Churchill's White Rabbit (36 page)

15. Forest’s first attempt at parachuting scared the life out of him; it was a dangerous business and many SOE agents broke bones with bad landings.

16. France was quickly crippled by the Nazis and when Forest returned to it in 1943 his beloved country was decimated. The destruction only made him more determined to fight back.

17. Wireless sets were a constant nightmare. Difficult to hide and awkward to repair, they were the bane of SOE. Forest had to use them to send back messages, but he knew the risk involved. This example is an early Marconi set.

18. Wireless-detection vans had been first designed to track pirate radios, as this British picture demonstrates. The Germans used them to track SOE agents reporting in and, over the course of the war, developed them to the point that the detection unit could be carried by a single man.

19. Barns and outbuildings proved havens for resistance men and women. Forest spent a lot of his time in rural France in such places. Unfortunately, many were raided by the Germans and their occupants murdered.

20. Jean Moulin with his good looks and charm united the early resistance, though he fell out of favour with Forest and Brossolette. When he was arrested and accidentally killed by the Gestapo, the resistance came close to falling apart and it was agreed that never again would it be united under one figurehead.

21. On his train journey from Lyons, Forest distracted the fearsome Klaus Barbie by noting the train wreckage out the windows. Teams of Germans and French civilians scrounged the debris for salvage.

22. Forest had the sense to know not all Germans were evil and when he met ordinary individuals he felt friendly towards them. He gave one German orderly some chocolate to take home to his children.

23. One of the worst tragedies for Forest was the unknown musician who was arrested by the Gestapo because his telephone number appeared on a bank note in Forest’s wallet. The man was innocent, but probably perished in Gestapo hands.

24. Passy Métro station, Paris. The site of Forest’s disastrous arrest. (Copyright Mbzt/Wikimedia Commons)

25. Plaque commemorating the heroic Pierre Brossolette; he is still well remembered in French history and has a road named after him. (Copyright Mu/Wikimedia Commons)

26. Buchenwald inmates – Forest’s first sight of the people who he would be living with was an awful shock; they were little more than skeletons with skin. These individuals are slave labourers of multi-nationality. (By Permission of The National Archives)