CHAPTER 23
The Ultimate Secret Agent
When Jacqueline retired and returned to London in 1978 she decided to buy a flat and eventually found one that she liked at 14 Chesham Place, Belgravia. It was only 5 or 6 miles from where Didi was living and they were able to enjoy time together again in London, as they had when they first came to England in 1942. But despite the many things they had both done since those days, the SOE just wouldn’t go away.
Shortly after her arrival in New York as a new liaison officer, Jacqueline had been the subject of an article written by journalist and war correspondent Charles Lanius that was published in Woman’s Day magazine in January 1947. It described the life she had led in occupied France as an agent of the SOE and told how she would be helping the nascent United Nations Organization to ensure that wars would not happen again. Shortly before she left New York to retire to England she was asked to appear in a show on the listener-funded radio station Pacifica Radio, and again was asked about her life as an agent.
The quest for more information about the SOE and what had happened during the Second World War did not diminish, and two years after she returned to England Jacqueline was invited to help make a documentary about the work of the SOE in France. She was reunited with Harry Rée, with whom she had starred in the film Now It Can Be Told, and admitted that many of the scenes in that film had been overdramatized. She also thought that most of the television programs about the organization were inaccurate and cited A Man Called Intrepid as being one of the worst, saying that “not one of those agents would have lasted a day in occupied France.” Despite having spent almost half her entire life—32 years in fact—working for the United Nations, it was the 15 months she spent as an agent in France that were to be her lasting legacy.
Her well-earned retirement was tragically short. She had only been back in England for four years when she became ill and was diagnosed with cancer. Didi moved to her flat to care for her in the final few months of her life, and on 15 August 1982 Jacqueline died, aged 66 years. Didi, who had suffered so much and for whom Jacqueline had been a lifeline, was devastated.
Messages of condolence for Didi, along with stories of her sister’s kindness, her humor and her friendship, poured in from Jacqueline’s friends and colleagues from across the world. At her funeral, Harry Rée delivered a eulogy, in which he said:
Jacqueline radiated friendship and at the same time attracted friendship. And while her magnetism, her generosity and her extrovert energy were surely felt deeply by all who came into contact with her, she remained always composed—in control, keeping those of us who could claim friendship with her, not so much at a respectful distance, as at a respectful closeness; she shunned effusion at any time. This makes it difficult to speak of her now since she certainly wouldn’t want an emotional eulogy from me or any of us.
You can hear her, can’t you? “Dis, Henri—pas de comédie, pas de tragédie, non plus.” And she’d pout a little, then smile and toss her head back and utter her infectious characteristic laugh, and then look at you, waiting for you to say something… so—no comedy, no tragedy.
… It was a great joy to have her back in England when she retired—she really enjoyed these last few short years, and when a year ago her suffering started, increasingly disagreeable pain in her teeth and lower jaw, she bore it so lightly; and as it got worse—with typical stoicism. She was of course lucky, in the last month or so, when things got really bad, to have her sister, whom we know as Didi, to look after her day and night. We, her friends, can also count ourselves fortunate that Didi was there, and [are] grateful to her for all she did for Jacqueline during those last sad weeks.
… Jacqueline [has] a very special and permanent place in our hearts, and memories, and we can continue to be grateful to her because even now she exerts her influence. We are, and will be, better people for having known and loved her.1
She was also greatly missed by her friends and former colleagues in America. A service of remembrance was held for her on 19 October 1982 in New York, at the Catholic Church attached to the United Nations, which she used to attend. Didi did not attend that service but received letters from many of her sister’s friends there telling her about it, and about how much they loved and missed Jacqueline.
During the service Jacqueline’s boss, the Chief of Protocol, Sinan Korle, gave a moving tribute to her. He, like Harry Rée, managed to highlight many of the lesser-known facets of Jacqueline’s character:
It is very hard for me to use the past tense while speaking about Jacqueline. I have known her for many years but the last 14 years she was part of my daily life, at least from nine to five every day. I used to work with her, chat with her, argue with her and joke with her.
