Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins & the Missing Agents of WWII (7 page)

Above all else she wished to confirm that Nora believed in her own ability to succeed. Confidence was the most important thing for any agent. However poor Nora's jumping or even her encoding, Vera knew that those agents who did well were those who knew before they set off that they could do the job. Her intention was to let Nora feel that she had an opportunity to back out gracefully should she so wish. Vera began by asking if she was happy in what she was doing. Nora looked startled and said: “Yes, of course.”

Vera then told her of the letter she had received and what was said in it. Nora was upset that anyone should think she was not fit for the job. “You know that if you have any doubts, it is not too late to turn back,” Vera said. “If you don't feel you're the type—if for any reason whatever you don't want to go—you only have to tell me now. I'll arrange everything so that you have no embarrassment. You will be transferred to another branch of the service with no adverse mark on your file. We have every respect for the man or woman who admits frankly to not feeling up to it.” She ended by adding: “For us there is only one crime: to go out there and let your comrades down.”

Nora insisted adamantly that she wanted to go and was competent for the work. Her only concern, she said, was her family, and Vera sensed immediately that this was, as she had suspected, where the problem lay.

Nora had found saying goodbye to her mother the most painful thing she had ever had to do, she said. As Vera had advised her, she had told her mother only half the truth: she had said she was going abroad, but to Africa, and she had found maintaining this deliberate deception cruel.

Vera asked if there was anything she could do to help with family matters. Nora said that, should she go missing, she would like Vera to avoid worrying her mother as far as possible. The normal procedure, as Nora knew, was that when an agent went to the field, Vera would send out periodic “good news” letters to the family, letting them know that the person concerned was well. If the agent went missing, the family would be told so. What Nora was suggesting was that bad news should be broken to her mother only if it was beyond any doubt that she was dead. Vera said she would agree to this arrangement if it was what Nora really wanted. With these assurances Nora seemed content and confident once more. And doubts in Vera's mind were also now settled.

Vera always accompanied the women agents to the departure airfields, if she possibly could. Those who were not dropped into France by parachute were flown there in Lysanders, which were short-winged monoplanes and light enough to land on very small fields. The planes were met by a “reception committee” made up of SOE agents on the ground and local French helpers. The reception committees were alerted to the imminent arrival of the plane by a BBC action message inserted as a message personnel; these were broadcast across France every evening, mostly for ordinary listeners wishing to contact friends or family separated by war. The messages broadcast for SOE, agreed in advance between HQ and the circuit organiser, usually by wireless signal, sounded like odd greetings or sometimes aphorisms—“Le hibou n'est pas un éléphant” (The owl is not an elephant)—but the reception committee on the ground would know that the message meant a particular operation would now take place. “Roméo embrasse Juliette,” for example, might mean a Lysander flight was coming in that night.

Nora was to fly by Lysander with the June moon to a field near Angers, from where she would make her way to Paris to link up with the
leader of a Prosper subcircuit named Emile Garry, or Cinema, an alias chosen because of his uncanny resemblance to the film star Gary Cooper.

Once on the ground, Nora would also make contact with the Prosper organiser, Francis Suttill, and take on her new persona as the children's nurse Jeanne-Marie Renier, using fake papers in that name. To her SOE colleagues, however, she would be known simply by her alias, which was to be Madeleine.

There were two Lysanders leaving that June night in 1943. Also departing would be two other women: Diana Rowden, who was going out as a courier to the Jura area in the east of France, and Cicely Lefort, who would be doing the same for the Jockey circuit in the southeast, as well as an agent named Charles Skepper, who was going to Marseille.

Two open-topped cabriolets took the group to the airfield at Tang-mere, near the Sussex coast east of Chichester. It was a gorgeous afternoon, and the hedgerows were smothered in dog roses. Nora hardly talked on the journey, and to Vera she appeared serene.

By the time they reached the cottage at Tangmere that was used as a base for the pilots—members of the so-called “Moon Squadron”—night had fallen, and inside the cottage supper was being prepared. Places were laid along two trestle tables in front of bare, whitewashed stone walls. Part of the cottage had once been a chapel, and random numbers around the walls were thought to have denoted the Stations of the Cross.

After the meal Squadron Leader Hugh Verity, the genial head of Lysander operations, led the group into another small living room, which had been converted into an operations room. On a table were a black telephone and a green scrambler, and on one wall was a large map of France bearing red marks, mostly over the coast, which Verity explained were high-risk areas for flak.

Vera and the three agents pulled up chairs as Verity started his briefing. The weather forecast, just telephoned in from the Met Office, was fair, with a slight risk of mist at ground level. Verity indicated the flight path on the map and showed the agents a photograph of the landing field, three kilometres north-northwest of Angers, that had been taken by an RAF photo reconnaissance unit. It showed a tiny open space surrounded by woods and a river looping towards the southern end. Verity
explained that, from their seats under the glass hood of the plane, they would be able to follow the loops of the Loire, which on a clear night like this would be lit up by the moon. They would be surprised how quickly they got used to the moonlight, he said, and it was quite adequate for reading a map—or even for finding the hip flask of whisky stowed in front of their seat. Verity always tried to relax the “Joes,” as the SOE passengers were called. Nobody was allowed to know their names. And as he talked, Vera constantly watched for signs of nerves in her agents, observing just the occasional shaking cigarette.

After the briefing Vera said a few words. Air Ops in London had called to say that the BBC message announcing their arrival had already gone out, which meant the reception committee would be in place. She then took each agent to one side, to go over cover stories one last time and to carry out her final checks of their clothes and equipment.

