Pearl specifically requested to join the Stationer network or circuit, which was headed by her old school friend Maurice Southgate (whose code name was “Hector Stationer”). The Stationer network’s mission, like most other SOE-run networks in France, was stated as “harassment.” Used in a military sense, this means to exhaust or impede an enemy. The operatives were to hinder the German war effort in any way possible, but specifically they worked to destroy communication lines, transportation methods, and munitions production, especially in preparation for D-Day. To this end, they sought to recruit, organize, supply, and train groups of Maquis within their network in southern France (the demarcation line between occupied France and unoccupied France ran across Stationer’s northern border).
The political and military affiliation of the Maquis groups within the Stationer circuit was varied but Southgate, one of SOE’s most effective organizers, found a way to make it work. Many Maquis recruited by the Stationer network were from the Communist Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP), fighters who normally only took orders from Communists. But Auguste Chantraine—the mayor of Tendu and a Communist who had agreed to help the SOE—was in charge of Stationer’s northern section, and he was able to recruit Communist Maquis into Stationer.
Charles Rechenmann, a former member of the French military who could recruit other former military men, was put in charge of Stationer’s southern section.
Part of the SOE training was practicing parachuting since most SOE agents—like Pearl—parachuted into remote rural areas of occupied France near the time of a full moon. After the agents had left England for work in the field it was very disappointing to have to turn back due to bad weather or problems with the landing party that was to meet them on the ground. Some agents gave up completely after multiple failed attempts to jump, feeling that they were somehow unlucky. Pearl—who had to turn back twice before landing in France—didn’t.
Henri joined the Stationer circuit before Pearl arrived. On the night of Pearl’s first attempt to parachute in, Maurice Southgate arrived in the landing area only to discover that the French police had been unusually active there, searching for FTP Maquis. He needed to contact the SOE in London immediately so that Pearl’s flight could be canceled in time.
Maurice Southgate sent Henri on a frantic 20-kilometer bicycle ride to radio operator Amédée Maingard so that he could contact London. But the two men hadn’t met before, and by the time Amédée had finished questioning Henri to make sure he could be trusted (in other words, that he wasn’t either a Milice or a Gestapo agent) it was too late to tell London to cancel the flight. The only way to prevent Pearl’s landing now would be to remove the drop zone lights and hope the pilot would understand.
During my first attempt at landing, the night of September 15-16, we made a round trip. The landing strip was in the north of Indre. They hadn’t put the lamps on the ground to mark the strip, which meant that I couldn’t jump. Maurice Southgate had made the decision because the area had suddenly become a dangerous place for dropping in an agent; the gendarmerie [French police] were looking for three leaders of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans in the woods at Taille de Ruine. I returned to Tempsford, my starting point.
The second attempt was in the night of September 21-22. I had quite a fright before takeoff, when the plane was maneuvering on the runway. I didn’t understand what was going on. The engines were getting louder and louder, which was quite normal, but then suddenly, the noise stopped. I looked at the dispatcher and asked him, “What’s happening?” No one was laughing. He said, “This isn’t a real runway.” The landing strip was in a field belonging to a farm and probably wasn’t very wide. One of the wheels had run off the strip, so we had to start all over again.
The weather was so bad that night that we couldn’t even go back to our base, Tempsford. We landed in an aerodrome called Ford, on the south coast of England. I was with two Frenchmen. There were also homing pigeons in the plane in a little box, with a parachute. They were for the intelligence service. The pigeons should have been dropped to an agreed spot so that messages could be attached to them and taken back to England. Well, that evening, they didn’t even drop the pigeons. The weather was so bad that they had no idea where we were.
When I entered the military base, everyone inside looked at me as if I were a strange animal. They were young, and it was one or two o’clock in the morning. Nobody was expecting to see a lady out of uniform at that time of night. This incongruity was explained by saying that I was a reporter.
Then someone said, “Right, you can go to the dining room.” I headed there, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, when an officer in British uniform started talking to me in French. He was very charming, Philippe Livry-Level, a famous French airman [and veteran of the 1914-1918 war] who so desperately wanted to be a pilot during this war that he had lied about his age [he was eight years too old] and managed to join the Royal Air Force. The RAF eventually found out, but they kept him as a navigator. Livry-Level must have been in the teams flying between France and England. When I was talking to him I had the impression that he knew perfectly well why I was there.
