大象传媒

Two Jewish Heroines of the SOE Part 2
By Martin Sugarman

EXIT TO ENGLAND

Denise and Dupont finally left Agen on 29 April via Toulouse, Montrejeau (where they spent the night) and then travelled for three hours by train seventeen kilometres to Cirs De Luchon, on the first stage of the journey to get to Britain. Starr had promised her a route out of the country of only three kilometres on flat ground. At Cirs, she told the chef de gare she had urgent papers to get through to Britain. He said she was mad and there were six hundred yards and several patrols to pass before reaching the hotel where she could get 'help'. But they went on and met no Germans; the proprietor of the Hotel des Trois Ormeaux found her a room for the day until he arranged two 'passeurs' for the price of five thousand francs (24) to get her over the Pyrenees. She left at half an hour after midnight, and after fifteen hours hiking across the Pyrenees at 3,300 metres, with bare legs and a half length coat (at one point her guides stopped and made her a fire to warm by) they reached Bausen at 3pm on a Saturday. Here she had to wait three days for the bus, but was glad to be able to rest. The Spanish police, meanwhile, confiscated all her papers including Colonel Starr's report. She then proceeded via Veille to Lerida, arriving on 5 May, where she met the British Consul from Barcelona and had dinner with him. He gave her documents to proceed to Madrid (8 May ) where she stayed for five days and in her hotel met four Allied escaped airmen (two American and two British) . From Madrid Denise continued to Gibraltar (Saturday 15 May) for three days, then Lisbon and then ultimately to London , arriving on 21 May 1943, after a twenty-two-day journey.

There she gave her report verbally (25) to SOE underlining the lack of arms, money, w/t's and general stores such as clothes and food of which Starr was especially short. She also warned that Starr asked that the SOE should be careful to whom they supplied arms as some Resistance groups were Left wing and may attempt to take power after the Nazis were ejected.

Denise's de-briefers (26) commented afterwards that she was very anxious to return to Lyons to work, but SOE warned her that she was almost certainly by now known to the Gestapo. She disagreed and said that if it was so, then Starr also needed to be brought out as they were often seen together. She added that as she had been at the same address for months, the Gestapo would have picked her up by now. She also told her de-briefers that she had managed to meet her mother for a meal three months ago, and that she had alternative cartes d'identite in the names of Katrine Bernard and Chantal Baron.

TRAINING

Denise now proceeded to formal training for ten months as a w/o and parachutist with SOE in Britain, and was enlisted as a F.A.N.Y Ensign.

According to B E Escott (27), F Section training began at Wanborough Manor near Guildford for those who had passed the first, stiff interviews in London. From here they continued to Arisaig House in Inverness-shire for training on arms and explosives. Those requiring very specialist instruction (industrial sabotage, wireless, and so on), continued to specified specialist centres round the country. Then came parachute training at Ringway, near Manchester, whilst living at Tatton Park, and finally security training (use of safe houses, letter boxes and so on) at Beaulieu in Hampshire. For SOE in general, however, there were as many as fifty training schools up and down the country, mostly in isolated country houses.(28).

At her initial training school, the following comments (29) were written about Denise's progress; 'An experienced woman with knowledge of the world. She has courage and determination and a thorough understanding and hatred of the Boche. Has complete self-assurance and is capable of handling most situations. Has a feeling of physical inferiority which limits her athletic activities. Keen to get back into the field and under a good male organiser would make a very good W/T operator or courier. Is not physically suited to the training of Group A (ie para-military training)'.

Vera Atkins recalls one of Denise's final pre-mission briefings at a commonly frequented secret location used on such occasions, in an SOE flat at 6, Orchard Court, Portman Square (30) as well as the final kitting-out in authentic tailor made French clothes (31). Denise also met Leo Marks, MBE (the Jewish Chief Cryptographer - Chef de Codage - at SOE throughout most of the War) in February 1944, for a code briefing and was given her "code poem" by him which he had composed (31a).

RETURN TO FRANCE

Denise returned to work in France on the night of 2-3 March 1944 with Captain Robert Benoist (code name 'Lionel'), landed by an RAF Westland Lysander at Soucelles, ten kilometres south of Vatun and two-and-a-half west of Villeneuve, near Nantes. The secret drop was code-named 'Laburnum' (32). Her circuit (or Reseaux) , called 'Clergyman', was a large one consisting of two thousand armed members of the F.F.I (Forces Francaises de L'Interieur) which had to be re-established after its collapse the year before. One source (33) alleges that the plane was met by Resistance leader and former pilot Clement Remy, code name 'Marc'. Denise had returned to France now running the double risk of being both an official SOE agent AND Jewish (34).

Her orders were to act as courier, encoder and w/o and assist in the attack on high pylons over the River Loire at Ile Heron and cut railway and telephone lines converging on Nantes, before D Day, to disrupt German communications . Benoist's orders were that Denise 'will be under your command but it must be understood that she is the ultimate judge in all questions regarding the technicalities and w/t and w/t security. She will encode the messages herself........and it is of the utmost importance that her time on the air should be reduced to the minimum' (35). She contacted London within two weeks, on 15 March (36) and worked for three months sending thirty-one messages and receiving fifty-two (37).

Benoist, a wealthy racing driver, was sadly captured on 18 June 1944 in Paris visiting his dying mother and hung later at Buchenwald death camp. Denise was captured the day after, following a Gestapo raid on a chateau belonging to the Benoist family (Villa Cecile ) in Rambouillet at Sermaise (38) west of Paris on 19 June 1944, where she was based,with agent Jean-Paul Wimmelle (who managed to escape). Vera Atkins (39) said that it was clear there had been a betrayal - and they knew immediately she was captured by a message from their agents - but it would never be known now who was involved unless it was possible to scour the German documents on the issue. Nazi spies and sympathisers were rife in France at the time and so such incidents were commonplace. Only the German archives might reveal how the Gestapo knew of the presence of the SOE agents at the chateau, and so who the informers were, but then SOE had neither the ability or time to get to the truth whilst the war had to be won. After the German surrender, SOE was wound up very quickly (1 January 1946) and as it was felt that no good could come of finding the traitors - and what with the turmoil in post war Europe - matters like these were often left uninvestigated and unsolved.

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