Forest viewed him as an ally, and while he spoke of how the Germans were pretty good to him, he interspersed his words with meaningful glances that the Nazi words of honour were not to be trusted.

How much of this was a genuine attempt by Starr, or Forest’s addled mind seeing what it wanted to see has to be left to personal judgement.

Events now began to slip into a blur. Forest still refused to talk, though by now this was in part due to the deteriorating mental state that left him unable to formulate answers. He didn’t recall being dragged from Ernst’s presence, though he must have been because suddenly Rudi was slapping him. Then there was another sallow-faced interrogator who wanted to know about resistance sabotage plans. Once again silence was followed by a trip to the bathroom, where Forest only had vague impressions of being stripped and then immersed in the freezing water. The horror of semi-drowning was only made worse by his dazed and dream-like state.

Forest’s resolve was dying; every time he was left alone to contemplate his situation he was convinced he would talk, yet every time he sat before an interrogator again his pride and stubbornness kicked in and he would remain silent despite the abuse inflicted on him. He just wondered how much longer it would be before the Gestapo got tired of him and shot him. It was the only thing he had to look forward to.

The next interrogation was conducted by a duo: a middle-aged man and a younger officer wearing glasses. It was back to sympathy and kindness to induce him to speak.

‘They’ve been rather unkind to you, I see. It’s unfortunate, but that’s war for you. I expect you’re rather hungry.’

The younger interrogator undid his cuffs, brought his hands forward and re-secured them, though looser so he might eat.

A tray was brought to him with sausage sandwiches and a jug of hot soup. Forest’s first thought though, was to look at his arms. They were mangled-looking things. His wrists were slashed open from the edges of the cuffs, which were red with blood. The wounds were tinged purple and his left arm was swollen up to the elbow. Seeing his injuries made him realise how bad a state he was in, but he had to shove that aside and eat while the opportunity was before him.

The new interrogators had compiled a chart of the structure of the BCRA organisation from previous interrogations and now proudly showed this to Forest. Forest was alert enough to be amused that so much of the information was wrong and clearly past victims had talked quite imaginatively. Pushed to cooperate he saw no harm in adding his own inventions to the little chart and offered the names of mythical officers and their fantastical duties.

His enjoyment was short lived. Marched downstairs, he was horrified to see Suni Sandoe. She had failed to flee her safe house quickly enough and had been caught. They briefly passed each other and Forest hissed that she should say she knew nothing of his activities, particularly of any hidden firearms, then he was swept away.

More horror awaited him later that day when he was led into a room containing some of his closest associates hand-cuffed and showing obvious signs of torture. There were members of Pichard’s secretariat (though luckily Pichard himself had been out of town at the time of the arrests). One woman’s hair was dripping wet and sticking to her face in bedraggled strands: it appeared she had already discovered the bath torture. The men in the room were bloodied and bruised, showing they had been more traditionally treated.

The prisoners were all sitting on chairs arranged back to back to prevent subtle communications. Forest was sat behind Commandant Noel Palaud, Artilleur, one of the most important figures of the resistance. Forest was desperate to talk to him and let him know that he had not named any resistance members, but when he turned his head he was unceremoniously slapped by a guard. For a time conversation seemed impossible, but Forest’s brain had been revitalised by the shock of seeing so many resistance members captured and he suddenly had an idea.

Quietly he began humming a popular French tune, ‘
Tout va tr
è
s bien, Madame la Marquise’
. When the guards showed no interest he started to sing the words and then carefully substitute the real lyrics with a message for his friends.

‘I do not know Palaud. He does not know me. Captured at metro station.’

Then he sank back into humming and waited. After a pause Palaud joined in the song and added his own messages. Slowly, over the next 2 hours they exchanged information right under the guards’ noses.

Their communication was stopped abruptly when the door burst open and the guards herded the unfortunates out into a central courtyard where a van was waiting. Rudi and the original Ernst had reappeared to check prisoners off a list as they were shoved into the vehicle. The van was divided into airless cubicles either side of a central corridor; at the end of the corridor an armed guard watched the prisoners get on and shoved them into their ‘cells’. Forest found himself in the cubicle nearest the guard. There was no window and once the door was shut and locked the only light and air came through the slatted floor and a small gap under the door through which Forest could see the polished boots of his guard. There was no place to sit, so Forest stood. His only consolation was that the slats in the floor at least provided him with glimpses of his beloved Paris and as the van drove off he was able to imagine the roads they were heading down and the route they were taking. Before long he was certain of where they were going. He was off to Fresnes.

Notes

1
.  The Gestapo had infiltrated a number of resistance networks as well as capturing wireless operators and their machines and they used these to send false messages back to London. Security measures by SOE were supposedly in place to counteract this, but they were commonly ignored or missed. It is still unclear how many wirelesses were Gestapo controlled, though some were identified and used for London’s own counter-counter-intelligence operations.

2
.  Seaman,
Op cit
.

3
.  Not the same Ernst as the one referred to earlier.

4
.  Post-war, Starr found himself being investigated by the French for collusion with the enemy, but the case came to nothing.

– 14 –

The Traitor at Fresnes

FRESNES WAS BUILT BETWEEN 1895 and 1898, the largest prison in France at that time,
¹
and with the capacity to hold 1,200 male prisoners, with a smaller number of cells for women. Upon the occupation of Paris the Germans took control of Fresnes and its name quickly became synonymous with torture and horrific conditions. Intended to house British SOE agents and resistance members, it sometimes also accommodated captured Allied airmen, but these prisoners were generally spared the full horrors meted out to the rest by sadistic guards.

Whether SOE or resistance, captives at Fresnes knew that it was likely to be their last stop. Berty Albrecht, co-founder of the Combat network, died at Fresnes, as did Suzanne Spaak, who worked tirelessly for the resistance and to save Jewish children from the concentration camps. She, like so many, was shot as the Allies retook Paris.

For others, Fresnes was a mere stopping point before they were sent on to a concentration camp. For Odette Sansom, an SOE agent who operated with Peter Churchill, this meant eventual transfer to Ravensbruck women’s concentration camp after torture at Fresnes. For many more Buchenwald concentration camp was their final destination, but either way it was very clear that Fresnes was the end of the line before the Germans got tired of you. As Forest realised his destination he also knew that his chances of escape or even just of survival were severely reduced.