Shortly before he was arrested, Maurice Southgate had sent a report to the SOE offices in London explaining that he considered the first week in the field the most dangerous for an agent because of nerves and unfamiliarity with the new area. Then, after six months, an agent tended to become complacent about security procedures, and if they became ill or exhausted, disaster would most likely follow.
On May 1, 1944, Maurice Southgate, an excellent but exhausted leader who had been working in France for nearly one and a half years, failed to notice clear signs of danger outside a home where members of the Stationer network had been staying in Montluçon. Maurice had planned to meet his radio operator in order to read some messages. When he opened the door, he was faced with the guns of multiple Gestapo agents. They arrested him because he couldn’t give them a good explanation as to why he was visiting a house where they had just discovered three radio sets, radio messages, and a huge pile of cash.
Pearl had planned a picnic for that same day and pressured some members of the exhausted team to join her, not realizing that this gesture would have a drastic impact on their destinies.
Henri could feel trouble brewing. He had arrived from Paris the evening before—the night of April 30-May 1, 1944—to the Lhospitaliers’ house [the home where Robert Lhospitalier, a member of the Stationer network, lived with his wife and his grandmother] in rue de Rimard. We all sensed D-day was about to happen.
That night Maurice went to meet John Farmer and Nancy (Wake) Fiocca, a team parachuted to join the Auvergne Maquis. On his return from this meeting, where he had received information and money, he was arrested. He forgot to look behind him when he arrived at the Lhospitaliers’, because he was very tired. He explained this to me when he returned from Buchenwald concentration camp. There was a front-wheel-drive Citroën, the car used mainly by the Gestapo, hidden further down the street. “If I had seen it, I wouldn’t have rung the bell,” he told me.
The Gestapo was there. They were looking for Robert Lhospitalier, as he had refused to do his STO, the German compulsory work service. Maurice rang. It was too late for him. Luckily for us, Robert Lhospitalier’s grandmother was ill and had called the doctor. When the doctor arrived the Germans refused to let him in. But he insisted on seeing his patient and he managed to enter. The grandmother took advantage of his visit to give him a note, “The Gestapo are in the house,” and she jotted down the address of Robert’s parents-in-law in rue Bienassis.
We just missed being caught. We weren’t in the house when the Gestapo arrived. Why had I suggested a picnic that day? Why had I insisted that our radio operator, Amédée Maingard, come with us? It must be fate.
With the grandmother’s note, the doctor warned the family-in-law—Monsieur and Madame Bidet—who knew we were picnicking. When we saw Monsieur Bidet, as white as a sheet, arrive on his bike, we all stood up together. He said, “The Gestapo’s at Rimard [referring to the street where the Lhospitalier home was located].”
The Germans took Maurice and [Sergeant René] Mathieu, the young, newly arrived radio operator, who was staying with Robert’s mother and grandmother. They took them to Montluçon prison. Robert’s mother ended up in prison in Moulins, but she wasn’t deported—one of the few. We never saw Mathieu again. His name is on the SOE memorial at Valençay.
When the Germans saw the radio, the money, the list of landing spots for parachute drops, they must have thought there were other people in the network. They encircled the town the next day.
The evening Maurice was arrested, Henri and Jacques Hirsch slept in a bistro on a billiard table. I was in a rented room in rue Chantoiseau. The next day when we discussed what we were going to do, we saw the barricade on the bridge and lots of Germans in lorries [trucks]. Luckily, Jacques Hirsch met someone he knew in Montluçon. He asked him if he could get us out of town. He took us in his car along a small road. We traveled to Saint-Gaultier to warn our other radio operator and asked him to send the message to be broadcast by the BBC, “Hector is very ill.” This meant Maurice had been arrested. Such messages were broadcast to warn members of our network.
Then he dropped us off near Néris-les-Bains (Allier) and we took a taxi to the crossroads of Dun-le-Poëlier, in Indre. Henri and I walked the rest of the way to Les Souches, to Monsieur and Madame Sabassier, while Jacques Hirsch went to Châteauroux. Amédée Maingard and Robert Lhospitalier had both gone in different directions without saying where, for security reasons.
Maurice was taken to the Gestapo on avenue Foch in Paris. To start with, nobody knew who he was. The Germans had no idea what he did until his photograph was shown to someone he knew. They asked the person, “Do you know this man?” and he replied, “Yes, it’s Maurice Southgate.” At least a month went by between his arrest on May 1, 1944, and his arrival at the Gestapo.
When the Gestapo found out that it was Maurice South-gate—who, after all, was someone quite important—he was forced to “give” information concerning the network. He probably gave the sector Dun-le-Poëlier where, apart from Alex [head of the local communist FTP; his real name was Briant], nothing was organized. That must be why we started having trouble when the Germans came a month later at the beginning of June—Monsieur [Armand] Mardon, the mayor of Dun-le-Poëlier and regional councilor, was arrested. It’s not certain but very likely.
Maurice was taken to Buchenwald concentration camp. He was one of 36 English agents deported to that camp. Out of 36, only 4 survived; all the others were hanged. The survivors had taken the identity of someone who had already died, with the complicity of [Dr. Alfred] Balachowski, the French head of the infirmary.
Maurice told me all this the day after he returned to England. First they hanged 15, then another 15, and finally 2. Nobody knows why. And do you know how they did it? With butchers’ hooks through the base of their skulls.
When he came back he looked appalling: completely shaved head, blank stare, gaunt. He neither wanted to talk nor hear about the war.