It was Vera's job to look meticulously through pockets, checking labels and laundry tags, examining every article of equipment and clothing for any telltale signs that these people had come from England. Then she completed their disguises with a packet of French cigarettes, a recent French newspaper, or perhaps photographs of a “relative” to go in a pocket or a bag. If any last-minute adjustment to clothing was needed, Vera could deftly stitch on a French manufacturer's label or a French-style button. As she knew, the tiniest trick could sometimes perfect a disguise.

Instructors had warned that Nora was so distinctive she could never be camouflaged, but on this operation Vera felt just as worried about Cicely Lefort's poor French accent and Diana Rowden's English looks. Born in England of Irish descent, forty-three-year-old Cicely had married a French doctor and lived for a number of years in France yet had never lost her English intonation. Diana was thoroughly bilingual, having grown up in the South of France, where her family had a villa and a yacht. But she was English and educated at an English girls' private school, and this showed—even down to the bow in her fair wavy hair.

The checks complete, Vera gave each agent a chance to see her alone, should they wish. She took Nora up to the bathroom, and as they spoke for a moment on the landing, Vera was relieved to find that she seemed quite relaxed, almost elated. She even commented on a silver bird pinned
to Vera's lapel. “You are so clever, Miss Atkins. You always make sure you wear something pretty.” Vera responded by unpinning the brooch and pressing it into Nora's hands.

Just before ten p.m. a large army Ford station wagon arrived at the cottage. The group were then driven out to the tarmac, where the moonlight was now bright enough to light up the Lysanders. The group got out and stood huddled together as Verity briefly explained takeoff procedures, describing how luggage was stowed under the hinged wooden seat.

Then Verity nodded to Vera, who moved forward, embracing Nora, Diana, and Cicely and shaking Skepper's hand, before taking several paces back.

The pilots signalled their passengers to step up to the ladder and climb into the plane. Nora, heaving both her ordinary suitcase and a much heavier one containing her wireless, was the last to board. She was so slight she could hardly get a foot on the ladder, and an airman moved forward to give her a leg up.

Within moments the engines had started and were left ticking over for several minutes as the pilots carried out their checks. The engines briefly opened up to full throttle and then returned to fine pitch. As the first “Lizzy” turned its nose towards the runway, Vera looked up towards the silhouetted heads in the passenger seats and waved goodbye.

Back at the cottage, Vera paused only to collect up the few oddments left behind by her agents—a novel, a coat, and a small vanity case—and then asked her driver to take her back to London. The moon was now high in the sky. June had been an excellent month for the Lysanders.

2.
Disaster

J
ust as Vera's colleagues knew nothing of her background, so nobody
I
I spoke to in my researches knew what her real role was within SOE. Penelope Torr, F Section's records officer, said she was “nothing special—the same as me.” But Pearl Witherington, perhaps SOE's most outstanding surviving woman agent, said: “For me Vera Atkins was SOE. She still is.”

Details of Vera's service would be in her personal file, I was told. SOE personal files were still secret. I would have to see the “SOE adviser,” who turned out to be an amiable man in a dark suit. His secretary, Valerie, led me down a deserted corridor in the bowels of the Old Admiralty Building to find him. It got darker, and there was quite a chill. She pointed to where Ian Fleming's office once was, and we talked about the suggestion that Vera was Miss Moneypenny, M's alluring secretary in the James Bond books, as mooted in an obituary. Valerie thought this most unlikely as Fleming worked in naval intelligence, although he might have caught a glimpse of Vera when she came to Room 055a, which was also down here somewhere, along a corridor that connected to the old War Office.

Up stone steps, Valerie stopped outside a door bearing a picture of Maurice Buckmaster in late middle age, looking kindly, almost ecclesiastical, and smoking a pipe. The door swung open onto a tiny room, and
amid a pile of files—stamped “secret” or “most secret”—sat the SOE adviser. “Closed until 2020,” it said on one file identified by a yellow sticker as “pending release.”

The intention after the war was that all these files would remain secret indefinitely. SOE was closed down in January 1946, its staff sworn to secrecy and its papers locked away. But versions of the SOE story emerged anyway, in particular about the many agents who lost their lives. Sinister conspiracy theories were elaborated about SOE's true wartime role, and debate began about whether the organisation had served any useful purpose at all. So persistent were the questions that an official with experience in secrets was appointed to “advise” the general public by reference to these files. But the questions kept on coming. So now, explained the SOE adviser, the files were finally being opened up, and people could read what happened for themselves.

However, he added, I would have to wait at least a year or two to see the files, as before their release they were being declassified. This meant that all sensitive material was being weeded out forever. Sensitive material meant anything the people “upstairs”—the MI6 “weeders”—felt should not be seen. I asked if Vera Atkins's file had already gone upstairs, and Valerie went to see.

In any event, the adviser told me, personal files often had nothing much between the parachute training and the casualty report. “Look at this,” he said, picking up a file on one of the agents, Vera Leigh, which held two or three scraps of paper. “Born, Leeds. Abandoned by mother,” said a note. She had once been put up for a George Cross, but this was not pursued, and there was no explanation why.

“The fact is that in those days if people died they scrubbed their files because they were of no further interest. You see, effectively whole periods of history were just junked. Only thirteen percent of the files remain.”

“Why thirteen percent?”

“I don't honestly know. It was a figure handed to me by my predecessor. ”

Immediately after the war many files were supposed to have been lost
in a fire, but of course, said the adviser, “those conspiracy theorists” did not believe in the fire. They thought the files had been deliberately destroyed as a cover-up.