The Twins
Peter Churchill had not been long back in England from his second mission when he was summoned to Buckmaster’s office in Baker Street and told he was wanted for a mission of a specialized nature. Buckmaster explained that he had been asked by the Chiefs of Staff if he had someone who could tackle a rather tricky proposition and, having informed the chiefs that he did have someone in mind, Buckmaster was then instructed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill to approach the agent about the mission.1
With such direction from the very top, Churchill (Peter Churchill that is) did not hesitate to volunteer for the mission. During his briefing he found out the Chiefs of Staff had ordered the destruction of a radio station at Saint-Assise that was being used by the German naval command for directing U-boats in the Atlantic. Allied convoys were being attacked on a regular basis and the only radio transmitter considered powerful enough to transmit over such a long distance was the one at Saint-Assise. Destroying the radio station, even for a matter of days, would break down communications for long enough to give the Royal Navy enough time to hunt down the packs of U-boats and save the lives of many British and Allied seamen. Peter Churchill’s task was to take two highly trained demolition saboteurs to France and blow up the radio station.
The two saboteurs chosen by Buckmaster were Alfred and Henry Newton. Although they were known in Baker Street as ‘The Twins’, the Newton brothers were, in fact, born ten years apart with Henry, aged thirty-eight, the elder of the two. They were the sons of a former Lancashire jockey who had been a trainer in France and had lived there with his family for many years. Before the war, the two brothers had become well known in Europe as cabaret artists called the Boorn Brothers (Boorn being their mother’s maiden name) and both had married in France with Alfred, who was married to a German-born dancer, having three young sons.
The brothers, their parents and their families had all lived together in Cendrieux, an isolated hamlet near Périgueux in the Dordogne. After the German invasion they had become trapped in France and so Alfred and Henry Newton organized what was, perhaps, the first underground movement in the unoccupied zone. There was little, in reality, that two men could achieve but most of their villagers were neither convinced Vichyites nor Gaullists, and so the brothers set about preventing them from becoming lulled into the constant Vichy-German propaganda. Twice a day the Newtons met a trusted group of men and women in a barn and passed on to them information about the war that they had picked up from listening to the BBC’s Home Service on a hidden receiver. Then the couriers would hurry away on bicycles to their villages nearby where others waited their turn to further spread the news.
The bush telegraph worked well and the news spread far and swiftly. The results were astonishing with news travelling more than 100 kilometres. More schemes were then hatched, including minor acts of sabotage such as putting sugar in the petrol tank of an enemy vehicle, as well as gathering and storing weapons and explosives that had been left abandoned by the French army. Gradually the Newtons created impalpable opposition to the Vichyites and occupying forces. They knew that other groups were working on similar lines but it was too early to think about attempting to join forces; that would have to wait.
Unfortunately, though, their moonlight bicycle excursions and numerous early morning ‘fishing trips’ caught the attention of the Vichy police and one morning they were summoned to Périgueux where they were interrogated by two Vichy officials. There had been nothing to detain them and so the two brothers were released home on ‘forced residence’, meaning that each morning they were required to report to an official who was given responsibility for their good behaviour.
The Newtons had no intention of remaining in Cendrieux. Satisfied their family members were safe, and having formed the nucleus of a valuable resistance group, they planned to make their way to England.2 But it was then that the family received a letter from the American Consulate-General in Marseilles, urging all British civilians residing in the unoccupied zone in France to make arrangements to leave the country at the earliest possible date. Negotiations were taking place with the Vichy French for the repatriation of British subjects under and over the military age.
This news upset everything the brothers had planned and so they decided to remain where they were for now to continue their subversive activities with renewed vigour. The Germans had put pressure on the Vichy French to take a much stronger stance against any subversive activities and so the brothers were again summoned to Périgueux, only this time they were put in front of a military tribunal. Their ‘trial’ took place in a makeshift hut on a patch of waste land near the cattle market and turned out to be more of a farce than a serious session in court. At the end the Newtons were told they were sentenced to undergo disciplinary labour at a nearby camp called Chancellade but, again, the situation turned into farce when they were issued with work passes to work on local farms instead.
