The Secret Ministry of Ag. & Fish (18 page)

Late one Saturday evening in early February 1944, Buck told me that I was being transferred to Beaulieu, to Group B, where, after all the strenuous exercises they had endured,
future agents finally learned the art of spying.

‘Pack your bags,’ Buck smiled, ‘and catch the two-thirty train from Waterloo tomorrow afternoon, and get off at Brockenhurst.’

It was rather short notice, but one’s worldly possessions in wartime didn’t amount to much, so my packing didn’t take long.

‘A soldier in a car will be waiting for you outside the station,’ Buck ended.

We never left the train at Beaulieu Halt, a small station which would have been much nearer our destination, because, since it was so small, our movements would have been more conspicuous.

The Wrens, whose seductive hat I had once coveted, were stationed not far away, so naval uniforms were everywhere. But there were no Army units in the area. Beaulieu was a small, delightful
village where everyone knew everyone else, so a group of khaki-clad figures to-ing and fro-ing from the local station might have caused raised eyebrows, leading to awkward questions being
asked.

When I stepped out of the train at Brockenhurst station, where the promised car with a soldier at the wheel was waiting, I walked into a winter wonderland. It had been snowing for several days,
and after the slush and grime and the devastation and rubble of bomb-shattered London, I almost believed I had stepped into fairyland. It was like a scene from a glorious technicolor film. The snow
was crisp and clean, and as the car whisked me through the small country town and on to Lord Montagu’s estate, the trees were sparkling, tinkling with diamond pendants of frost.

The soldier decanted me in front of a small cottage deep in the forest. And it was there that I was to spend the rest of the war together with Jean, a South African, and Dorothy, a charming,
elegant, distinguished woman in her mid-thirties. We were looked after by a marvellous housekeeper who clucked over us like a mother hen and concocted wonderful meals out of absolutely nothing.

Jean was a FANY, the official title First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, an elite unit of upper-class girls who didn’t appear to have anything to do with nursing. The corps had been very active
during the First World War, when they drove ambulances and staff cars. They may have lived up to their title during the Boer War, when the unit was created, but during the Second World War nursing
was not part of their curriculum. They were almost exclusively attached to SOE as ‘drivers and secretaries’. But in reality, they performed many other duties. The FANYs wore khaki
uniforms with maroon buttons and insignia and, like Army officers, shining Sam Browne belts. Their uniforms, which were beautifully tailored, were made of barathea, like the officers’ dress
uniform, not the rough serge worn by recruits to the ATS and the WAAF.

Most of the future women agents, if civilians and not already members of one of the armed forces when recruited, were given honorary commissions in the FANYs. But, for reasons of which I am
still unaware, FANYs were not considered to be part of the Army. They were a unit on their own, with the result that many women agents who had been commissioned into the FANYs were ignored by the
War Office upon their return, receiving neither a pension nor benefits, in some cases resulting in great hardship.

Jean, the FANY with whom I was to share the former gardener’s cottage, was a little older than I. She had left South Africa, her home country, and followed her fiancé, who, when war
was declared, had immediately embarked for England to enlist. Unfortunately for Jean, by the time she had managed to secure a passage from Durban and disembarked at Southampton, her fiancé
had already left with his regiment for the Western Desert. So Jean was very much a ‘lady-in-waiting’.

Dorothy, the third member of our little group, was a very pleasant woman, very easy to live with, but she was also something of a mystery. However, we didn’t ask questions: it had become a
way of life. It was only after the war that I learned something of what Dorothy’s real role had been.

Although we three women at Group B were euphemistically known as ‘secretaries’ for want of a better word, most of the secretarial work was done by a splendid little cockney corporal
called Frank. Frank was a treasure. He had a wonderful sense of humour, was endlessly cheerful, endlessly helpful, was never flustered or impatient, did 99 per cent of the work with a huge smile
and got us out of all kinds of scrapes. He was engaged to a girl called Doris, who worked in Woolworth’s.