… She was interested in everything which was beautiful, good and inspiring… to Jacqueline her work was her sublime responsibility, she would give herself wholly to it. She had joined the UN on the eve of its creation and was the pillar of the Office of Protocol.
She was a true friend; a friend you could depend on, a friend you could confide in. She would always try to help you and be useful. In short, to know Jacqueline was to love her.
… Jacqueline could communicate with anybody, even if there was a language barrier. A few years ago when she was visiting us in Turkey during her summer vacation, she not only made friends with all members of my family and friends she met there, but conquered the heart of my sister’s old maid. Jacqueline did not speak Turkish and the maid could not understand English yet they could understand each other. The day Jacqueline was leaving to return to New York the maid said: “If angels really exist this lady must be one of them.”
Jacqueline was at ease with everybody; diplomats used to invite her to official functions. She would also be the guest in their private parties. Many dignitaries used to come and visit her in her small office at the UN. She was a friend and the confidante of old and young, rich and poor. The Italian grocer next to her building used to call her Signorita Nearney; for the drug store man she was Miss United Nations. In short she was loved and respected by everybody. We have lost a friend who has lived her life the way she wanted and quietly faded away.
Thank you Jacqueline for what you have been.
After Jacqueline’s death Didi discovered that her sister had left her the flat in Belgravia. After all the rooms, bedsits and studio apartments that Didi had lived in since she had returned from Germany Jacqueline wanted her to have her own “good place to live.” The flat was her final gift to her much-loved sister.
Didi remained on the night shift at Branch Hill care home for the rest of her working life, traveling the five miles from her new flat in Belgravia to her work by public transport each evening. She retired in 1986 and, at her farewell party, was presented with a diploma, detailing her many years of service at the home, by the mayor of the Borough of Camden.
Although she had enjoyed her time looking after the elderly residents in Branch Hill, she sometimes thought back to the days she had spent as an agent in Paris. It had been a dangerous but exhilarating time for her and, despite what had happened to her after her arrest, she still missed it sometimes and said that everything that followed had been very tame by comparison.
With the passing of time the troubles that life had dealt her no longer had the power to defeat her and she accepted her lot, not as before with a feeling of depression that she had found hard to shake off but with a hope for what the next part of her life might bring. But despite her newfound strength and stability, she couldn’t help looking back over her life and wondering what might have been.
Being a part of the SOE had changed the lives of Didi and Jacqueline forever. While women were cautioned to tread carefully when broaching the subject of what their menfolk had been through during the war, there was little thought for what the women who had served in the military or other related services might have seen or done, largely because women were never frontline military troops; although their input in the conflict was invaluable, freeing as it did the men for the actual fighting, there were relatively few who saw the real horror of war at first hand during their wartime careers. The female SOE agents were different. Almost without exception they had seen that horror and, having done so, would never be the same again.
For Didi and Jacqueline the war had intervened at a time when, like many girls of their age, they would have been looking forward to marriage and a family of their own. Didi was fond of children and it is likely that if she had remained at home, rather than going to war, she would have settled down to marriage and motherhood. But after the mental problems that her protracted exposure to Nazi atrocities had induced, that way of life eluded her; by the time she had recovered, her chance of marriage and children had disappeared.
While Didi lost her exuberant, carefree attitude and shrank into her own isolated world, Jacqueline gained from her war service a confidence she had lacked at the start of the war. Her success as a courier and the trust that Maurice Southgate and the other members of the Stationer circuit had placed in her had given her a belief in her own ability. With this, she was able to continue to make her life one of service through her work at the United Nations, which she truly believed would help to bring people of different cultures and beliefs together so that a lasting peace could be achieved.
Didi did not regret joining in the fight for freedom against Nazi oppression, and she knew that her sister was glad to have served as well, but she also knew that by doing so, both she and Jacqueline had sacrificed so much.