While we were waiting to get back to our base I was given an airman’s bedroom. It wasn’t very pleasant and I didn’t sleep much. It was freezing cold and it also smelled awful! You know how some people have a strange smell. Anyway, I thought to myself, I have a room, I can’t complain.
We left the next morning. The funny thing was, I had come with a team of petty officers who were really pleased to escort a “bird” around! I thought that I was going to return with them, but a squadron leader arrived and said, “I’ll take her.” I had to go back with him. After all, what else could I do? I didn’t have any say in the matter.
During the flight from Ford to Tempsford, the squadron leader told me to go to the front of the plane. The nose of the bomber, as well as the rear, had a clear plastic bay window for the machine-gunners. He told me to lie in there on my tummy. Through the plastic I could see everything that went by. When we were flying over a fairly tall chimney, he said, “You’ll see what happens when we fly over it.” There was a whoosh and we dropped because of the mass of rising warm air. It was quite bizarre.
The crossing was not as fast as it is today, despite the four engines! There were 400 to 500 miles, which meant almost two hours of flying.
My third attempt at a parachute landing was successful. Just in time! It was the night of September 22-23, 1943, and the last night of the moon. If I had not been able to jump then, I would have had to wait another month. Our pilots needed the moonlight to see the rivers, which acted as landmarks. When they headed south of the Loire, they flew near Blois, where there are three rivers, the Loir, Loire, and Cher.
They flew that way frequently, so they knew the route very well, but they were just as frequently attacked by flak—antiaircraft guns—which tossed the plane. We were not hit that night because we were too high, but the plane was shaken by the explosions. At first I wondered what was happening, but the dispatcher reassured me, “Don’t worry,” he said, “it’s the flak; we’re used to it.”
I was in a massive Halifax bomber, equipped to go as far as Poland. Usually, there were long seats running down the middle of the fuselage, opposite each other, where one could lie down. But this time the space was taken up by fuel tanks. It’s a long way to Poland and back!
The crew had kindly found me a sleeping bag and I lay down in it, on the floor, waiting for the moment to jump. Although the noise was terrible because of the four engines, I managed to sleep. I hadn’t slept the night before, due to the previous unsuccessful landing.
Around midnight, I began sitting for quite a long time on the edge of the opening I would have to jump through. It wasn’t very warm. The plane circled for a long time while I was waiting there, and I didn’t know why. But in a plane the size of a Halifax bomber, it isn’t easy to pinpoint four little electric torches [flashlights] on the ground. I thought that the torches were always held by hand, but this time, the reception committee had done something different. They had three small torches on the ground, with the fourth one a bit further along, staggered a little to indicate the direction of the wind. At the same time, the fourth torch gave the letter of the landing strip in Morse code. That was essential—if they had not given the right letter, I would have had to go back.
I just waited for the red light to come on. It wasn’t like our training sessions, when the dispatcher would shout “Action station!” with me on the edge of the hole, in the middle of the fuselage, ready to jump, and then “Go!” He would shout very loudly so there was no hesitation, we just did it. This was different. There were two lights: the green one meant “get ready” and the red one “go.”
When the red light came on, well, off I went. The hole I jumped through was like a downward chimney. You had to jump with your legs together, as if you were jumping vertically into water, at the same time keeping your arms by your side, clutching your trousers. The parachute was attached to the plane, it’s known as a static line. The folds of the parachute were held together with small strings, you could really feel them snapping during the descent. When the last string snapped off, the parachute opened, it jerked a little.
During the fall, in our training, we had to reach up the harness as far as possible and pull the parachute down toward ourselves, that way we landed leaning slightly over to one side. We landed on the right or the left, which prevented us tumbling head-over-heels and getting tangled in the cords. That’s how we had been taught to fall.
I had done one night fall during training, and the landing is not as hard as during the day, apparently due to heat rising from the ground. We didn’t know what to expect underneath us in the dark, and although I suppose there were possible dangers with night landing, I never thought about them. I was convinced I just had to get on with it.
The plane crew took care of my luggage, which was dropped through the same hole. Because of the wind, I landed in some bushes. I thought, That’s it, I’ve been blown off course by the wind, I’m not where I should be. And the parachute would not collapse because of the wind. During our training, we had been told that if this happened, we had to move round the parachute to collapse it. But I couldn’t do it, I ended up twisting my ankles—it was awful—so I took the device holding the harness, I turned the clasp, and I gave it a thump. The parachute then came off and got tangled in the bushes. Then I thought, Right, now I must sort myself out.