Then, suddenly, and without any notice, they found their families had gone. They had been evacuated by the Red Cross and were on their way to Spain and then Lisbon, from where they would sail to England.
The brothers decided that it was now the time to make their way to England. They soon managed to escape from Chancellade at night through a combination of forged passes and a sleepy sentry, and made their way to Marseilles and then Perpignon before crossing the Pyrenees. Having finally arrived in Spain they were arrested for illegally entering the country without passports and sentenced to fifteen days at the Miranda de Ebro internment camp amongst many other nationalities – Poles, Czechs, Dutch, Danes, Belgians, Norwegians, French and even Greeks and Arabs – all trying to make their way to Britain. They were eventually released at the end of 1941 and taken to the British Embassy in Madrid, and it was there a military attaché gave them the devastating news that their entire family – their parents, wives and Alfred’s three young children – had been killed when a German U-boat sank the mercy ship they were sailing on for England.
From that moment on, the Newton brothers were consumed with a passion for revenge on the Nazis.3 They made their way to Gibraltar to wait for a passage back to England and by the time they arrived in Liverpool after a long sea passage on board the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Hesperus, they only had one thought between them – vengeance on the Nazis.
The brothers were met on arrival by an army sergeant and escorted by train to the War Office in London. It was January 1942 and bitterly cold with the capital covered in snow. They were met by a man dressed in a lounge suit, an army captain. He knew about the brothers and their loss, and asked them what their plans were now that they were back in England. The brothers then brought the captain up to date with their activities over the past couple of years and informed him they intended to seek revenge, Henry’s words being along the lines of ‘Give us a couple of tommy guns and a bunch of hand grenades. We know bloody well what we’re going to do’.4
With that the army captain gave them both instructions to go to Portman Square to meet with an army major, Lewis Gielgud, the brother of the English actor John Gielgud and a recruiting officer for F Section. The Newtons were as blunt with Gielgud as they had previously been with the captain, even suggesting they should be allowed to land back in France with a commando unit where they could inflict as much damage on the enemy as possible. This amused Gielgud but, as he explained, if they were to be allowed to do so then, at best, they might kill a few Germans but then they were almost certain to be killed themselves. Gielgud went on to explain that the two brothers were too precious for that to be allowed to happen and that, with their courage and ability, they could contribute to the war in a far better way. And so the two Newton brothers were recruited by the SOE. Gielgud had clearly recognized that he had recruited two men who would shirk no task, however dangerous or difficult, and they were considered perfect to be trained as saboteurs.
The brothers now lost their true identities. Given the surname of Norman, Alfred became ‘Arthur’ and Henry became ‘Hubert’, with the codenames ‘Artus’ and ‘Auguste’ respectively, and together they simply became known as ‘The Twins’.
Although other brothers worked within the SOE, the Newtons were the only brothers known to operate together as a team. For the next few weeks they were trained, first at Wanborough Manor, where Alfred was more adept at learning than his brother,5 and then in Scotland for their physical commando-style training, followed by parachute training at Ringway and finally their specialist sabotage training at Brickendonbury Manor in Hertfordshire.
The Twins were put through their paces but both proved incredibly tough. As the weeks passed they became experts in creating mayhem and sudden death. They learned how to handle weapons and explosives of all types with much of their training focusing on the destruction of buildings and machinery. They were taught how to take almost any manufactured article – whether it be a bicycle, hairbrush or a matchbox – and convert it into a piece of equipment to maim and kill. The Twins were then commissioned with the rank of second lieutenant and after some leave were summoned to Baker Street with Peter Churchill to be briefed on their special mission.
Having been briefed on the radio station at Saint-Assise, the three went off to plan their attack. The Twins were excited by the idea, particularly as they both felt they had a personal score to settle with the Kriegsmarine (the German Navy). They had about ten days to put together a plan and were given every possible assistance, using aerial reconnaissance photos of the site, seemingly taken from every possible angle, a scale model of the site and surrounding terrain, and calculations of the amount of explosive required to bring down one of the transmitter pylons.