Didi felt the loss of her sister keenly. Having looked forward for so many years to the time when they could be together again, it was a cruel twist of fate that parted them so soon after Jacqueline’s return to England. Didi had looked up to her kind, beautiful and exceptional sister for as long as she could remember, and had tried to be like her. Her love and admiration for her had never changed, and when she found that Jacqueline had left her the flat in Belgravia, she realized that it was so much more than a place in which she could live; it was the final expression of the care and consideration that Jacqueline had always shown her throughout her life. Like Jacqueline’s many friends, Didi also felt that she had become a better person for having known her and, although she was no longer with her in this life, the influence of her very special sister would remain with Didi to the end of her days.
With the death of her beloved sister and her own retirement, Didi’s life changed yet again. But in her remaining years Didi was not the recluse she was portrayed as being in the articles written at the time of her death in 2010. She simply did not court publicity, and saw no need to disclose the minutiae of her life to all and sundry.
The flat she had inherited in Belgravia was much bigger than her previous rented accommodation, and she was able to hold several dinner parties there for friends she and Jacqueline had known from the SOE, and for her own friends whom she had met after starting work at the Royal Free Hospital. Jenny, who had secured the job for her at the hospital, remembers that Didi engaged someone to cook for her at these dinner parties, which she thought was a good thing, as although Didi could cook, she was rather heavy-handed with the garlic. Letters from the friends who attended Didi’s parties speak of a generous hostess, good food and wine, and very enjoyable evenings.
On Jacqueline’s death, Didi began corresponding with several of her sister’s friends, and one of the SOE women who sometimes visited Didi when she was in England was Jacqueline’s good friend Lise de Baissac. Their friendship seems to have begun in earnest after Jacqueline’s death, and among the papers found in Didi’s flat in 2010 were many of the letters that Lise sent to her from her home in Marseilles, where she lived with her husband, Gustave Villameur, whom she had married in 1950. Lise died on 28 March 2004, just six weeks short of her 99th birthday.2
Didi also kept letters from Vera Atkins, Maurice Buckmaster, Brian Stonehouse and Pearl Cornioley. But among her most prized letters were some from just after the war: two from Jean Savy, the chief of the Wizard circuit to which she had belonged when she first went to France as an agent; one or two from Louise, her first contact in France; and one from Louise’s mother. These also give an interesting insight into how affectionately Didi was regarded by the people with whom she worked.
Although Savy had been back in England when Didi was arrested and had, by then, been transferred to another circuit, when he returned to France he made extensive inquiries about what had happened to her. This was a dangerous thing for him to do, for had the Germans got wind of his interest in Didi he might also have been arrested. Although very few details were available, he passed what he knew to London so that her family could be informed. In December 1946 he wrote to her on his own headed notepaper but signed himself with his code name, Regis. In his brief letter he said:
My dear Eileen,
I’m sorry we missed each other. I was in Park Lane from five to six and then at the club. On my next trip to London I’ll telephone you again and we’ll go to the club together. Maybe in the interim, if you came to Paris before I return to London, our friend would be very happy to see you.
See you soon dear Eileen and as always, warmest wishes to you.
Regis
The club to which Savy referred was the Special Forces Club, which was founded in 1945 on the initiative of the Chief of the SOE, Major-General Sir Colin Gubbins, KCMG, DSO, MC. Unlike most of the other London clubs, whose membership was only open to men, the Special Forces Club was open to both men and women on equal terms and took members from other Resistance organizations with whom the SOE had worked, and also from the SAS, SBS and the FANY. Didi eventually became a club member herself and remained one for many years. The cryptic reference to “our friend” remains a mystery, although Savy might have been referring to René Dumont-Guillemet, the chief of the Spiritualist circuit, for whom Didi had worked after Savy went back to London, and who was known to them both. Savy followed up his first letter with another short note, on New Year’s Day 1947, in which he expressed his “most sincere and cordial wishes for 1947” and added: “I hope you have started the New Year well and that it will allow me the pleasure of seeing you soon.”