On the eve of VE Day, we had a splendid celebration party at the House in the Woods, where the officers lived, to which, there being no longer any need for security, the Montagu family and other
local guests were invited. I had danced till dawn and beyond and was staggering across to the office in the early morning, rather the worse for wear, when Frank suddenly popped up out of a
rhododendron bush. The rhododendrons on the estate were magnificent and all in full bloom at that time of year. ‘Since it’s victory day,’ he said, ‘may I kiss
you?’

‘Frank,’ I gasped, taken by surprise and not quite myself after my splendid night on the tiles, ‘what about Doris?’

He smiled and winked at me, then whispered. ‘I’ll tell her it’s my last sacrifice for the war effort.’ Not very flattering for me!

Soon after the files were opened in 2000, my husband heard this story and he wanted to know the outcome. Had I allowed him to kiss me or not? I told him it was one of the most closely guarded
secrets of the war, locked in a secure safe, which would not be opened for 100 years. He’s noted in his diary to ask me the question again in 2040!

There were twenty-five officer instructors on the estate. I think all but two were former agents who were ‘blown’, the code word for agents whose identity had become known to the
Germans and who had had to hurriedly return home. One of the two was handsome, charming, efficient – everybody liked him. He had in fact with his brilliant mind organized the training
programme for Beaulieu. He was recalled to HQ in London early on in the war and rapidly climbed the hierarchical ladder of ‘the Firm’, as the Intelligence Service was called, to become
head of the highly sensitive Russian Section at the Foreign Office. From there he kept Moscow informed of all Foreign Office secrets. His name was Kim Philby. In 1963 he had to hastily flee his
native land and seek asylum in Moscow when the British government discovered that he had been spying for the Russians since his days at Cambridge in 1933. He was, in fact, one of the
‘Cambridge five’.

The other officer, Jock, was a rather rough diamond, not at all like his colleagues, who were all very public-school and every evening changed into service dress for dinner. Jock was a tough
Glaswegian who knocked around in battle-dress and hob-nailed boots and never appeared to change into anything. He was not a permanent fixture at Group B, but turned up periodically. These officers
lived in the House in the Woods, about ten minutes’ walk away from our cottage. It was a lovely house which Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson had apparently used for secret weekend rendezvous
before his abdication.

Our HQ was a rather ugly stockbroker-Tudor house called the Rings. It was situated between the cottage and the House in the Woods, and here the commandant, Colonel Woolrych, a stern man who
didn’t suffer fools gladly, was in charge. We called him Woolybags behind his back. He was a regular army officer who had been in intelligence during the First World War – and probably
ever since. I was rather in awe of him in the beginning and kept out of his way as much as possible. But I was later to discover that beneath that austere exterior was buried a wealth of
compassion. An accomplished classical pianist, he used to play the beautiful grand piano in the drawing room at the House in the Woods for an hour every morning before breakfast.

We worked every day of the week, finishing at one o’clock on Sundays, and had one weekend off a month, when we usually raced up to the ‘bright lights’ of London. Often on a
Sunday afternoon Jock would bang on the cottage door and shout: ‘Anyone want to come for a walk?’ In winter, Sunday afternoon was the only time during the week when we could get a
breath of fresh air in the forest, since the days were short and by the time we finished working it was already dark. So, when he called, I often tripped off with him. The New Forest was beautiful
at any time of the year, and on the estate we had miles of it all to ourselves. He sometimes became a bit sentimental, but one only had to say, ‘Oh, stuff it, Jock,’ and he never
insisted. However, after the war I saw a film which had been made for the archives in 1943, and I’m sure I recognized Jock. He was a specialist in ‘silent killing’. They had
filmed a demonstration. It was both horrifying and fascinating at the same time. And I couldn’t help wondering whether, had I known about his ‘speciality’ at the time, I would
have tripped off so happily with him for a walk in the deserted forest. Or even whether, had I done so, I would have had the courage to resist his amorous advances!

When in training, the prospective agents were referred to as ‘students’: they became ‘bods’ once behind enemy lines, only reverting to human being status when they
returned. They lived in about a dozen houses dotted in the woods on the Beaulieu estate, out of sight of our HQ, which had all been requisitioned in 1940 for the exclusive use of SOE. There were
the French, Polish Norwegian, Czech, Belgian, Dutch, Danish, Greek, etc. houses. Those destined for work in France were often billeted at ‘Boarmans’, the ‘Orchard’ or the
‘Vineyard’. The women usually stayed at the ‘House on the Shore’.

