On the evening of June 4, 1944, Jean Claude, Philippe, Violette, and Bob sat wearily with drinks in a country house north of London, singing a pop tune that was becoming a theme song for them, a hit ballad by the Mills Brothers called “I’ll Be Around.” (“I’ll be around / No matter how / You treat me now / I’ll be around from now on. . . .”) The agents were winding down in Hassells Hall, a huge Georgian edifice, after a long, disappointing day. Hassells Hall was one of the residences attached to SOE’s top-secret air base, RAF Tempsford—the jumping-off point for missions into enemy territory.
The Tempsford base was designed by a renowned London stage illusionist, Jasper Maskelyne, to resemble an abandoned farm, especially when viewed from the air. Its buildings had missing windows and roof tiles; barracks and hangars were disguised to look like run-down haylofts; old tractors were left here and there; and the two runways were painted with green and brown patches to appear overgrown with shrubs. There was a large farmhouse, shabby on the outside like the other buildings, but actually a state-of-the-art operations center linked directly to Baker Street.1
Behind the farmhouse was a barn where agents were given their final checks and instructions before taking off. It was there that the Salesman team had assembled earlier in the day.
Jean Claude had his orders. They read, in part:
Our agent Hamlet [Philippe’s code name] is returning to the field during the June moon period to take over a circuit which covers the Southern part of the Haute Vienne and parts of the Departments of Dordogne, Corrèze and Creuse. This circuit originally formed part of a larger organization, the chief of which was arrested at the beginning of May. His work is being carried on by his second-in-command, Samuel, but in view of the large area involved and the likelihood of communications becoming more difficult with the approach of D-Day, it has been decided to divide the circuit, and Hamlet is taking over the Southern area. . . .
Your mission is to act as W/T operator for Hamlet and you will take all your instructions from him. . . .
You will be parachuted into France . . . to a point 9 kms. N. of Chambert, 40 kms. E.S.E. of Limoges.
You will be received by a reception committee organized by Samuel.
Should you by any mischance miss the reception committee and lose contact, you can get in touch with Samuel through the following address:
Mlle. Guillon
16 rue de la République
Châteauroux
Password: “Je viens pour une chambre.”
Reply: “De la part de qui?”
Your reply: “De la part de François.”
[Translation: “I’ve come for a room.” “Who sent you?” “François sent me.”]
In the barn, Jean Claude, Philippe, Bob, and Violette changed into their French clothes and lightweight jumpsuits. They were issued pistols and ammunition. Jean Claude’s radio crystals were checked, and he was given a small cardboard box to carry them in on his person. The agents’ pockets and wallets were inspected for anything that might compromise them, like English cigarettes or bus tickets. Their suitcases were likewise checked, and then packed, along with Jean Claude’s radio, into canisters to be dropped with them.
Then they were told not to mention their pistols when they passed through customs.
They looked at each other. Customs?
Sure enough, there was a customs checkpoint by the door to the tarmac outside. An officer asked them if they had anything to declare, and one by one—wearing jumpsuits, carrying weapons, without luggage—they politely said no and passed through to the blustery airfield outside.
It remains a mystery why the customs ritual was put in place, but it had a salutary effect. The jokes the agents told each other—about what a person might actually have to do to get stopped at that checkpoint—helped them manage the rising tension they felt as they were driven to their airplane.
They boarded an RAF bomber in the dark. A dispatcher settled them on the floor and checked their parachutes. The plane began to move.
After just a few minutes it stopped. The agents assumed the pilot was waiting for clearance to take off, but then the dispatcher informed them that the flight had been scrubbed. The weather had turned foul, making it too dangerous to fly. Exasperated, the Salesman agents climbed out of the plane, went back through the barn, and returned to Hassells Hall for a nightcap and a wistful song.
The agents were far from alone in their frustration with the weather that night. In fact, the meteorological forecasts made on June 4, 1944, have become the subject of their own small field of scholarship, as the course of Western history was altered by them. June 4 dawned with bright skies over England, but a storm was detected moving eastward over the Atlantic. The D-Day invasion was scheduled for the next day, June 5. American weather forecasters predicted that a ridge of high pressure would steer the storm away from the English Channel in time. British forecasters disagreed, and advised the Supreme Allied Commander, Dwight Eisenhower, to postpone the invasion by one day. Eisenhower assented, and D-Day was moved to June 6. The weather did turn foul on the night of June 4, and remained so on the fifth. Some historians conclude that if Eisenhower had gone the other way and stuck with the June 5 invasion plan, his planes would not have been able to supply air cover, and the war’s outcome would have been different.