One of the messages from Louise was written, in July 1951, on a postcard showing the Pont Neuf. She wrote:
I’m sending you this card to show you that I never cross the Pont Neuf without thinking of how I met you there for the first time and, as in this picture, it was snowing as we met each other in front of the statue of Henri IV. No doubt you remember all that—you like France like a second home…
… I hope you still have good news of Jacqueline. We thought of her when the ONU was signed again in Paris. It would make us really happy to see you both… Mum, my sister and I give you a hug and await a letter from you.
Louise
Louise’s mother was also clearly very fond of Didi. In May 1952 she sent an affectionate letter to her, which began:
Dear Eileen,
But you will always be my very lovely Marie…
From my daughters who are away from Paris and from me, our thanks for your lovely present. How kind to associate us, through this, with the good times you’ll have, knowing from the press the magnificence one is preparing for the festival of the coronation.
… Alas, I cannot write to them [her daughters], not knowing how to get in touch and I’ll have to wait until their return, which I think will be the end of June, to tell them about things and give them your present. Please be sure that once Louise is here it will give her great pleasure to write to you and thank you for your kindness.
I’ll go now dear…, assuring you of my affectionate friendship.
Madame C. Gredt
6 place Saint Michel
Paris IV
The reference to Marie at the start of the letter indicates that Madame Gredt must have known Didi by the “documentary name” on her file, Marie Louise Tournier. The letter itself is plainly not just a polite message of thanks for a gift; it shows real affection which, given the short time that Didi was allowed to visit the household in the Place Saint-Michel, reveals the immediate, favorable impression that she must have made on the family.
Didi sometimes received letters asking for information about the war from people writing books or making television programs. At times she agreed to speak about what she had been through; more often she refused to talk about it at all. Occasionally she would ask the advice of Vera Atkins or Maurice Buckmaster. Whether or not she was aware of Buckmaster’s disparaging remarks about her during the war is not clear. He certainly wrote friendly notes to her in later years and when Didi sought advice he was always ready with an answer. In reply to one query from Didi about whether he thought she should speak about her work to a particular author he said: “I don’t see any objection to your meeting this lady and giving her general information about your work in the SOE. You could suggest that she contacts me if she wishes to do so and I will try to give her the general background.” He then suggested that Didi should “talk briefly about the training in Wanborough Manor and the careful briefing you received before going into the field.” Had he considered this a little more carefully he might have advised her differently, as Didi had not been trained at Wanborough Manor so would only have known very little, if anything at all, about it.
When the lady author got in touch with Buckmaster, he told Didi that he had agreed to see her “for a more general revision, so we will do our best for her.” He went on to complain about the people at the BBC and ITV, saying that he was concerned about the way they portrayed the girls of the SOE and that when he tried to explain how things really were, his comments were totally disregarded. Both television companies refused to accept the truth because it was not exciting enough, he said; he was of the opinion that “They don’t care a damn about the facts—they just make up what they think are romantic stories to attract viewers who have no recollection or knowledge of World War II.” Buckmaster appeared in television programs and argued vociferously against presenters who accused the SOE of incompetence, which had caused the deaths of some agents. Despite his denials, there clearly had been situations that had led to the deaths of agents, but whether these were because of genuine mistakes or deliberate sacrifice is debatable. In both scenarios these mistakes were inexcusable, so his righteous indignation was rather misplaced. It must have been difficult for agents such as Didi, who obviously respected Buckmaster, to accept what he told them when they themselves knew that certain of his “facts” were untrue. In the 1950s he had written two books about the SOE that were littered with errors, and it could even have been these books that accounted for the television people’s skepticism when Buckmaster tried to set them straight. Didi couldn’t bear to be thought of as a liar, so eventually, rather than upset her former boss, she just stopped asking for his advice and made the decisions herself about whether or not to talk to authors or appear on television programs.