I was wearing overalls, a padded helmet, and there were bandages around my ankles. I took the whole lot off and folded them into a bundle so as not to lose them. After the deafening din in the plane, the contrast was striking. There wasn’t a sound to be heard and I couldn’t see a thing because of the clouds.
I tried to get my bearings in the dark. Moving forward, I saw something through the bushes. It was smooth and flat and at ground level. I thought it must be the landing strip, but no, it was water. I was horrified to see water so near. In fact, I had landed between two lakes. I realized much later, when we returned, that there were two lakes and several electricity pylons and cables. Yet, surprisingly, the landing strip was often used in full safety and with no mishap.
Actually, they hadn’t mentioned lakes to us during training. They had talked about the sea. Luckily, I could swim, so I probably would have managed in any case. But the satchel I was wearing was fairly heavy, and there was a sort of pocket in the overalls I was wearing, with all the most important things inside. In the end, that’s all I managed to keep with me.
I was always frightened the moment I jumped; I wasn’t frightened afterward. When I landed, good heavens, I was so thirsty! Not a drop of saliva in my mouth.
Then all of a sudden I remembered that I had a flask. So I thought, Why not try the flask? It was rum, how awful. I really didn’t appreciate that at all.
The greeting party consisted of two men: Maurice Southgate and Auguste Chantraine, mayor of Tendu and councilor for the district. They whistled to find me [a code of two descending notes]. It was a dark night and they hadn’t really seen where I had landed. I whistled back and that’s how they found me.
Although I already knew Maurice, we didn’t talk about anything at all. Maurice just asked me, “Did you see where your bags fell?”
I said, “Listen, it was enough working out how I was going to land myself. I’ve no idea, I didn’t see them.”
My bags had fallen in the water. I only managed to retrieve them three weeks later.
We went to Chantraine’s farm. Maurice accompanied me to a barn and, pointing to a pile of hay, said, “Right, you can rest up there.” I climbed the ladder and settled down on top, completely dressed. I didn’t sleep much. When I came down, Maurice said, laughing, “You know, you were asleep on a pile of supplies in there.” They were war supplies of course. There were at least 20 tons stacked under me, but I didn’t know that.
I’m not sure what he did while I was sleeping, but he must have examined my papers to check that I had the right ration books, identity card, and so on. Then he probably took the papers I had brought for him. And there must have been some money for him, as there was for me.
In the morning, he woke me up and said, “We’re leaving.” We took a little train, I don’t know where. I don’t think I even looked at the name of the station, or maybe he arranged for me not to see it. We got out of the train at Châteauroux.
Still leading the way, he took me to the Hôtel du Faisan: it was the best place. Maurice always chose the best. Henri was waiting for me, jittering like mad, as if he were the one to have parachuted. I wasn’t trembling, but he was. It was the shock, the emotion of meeting again after not seeing each other for three years. We had breakfast there, then Maurice left; I don’t know where. When he returned, he said, “I have a room in Limoges. You can spend the night there.” And he asked Henri to take me. Henri accompanied me to the room in Limoges then immediately left for Paris.
I didn’t have anything, no nightgown, nothing, because all my bags were lost. It didn’t matter, I slept in my petticoat. I was very tired. Good heavens! I slept until at least eleven o’clock the next morning. When I woke up I thought, That’s strange, it seems there are fleas. I got up; no doubt about it, there are fleas! But I couldn’t see them in the bed, where were they? I had slept on an army of fleas that were under the bolster! It was awful, they jumped everywhere. I hadn’t even felt the bites and they had completely attacked both shoulders. That’s how I was welcomed to Limoges. That day, Maurice came to take me to a safe house in Riom, in Auvergne.
I was dressed in French clothing given to me by the organization’s official tailor. They issued everything: my underwear as well as two suits, one grey and one brown, so the accessories could blend easily with both suits. There were no trousers at the time. There weren’t any silk stockings either, you couldn’t get them. We were issued cotton stockings.
The SOE were meticulous about their agents’ clothes. They checked the labels and took them out or replaced them to make sure the Germans couldn’t identify their origin. But there was one thing that they couldn’t provide: French shoes. English shoes were quite different. Luckily, I eventually found, with the help of my sister-in-law, a less obvious pair, little material boots with cork soles. They were better, also because I had such cold feet in winter during my train journeys.