The Salesman agents turned in for the night, the men sharing a room, Violette in a room of her own down the hall. In the morning they had an early breakfast in the dining room, which was crowded with commandos speaking different languages and wearing assorted military uniforms and civilian disguises. Having nothing to do until nightfall, they borrowed a car and drove to Cambridge, where they strolled about and had a pleasant lunch. In midafternoon they drove back to Hassells Hall and played blackjack, betting recklessly with British money they would be leaving behind. None of them came out a big winner.
After dark they went back to the airfield, passed through customs again, and boarded an RAF Lancaster bomber. This time the plane took off. The agents sat in the dark, subdued, talking only a little. They played a few more games of blackjack, gratefully accepted cups of coffee and hot chocolate provided by the dispatcher, and tried to doze.
All at once they were wide awake: the standby warning light flicked on.
Jean Claude felt a rising panic. The cardboard box containing his crystals was wedged underneath one of his parachute straps, but it kept sliding around. He tightened the strap until it made him hunch uncomfortably, but still he couldn’t secure the box. If it came loose and fell to the ground, his crystals would scatter, the operation would fail, and he would be responsible.
Jean Claude was still wrestling with the problem when the cover of the Joe hole was removed. The agents sat around its edge, looking down at a landscape lit by a dim moon: woods, meadows, here and there a darkened village, small streams that glittered faintly. Jean Claude glanced at Philippe and saw the muscles of his jaw twitch; he was a little reassured that someone who had gone in before seemed to be just as nervous as he was. (Jean Claude didn’t know then that this was Philippe’s first operational jump too; his previous trips to France had been by Lysander.)
The plane circled for what seemed to Jean Claude like an eternity, though it was probably five to ten minutes. Then the dispatcher approached. The agents braced themselves.
The dispatcher informed them that there would be no jump—the reception committee had not shown up. (It had been run off by a German patrol, they later learned.) He motioned the agents away from the Joe hole. Before replacing its cover, he dropped carrier pigeons in special parachute cages. The hope was that French civilians would find the birds and use them to send back details of German installations and troop movements. Jean Claude wondered how many of them would end up in stewpots instead.
The agents loosened their parachute harnesses and relaxed. The trip back seemed much shorter than the outward-bound one. When Jean Claude mentioned to the dispatcher that he had never landed in an airplane before, he was escorted to the bombardier’s station in the nose, where he watched the English countryside sloping up at him in the faint predawn. By four in the morning the team had returned to Hassells Hall and turned in.
Scarcely two hours later Jean Claude, Philippe, and Bob were awakened by someone pounding on their door. It was Violette, bearing the news that the invasion of France had begun.
BY THE TIME they made their third passage through the Tempsford airfield barn, the Salesman agents had become familiar to the customs officer, who waved them through with a friendly “good evening.”
It was the night of June 7. This time their plane was a B-24 Liberator flown in from RAF Harrington, the airfield that was the base for Operation Carpetbagger, a joint venture by the OSS and the U.S. Army Air Force to drop supplies to resistance groups in Europe. Carpetbagger B-24s were specially modified for low-altitude nighttime work. They were painted black; had their nose guns, belly guns, and waist guns removed to gain speed and cargo space; and had blisters added to the cockpit windows for downward visibility. Where the belly gun used to be, they had a Joe hole.
The flight was pleasant, almost relaxed. Jean Claude had figured out a better way to carry the cardboard box with his crystals—inside his jumpsuit. The agents played blackjack and gin rummy in almost total darkness.
The warning light came on. The dispatcher hooked up their static lines and removed the plywood cover from the Joe hole. They sat with their legs dangling into it. Jean Claude noted that Philippe was looking up at the warning light with what seemed like studied nonchalance. Bob stifled a yawn, perhaps a little theatrically. Jean Claude smiled at Violette. She winked at him.
They made a first pass over terrain that appeared more wooded than open. Jean Claude worried about getting hung up in a tree. The plane banked, turned, and made a second pass.
That’s when the dispatcher called the mission off. He gestured to the agents to back away from the hole. In dismay, they complied. They started to unhook their static lines.
Then the warning light came on again. The bomber’s engines throttled back, and the agents heard the command “Action stations.” They secured their static lines and scrambled back into position around the hole.
They heard the “Go!” command. Philippe straightened up, pushed off, and jumped. As soon as his shoulders and head had disappeared, Violette followed him. Then Jean Claude, his body rigid, eyes shut tight, dropped into the night. Bob jumped last.