Churchill and The Twins headed off to Surrey, where they tried out various combinations of explosive charges on a steel bar, and then Sussex, where timbered columns with mocked-up screw jacks were erected to bear some resemblance to Saint-Assise. For ten hectic days and nights they planned and rehearsed the operation, placing the charges and setting the pencil time-fuses with precision.
The raid was planned for 28 May 1942 but then, and without warning, came the news that it was cancelled. The Twins were livid. They were told the Germans had heard that a raid was about to happen and had strengthened their defences with more troops spread across the entire area. It appears the Germans were waiting for them. They simply would not have stood a chance and any attempt to mount the raid would have been almost certain suicide. The Twins were, nonetheless, determined to go ahead and give it a try but in the end their request was denied.
A story later emerged that a member of the French Resistance and a couple of his friends had been cycling past the radio station at Saint-Assise. They had been carrying explosives hidden in the frames of their bicycles and when they left their bicycles against one of the radio masts to go for a walk, the explosives had blown up and damaged the mast. Within minutes the station had become surrounded by Germans and the area cordoned off. No one would be able to get anywhere near it.6
Whether this farcical reason for the cancellation of the raid was true or not is unknown, but The Twins would have to be patient and wait for another opportunity to return to France. They did not have to wait long, just a matter of a few weeks in fact, before they were again summoned for briefing at Orchard Court.
This time they were to go into France to work for a man known as Gauthier (this was Philippe de Vomécourt) in the Lyons area to act as sabotage instructors and to train members of the resistance groups how to handle British weapons and teach them guerrilla tactics. They were given their new identity papers, forged of course, and something of a rather muddled brief, but they were told they would be working with a radio operator, codenamed “Celestin”, and that all three of them were to be dropped on the same night.
Inside the car waiting to take them from their briefing was Celestin, or, to give him his real name, Brian Stonehouse, a tall and young Vogue fashion artist. Also in the car was F Section’s operations officer, Gerry Morel. They all then headed off for what would be The Twins’ last meal in England before heading across the Channel the following night.
It was now approaching the end of June and that night the BBC transmitted its list of coded messages to various reception committees across France. Amongst them was Les durs des durs arrivent translated as ‘the toughest of the tough are arriving’, to indicate the imminent arrival of The Twins. The message had been sent in response to an earlier message from Philippe de Vomécourt complaining about the standard of two earlier agents sent to him. In that message he had said ‘Petits Suisses trop nous. Envoyez des durs’, translated as ‘Swiss cheeses are too soft. Send tougher ones’. And so tougher ones were on their way.
The first attempt to drop The Twins and Stonehouse was unsuccessful after the Whitley they were travelling in had to turn back due to an intercom failure inside the aircraft. The following night the three climbed aboard a RAF Wellington and this time were more fortunate, although their aircraft had to circle for forty minutes over the Loire while the crew tried to identify the correct drop zone. Finally, some people were spotted on the ground cycling along a road towards the field and flashing torches into the air. Because of the aborted attempt the previous night, the reception committee of two men and two women had not been aware that the drop had been rescheduled for that night, but they were now on their way to the field, having been woken by the sound of the aircraft overhead.7
The Twins and Stonehouse came down in a field near Tours. A German guard post was known to be just a kilometre or two away and so the three new arrivals were quickly led away. They had been briefed to expect their circuit organizer – Philippe de Vomécourt – to meet them at the drop zone and that they were to be accommodated at the Château le Breuil, but there was no sign of de Vomécourt and the château was considered unsafe. They were taken instead to a barn with no light and no water. It had not been the arrival they had expected.
After being instructed to leave their suitcases and money behind, which none of them were particularly happy about, they made their way on foot to the railway station at Loches. They had been told that they could either catch a train to meet with de Vomécourt in Limoges or meet with his assistant, Joseph (real name J. M. Aron), in Lyons. At this point the three agents decided to split. Stonehouse would go to Limoges and meet with de Vomécourt while The Twins would go to Lyons and meet with Aron.