At Beaulieu there were no ‘unisex’ houses. As at HQ, segregation was strictly enforced, not only between men and women, but also between the different countries. The maxim ‘the
less you know, the less you can reveal’ was rigidly adhered to, even at Group B. Students destined for different countries in Europe never mixed in houses or classes, or even came across one
another. That way, if captured and questioned, they could not disclose under torture that prospective agents from other countries, being prepared for infiltration into occupied Europe, had followed
the same training course. Such information would have alerted the Germans to the fact that training was not limited to one or two countries, and could have led to a total collapse of the entire
European network. As with the
réseaux,
and the different country sections at HQ, students from different nations were kept strictly apart.

The prospective agents arrived in batches, accompanied by a conducting officer who was not a member of the Beaulieu staff. For the women students, the conducting officer was almost invariably a
FANY officer. The conducting officer lived in the various houses with the students they had brought down and often attended the classes: but they were primarily there as counsellors, ‘mother
hens’ really, to look after the students and help them if they had problems. Those students who were to work in the field stayed at Group B for three weeks to a month. But there were other
people who came as ‘observers’ and often took part in exercises and attended classes: the ‘observer’ stayed a maximum of ten days.

Vera Atkins once visited Beaulieu as an observer and took part in a night exercise, though it is difficult to imagine the elegant Vera doing anything as undignified as prowling around the forest
in the early hours of the morning with a group of disguised Beaulieu officers. The officers at Beaulieu taught the finer points of being a secret agent. In a bar or restaurant, never sit with your
back to the door. When travelling on public transport, if possible, don’t take a seat, stand on the platform or near the exit. Never take a direct route to a rendezvous or hold large
meetings, and never, ever hold meetings with several agents gathered together. Punctuality was stressed, and agents told that if the person they were to meet did not show up on time, they were not
to wait, but to leave immediately.

There is an amusing story of a Beaulieu student who, during an exercise, was given a rendezvous with an unknown woman at three o’clock outside the post office in Bournemouth. But he
arrived early. Thinking that he recognized his ‘contact’, he approached an innocent young woman who was startled to be accosted. Apologizing profusely, he walked around the block and on
his return accosted another supposed contact’, but with the same result. Taking a third trip around the block, he went to speak to the person who finally turned out to be his real contact.
But, when he approached her, an elderly lady hit him viciously over the head with her umbrella and threatened to call the police, accusing him of trying to ‘molest nice young
ladies’!

The officers usually walked through the forest every morning to the different houses where the classes were held: every officer except Johnny, who needed a truck, because he carried with him an
enormous door on which was every conceivable lock one could imagine. He had to teach the students to pick these locks, because once in the field they wouldn’t have keys to all the places they
wanted to enter. Johnny had learned this technique from a burglar. He must have been a very experienced, highly qualified burglar, because the British government had released him from a long
sentence in a London prison on condition that he taught his tricks to SOE. There was also the safe-blower, Johnny Ramensky, who was reputed to have blown open both Goebbels’ and
Goering’s safes. How true that information is I don’t know. He was apparently part of SOE, though I never met him.

We certainly were an unusual group of people. It’s hardly surprising that MI6, the official intelligence agency, disapproved of us.

It was at Group B that the students were taught how to signal to a contact who was scheduled to call on them, or a radio operator approaching a house before transmitting, that it was dangerous
to enter, or even to loiter in front of the house or flat. This was done by arranging in advance to have the curtains or shutters wide open or half closed: closed could mean danger, don’t
approach; open, it’s safe for the moment, come in. A flowerpot or an ornament placed in the middle of the window could mean all clear, but at the side, danger. One agent organized a lookout
living at the entrance to her courtyard to loudly play a series of chords from an arranged symphony to warn her that the Gestapo or the police had entered the building. These tactics were also used
when meeting a contact. If an agent had a newspaper rolled under his arm, don’t recognize him, keep walking. If the newspaper was folded and put in a jacket or coat pocket, coast clear. It
was in the agent’s interest to remember to get the signals right!