Strangely, in view of Vera Atkins’s reputation for being rather cold and aloof, she and Didi developed quite a close friendship. They not only kept up a long correspondence but also sometimes visited each other, usually when Vera came to London. Vera proved to be a good friend and Didi found that she could get better advice from her than from Buckmaster. After all the years that had passed since the end of the war, Vera still saw herself as the guardian of the SOE girls and she proved to be a great help to Didi in many ways. Despite her still busy life she remembered to contact Didi on the first anniversary of Jacqueline’s death. She sent her a card on which she wrote: “You are in my thoughts on this sad anniversary as I gratefully remember Jacqueline and the lovely person that she was. You have been wonderful, dear Didi, in getting through this difficult year with so much courage, sense and style. I hope that you will find it all a little easier as time goes on.”
By the 1980s Didi’s friend Jenny had left London and moved to Llandovery in Carmarthenshire, where Didi sometimes visited her. Jenny was still unable to cope with her friend’s love of garlic, so when it was free she rented the holiday cottage next door to her own home so that Didi could stay there and cook for herself the sort of food she loved. Even after all the years she had been back in England Didi still spoke with a slight French accent, and sometimes when she and Jenny went out for a meal she would speak to the restaurant staff with a very strong accent. When Jenny asked her why, she smiled and, with a twinkle in her eye, said that it was because she had found that she received much better service if the staff knew she was foreign.3 It was her own private joke. She enjoyed role playing and was obviously good at it. Jenny completely refuted the later claims that Didi was a sad recluse. They were simply not true. Her friend was fun, had a good sense of humor and enjoyed life.
When she stayed with Jenny in Wales, Didi loved to walk. She was very fit and could easily cover long distances, unlike Jenny, who quickly became exhausted by her friend’s boundless energy. After one visit to Wales, Didi came home with a dog that Jenny had found for her, a cross between a spaniel and a collie. She loved the little dog, which she named Bobby, and took him everywhere with her. He gave her love, companionship and a reason to take the long walks she so enjoyed, without having to go out on her own. Trouble arose for poor Bobby, however, when Didi tried to take him with her to the Special Forces Club: she received a note from the club officials telling her that dogs were not allowed. She was so annoyed by this that she wrote back to them canceling her membership. If her Bobby wasn’t to be allowed to visit the club, Didi decided that she didn’t want to go there again either.
Although Didi enjoyed living in Jacqueline’s lovely flat and would forever be grateful to her sister for leaving it to her, when it became clear that she would soon have a hefty bill for maintenance she started to look for other accommodation. The flat was on a short lease anyway and the building required a lot of work to be done, which Didi thought was not a good use of her money. So, by the summer of 1989 she had decided to sell, and she and Bobby began looking for another flat near to the coast. She had never lost her love of the sea and wanted to spend the remainder of her days looking out at its vast expanse.
Didi found a place to rent on the Kent coast, and she and Bobby moved in, but it wasn’t long before she decided that it wasn’t right for her; nor was the fisherman’s loft in Lyme Regis where she went next. Eventually her search took her as far as Torquay and when she arrived she knew she had found the perfect place. For Didi it had the feel of a Continental seaside town and she immediately felt at home. She found a small flat to rent in Lisburne Crescent and moved for the last time. When she had moved out of the Belgravia flat Vera Atkins had offered to help, saying, “I don’t envy you the selling and clearance of the flat. There are so many difficult decisions which only you can make.” But Didi had been unable to part with Jacqueline’s possessions—they were all that was left to her of her sister, and she couldn’t bear to sell them or throw them away—so they had moved with her, and now they took up a large amount of space in her tiny new home.