For the next three days the Twins waited in a small café in Lyons at the specified times for their contact to show up. But no one came. They could not risk checking into a hotel as they did not know which were considered safe. They were also without any food coupons and did not know the black market restaurants yet, and so they lived on a few sweets and chocolate they had brought with them from England. Every night they took the train to Avignon for somewhere to sleep and to keep warm before returning to Lyons again the following morning.
With no change on the fourth and fifth days, The Twins considered what to do next. If no contact was made soon they agreed that Henry would make his way to Paris to meet up with former friends while Alfred would return to England via Spain to brief London on what had happened and to find out what they should do next. Then, on the sixth morning, and quite by chance, they spotted an SOE agent they recognized from England. It was Alan Jickell, a man known to them only as Gustave.
It would normally be forbidden, and dangerous, for agents to make contact with each other in this way but The Twins felt they had no alternative. They approached him and explained what had happened. Jickell explained that he was working with a circuit in Cannes and would get word to London informing them that they had been found safe and to seek instructions for what they should do next. Jickell then found them somewhere safe to stay.
Those back in Baker Street were aware that The Twins had yet to make contact with their circuit but were somewhat surprised to find out that they had managed to make contact with another circuit in Cannes. It was at this point that The Twins met with Virginia Hall in Lyons and, finally, de Vomécourt – seventeen days after they had landed in France. But it soon became obvious that de Vomécourt had no time for them. It was arms and money he wanted and not more of London’s incompetents.8 Equally, The Twins had no time for de Vomécourt. In fact, since their shambolic arrival in France, they had become increasingly despondent with the whole set-up.
For the next couple of weeks, Alfred and Henry worked separately on different tasks. While Henry went off to check out the suitability of a small airfield near Vierson close to the demarcation line, Alfred went off to Marseilles to take charge of a nascent group that he was told numbered around 2,000 men, all waiting to be trained and armed. He arrived to find only a handful of dockers.
Although tough, the Newton Twins were by no means stupid. They finally managed to settle down at le Puy in the Haute Loire but found organization to be practically non-existent and considered much of what their colleagues were pretending to do a sham. They were also being steadily outmanoeuvred by some who did not hesitate to invent and spread infuriating rumours to their discredit, and had managed to isolate them from Stonehouse.9
However, the Twins were soon doing a sound job of organizing and training a couple of hundred reliable men of what became their own GREENHEART circuit. They had recruited gendarmes at Saint-Paulian, the firemen at Saint-Puy and many other notable individuals from the local area. They had also built up a fleet of cars and other vehicles for use, and a way of getting hold of, or forging, identity papers and other key documents, as well as ration books and tobacco cards.
The brothers worked harder than ever, with little sleep, as they cycled round the countryside looking for suitable drop zones, checking on military posts and establishments, and looking for industrial targets to attack. Relaxation was usually spent teaching some new recruit how to silently dispose of a German soldier. It was not long before the members of their circuit were thoroughly schooled in how to kill and how to commit arson and acts of sabotage such as train derailment.
There were tangible results too. For example, the entire output of sixton trucks from a factory in Lyons was sabotaged. They had been ‘greased’ in key areas with a mixture containing paraffin and a high proportion of pumice and steel powder, while the engines were ‘treated’ with a concoction that gummed up and corroded every component. After seemingly running normally for a short time, the trucks would then seize so badly that they were to be of no further use. There were other acts, too, such as blowing up a Gestapo staff car, killing its occupants instantly, blowing up a railway bridge and attacking a train carrying enemy anti-aircraft guns and their crews. The Twins also provided Virginia Hall with complete gendarme uniforms to help resistance members escape from a prison at Castres.10 Then, on 12 November, as the Germans were moving into the unoccupied zone, The Twins spotted two German radio trucks. They quickly got some explosives, made two charges and later that evening attached them to the trucks; the subsequent explosions wrecked both.
The Twins now made another useful contact, a man known to them as ‘Colonel Lucien’ (Raymond Bizot). They travelled the area, building up the Maquis as they went. Unlike other resistance groups, they kept no records of their circuit, its members and their activities to prevent any information from ever falling into enemy hands; everything was committed to memory. When someone was arrested The Twins simply went to ground but they, too, had now become wanted men, although the Germans had little information on either to go on.
Frustratingly, The Twins felt they were getting little support from back home. Air drops that had been planned never took place. They also had no way of communicating directly with London; they were isolated from Stonehouse and every message had to go through Lyons and Virginia Hall who then passed them to the radio operator of another circuit for transmission. They felt isolated and had no money. Although Virginia did what she could to help, they even went as far as to sell off some plots of their own land in France to raise money for their cause.
For several months The Twins waged their own private war on the Nazis, just as they had always intended to do. Eventually, though, the lack of money, the lack of arms and explosives, and the lack of direct radio link with London, forced them to abandon their work. Through their colleague, Alan Jickell, they made contact with an escape line with the plan to return to England via Spain.
But, even then, people could not be trusted. The Twins had caused a certain amount of intrigue amongst many throughout their time in France and, unfortunately, before they could make their escape, they were betrayed by a Nazi informer called Robert Alesch, the former Abbé of Saint-Maur and known as the Bishop.
In April 1943, the night before Jickell was due to collect them from their safe house in Lyons and take them on to Perpignon, The Twins were having dinner with their two most trusted French friends when their room was stormed by the Gestapo. Not surprisingly, they did not go down without a fight, but they were heavily outnumbered and it took several minutes for them to be overpowered.
The Twins were then imprisoned and brutally tortured by the infamous Gestapo chief, Klaus Barbie, the so-called ‘Butcher of Lyons’, although this only resulted in them hating the Nazis even more. The Twins would never give anything away. They were transferred to the notorious Fresnes prison, in the suburbs of Paris, the following month. Life there was awful. The prison was overcrowded, with prisoners doubled up in tiny cells, and for the inmates life was as basic as it gets: an iron bed, a sheet and a blanket with a toilet pan, limited exercise and poor food. It was barely enough to keep them alive. Most of the day was spent working, such as sewing or peeling potatoes, or recovering from the interrogations carried out at the Avenue Foch, where the buildings numbered 82–86 were being used by the counterintelligence branch of the SS, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), under the senior German intelligence officer in Paris, Hans Josef Kieffer, with most of the interrogations and torture of F Section agents taking place on the third floor at number 84.
For The Twins it was a gruesome existence but still the brothers remained silent. In January 1944 they were moved to the concentration camp at Buchenwald along with other F Section agents. They later described just how horrible their journey to the camp had been with more than a hundred men packed into a goods wagon, without water, for three days.11
During the bitter months that followed they were put into gruelling working parties but somehow both managed to survive, even though Henry contracted double pneumonia. As the war approached its end, agents were being shot but The Twins managed to hide in what was known as the ‘Little Camp’, a horrifically overcrowded and disease-ridden compound within the overall camp. By repeatedly changing their numbers and identities within the camp they were able to escape execution. Finally, a month before the end of the war, the camp was liberated by the Americans. The Twins were two of only four surviving British agents left in the camp.12
The Twins had survived against all the odds, although the loss of their family would always be felt. After arriving back in England at the end of the war, both Newton brothers were appointed Members of the Order of the British Empire for their mission and for the extreme courage and bravery they had shown after capture.
1. Cookridge, op. cit., p.159.
2. Thomas, No Banners, pp.28–31.
3. Thomas, op. cit., inside front jacket.
4. Ibid, p.94.
5. NA HS 9/1096/8, Personnel File, A. W. O. Newton.
6. Cookridge, op. cit., p.161.
7. NA HS 9/1096/8, Personnel File, A. W. O. Newton (Mission Report dated 28 April 1945).
8. Foot, op. cit., p.192.
9. NA HS 9/1096/8, Personnel File, A. W. O Newton (Mission Report dated 28 April 1945).
10. Ibid.
11. NA HS 9/1096/8, Personnel File, A. W. O. Newton (Mission Report dated 28 April 1945).
12. The two other surviving agents were Christopher Burney and Maurice Southgate.