It was around the time that Didi moved to Torquay that she began in earnest to try to recover her family’s property in Nice that they had had to leave after the fall of France and that Didi’s parents had been unable to reclaim after the war. During the war the tenant had paid them a very small rent. After the war she continued to live in the house but refused to pay any more than the rent she had agreed at the start of her tenancy. Jack and Mariquita tried to have her evicted but had no luck, mainly because they had no idea how to do it and because of Jack’s inability to speak French very well. With all their children, except Francis, living abroad and so unable to help, they found it difficult to get through all the legalities involved and although Francis was nearby, getting the tenant evicted was not something that he felt competent to tackle. Over the years that followed, the family made efforts periodically to have the tenant in Nice evicted, always without success, and when she died in 1994 her daughter continued to live in the property, paying the same rent as her mother had done for a further two years. By 1996 she had decided not to pay at all.4
With Didi turning her attention to the problem, letters from her sister-in-law, Thérèse, and the French lawyer in Grenoble were copied, translated by Didi and sent to her niece Odile, so that she could also sign the relevant papers to have the tenant evicted and they could repossess the house, which they intended to sell. Month after month letters flew backwards and forwards between France, England and Italy, where Odile lived with her Italian husband, Enore, and their sons, Silvio, Fabio and Giulio. At one point, when it seemed that a stalemate had again been reached, Didi wrote to Odile to tell her that she was thinking of moving back to France to live in the house herself. But despite all the efforts that were made to evict the woman and reclaim the house, they didn’t manage to achieve anything, and Didi became very tired with the whole situation and decided to put it on hold for a while and “go back to business.” To this day Odile, the only member of the Nearne family left, is still fighting to get back the house her family loved.
The “business” to which Didi referred was her self-appointed role as fundraiser for a local charity, Animals in Distress. She was particularly busy with this work in the summer, when she spent every day walking along the beaches collecting from holiday makers. Sometimes, although it was not strictly legal, she would also visit the town’s pubs during the evening and collect from people having a drink or something to eat. She never worried about going into a bar by herself or asking for donations for the animals and, as her friend Jenny said, this was not the behavior of a sad recluse. She liked people and loved animals, and collecting was a way of making herself useful to a cause she believed to be worthwhile.
In 1993 Didi bravely agreed to return to Ravensbrück to attend a ceremony in which a plaque was unveiled and dedicated to the memory of those who had not survived their incarceration in the camp. The trip had been arranged by the then SOE adviser at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Gervase Cowell, in conjunction with the British Embassy in Berlin and the Ravensbrück Museum, and the party that made the journey included Vera Atkins, code master Leo Marks, agents Francis Cammaerts and Brian Stonehouse, Lilian Rolfe’s sister Helen, Violette Szabo’s daughter Tania, John de Cunha, who had been a prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials after the war, representatives from the FANY and the WAAF (now the WRAF), and several members of the French Resistance. Also attending the ceremony was Odette Hallowes, formerly Sansom (she and her husband, Roy Sansom, were divorced after the war and, in 1947, Odette married Peter Churchill, the leader of the Spindle circuit; they too were divorced and, in 1956, she married Geoffrey Hallowes). On the morning of 10 June 1993 Odette, Yvonne Baseden and Didi, the only SOE survivors of the camp, unveiled the plaque. Didi wore a white suit with a red blouse, and her MBE and the Croix de Guerre pinned to her jacket. She was photographed standing next to Odette Hallowes, whose many awards weighed down the front of her outfit.
At the beginning of 1994 Didi’s beloved dog Bobby died. It was a huge blow to her. Vera Atkins, sensitive to how Didi would be feeling, sent her a letter saying, “I know how much you miss Bobby, your friend and companion and am so sorry that the poor fellow died relatively young—at least he seemed youthful.” Didi had certainly benefited from all the exercise she had enjoyed with Bobby. She was still extremely fit, and when she wrote to Odile she commented that she had recently had a checkup and that her doctor had declared her to be in A1 condition.
At regular intervals Odile and her family came over to England and spent time with Didi. They usually stayed in a hotel, as Didi’s flat was so small. In fact, although they visited her at Lisburne Crescent, they never actually went inside the flat; Didi always waited for them outside the building, and they would fetch her in their hired car and make day trips to all the sights in the Torquay area and beyond. Odile was very fond of her aunt and had really enjoyed getting to know her properly as an adult after the difficulties that Didi had suffered when Odile was a child. One holiday in particular still stands out in her memory. That year Didi advised Odile to rent a flat, “which she found for us at Babbacombe, overlooking the gardens and the sea. We had a super time that year, for we used to eat at home and then go on outings together, and then come back to eat at home in the evenings, just like a little family.”
Didi liked Odile’s husband, Enore, very much, although they could only speak to each other with Odile’s help, as he spoke very few words of English. They enjoyed sharing a bottle of wine, however, and after one of the family’s visits Didi decided it was time to learn Italian, so at the age of 73 she bought herself a cassette player and an Italian Linguaphone course so that she would be able to speak to Enore properly the next time they were together.
Odile came to regard Didi as a second mother and was particularly grateful to her for the help she gave her when she decided to become a Roman Catholic. Didi herself still attended church each week, although she distanced herself from church-related social events. When she had a fall in the town and broke her wrist, she asked to be taken to the church and a Sister Damian accompanied her to hospital, but when Didi heard that she was trying to find out her name and other personal details from the hospital staff she was annoyed because, although Sister Damian was only trying to help, Didi regarded it as prying. As far as she was concerned her relationship was with God, not the congregation, and only God needed to know anything about her. She felt that she could no longer attend that church, so began going to services at another Roman Catholic church in the town. Her religion was still very important to her and she passed on many things to help Odile:
She left me all her prayer books and many religious pamphlets which have helped me tremendously. There were even little booklets on how to say the Rosary. She must have bought them specially for me.
Didi loved going on pilgrimages too. She went to Chartres, Knock, Fatima, Lourdes, Banneaux, Lough Derg (St. Patrick’s Purgatory), and of course Medjugorje to which she was very close.
She was very witty and charming to be with, at the same time she was wise and a deep thinker. I used to love looking into her eyes, which were full of compassion and kindness. Being a devout Roman Catholic she talked about her faith a great deal, especially about Medjugorje and any miracles that had taken place. We used to listen to the messages together. I can truly say that she guided me in my religious faith.5
As time went by many of the people whom Didi had known from her SOE days died. She had always believed that she would live to a great age and, having been one of the younger agents herself, it was inevitable that she would eventually lose many friends from those days. However, apart from those who had perished during the war, many of the other members of the SOE had long lives too, despite their wartime activities.
Jacqueline’s boss, Maurice Southgate, chief of the Stationer circuit, had managed to avoid a mass execution of agents in Buchenwald in September 1944 and, although physically and psychologically weak, had remained in the camp until it was liberated by the Americans in April 1945. He was well enough to give evidence at the war crimes trials in 1947 but he never fully recovered his pre-SOE health. He was awarded a DSO, and when his health had improved enough for him to return to work he resumed his former occupation of furniture designer and manufacturer. He died in France in March 1990 at the age of 77.6 Maurice Buckmaster died on 17 April 1992 aged 907 and Vera Atkins followed him on 24 June 2000 aged 92.8
By 1998 Didi had already begun to consider her own mortality. Although she was still cheerful and busy, and had been joined at her flat by a new companion, a stray ginger cat she called Whisky,9 she spoke to Odile about what she wanted to happen after her death, telling her that she wanted to be cremated and have her ashes scattered at sea. While she was still alive she didn’t want anyone to know what she had done during the war and made her niece promise that she would tell no one, saying that if she did talk about it, Odile would not see her again, as she would simply disappear.
Was she a secret agent to the last or had she simply had enough of being asked what she had done in the war, a time that she would much rather have forgotten? It is an interesting question. Being a prisoner had taught Didi what counted most in life. She was her own person, kind, funny, perhaps slightly eccentric, but a devoted sister and aunt, a loyal friend, a devout Catholic and a tireless charity worker. For her these were the things that were important—much more important than anything that had gone before.