After their arrest, Louis (Marcel Leccia) and his team (Élisée Allard and Pierre Geelen)—along with Hector (Maurice Southgate) and a large number of agents—were deported to Buchenwald. In September, the Nazis began calling up and executing groups of them. I’m devastated to report that on September 10, 1944, Louis and his fellow agents were murdered. Because Hector was in the sick ward, he escaped the fate twenty SOE agents met, and survived through the liberation of the camp in April of 1945.
The doctor from Virginia’s first network, Jean Rousset, survived Buchenwald. He hid patient files from the Nazis and was able to turn them in to the proper authorities after the war to bring countless Nazis to justice. The prostitute from Lyon, Germaine Guérin, also survived, but I was unable to find the identity or the fate of the nun from Virginia’s first network. Rousset and Guérin both helped bring down the notorious Robert Alesch.
Sophie (Odette Wilen) survived her escape over the Pyrenees. Her guide, Santiago Strugo Garay, was so taken with her, he found her in London after the war. They fell in love and married, eventually moving to Buenos Aires and having two children. Sophie/Odette died in September of 2015 at the age of ninety-six.
In spite of the arrest and torture of Mimi (Marie Vessereau), and heavy losses to the Maquis group led by Lavilette (Fernand Vessereau), the couple survived the war. They had several children but, due to the abundance of characters, only one son—“the boy” (Gérard)—is mentioned in this book. At the age of ten, Gérard was awarded the Croix de Guerre for transporting weapons and supplies in his wagon for the Resistance. His parents were also given the Croix de Guerre, among other honors. Lavilette/Fernand died in 1961 at the age of fifty-five, but Mimi/Marie lived until 2018, when she died at the age of one hundred six.
Bob (Lieutenant Raoul Le Boulicaut) was reported to have joined the Free French’s Ninth Colonial Division for the remainder of the war, and the French Intelligence Agency after it. Sadly, in February of 1946, he died shortly after checking into a Paris hospital at the age of twenty-five, likely from complications as a result of head injuries from his accident.
Most devastating was the fate of Dr. Roger Le Forestier, which came on August 20, 1944, when Klaus Barbie had Roger and 120 prisoners sent from Montluc to an abandoned house just outside Lyon. They were handcuffed in pairs, sent to the top floor of the house in groups, and shot. When the top floor was filled with bodies, the groups were sent to the floor below it, and finally to the ground floor. In order to destroy their identities, Barbie had the bodies covered in phosphorus and burned. Four days later, Montluc Prison was liberated.
Danielle Le Forestier didn’t find out about Roger’s murder until six weeks had passed. Inspecting what could be salvaged of the bodies, she came across Roger’s distinctive belt buckle. A widow at the age of twenty-three, Danielle was left to raise her five- and three-year-old sons alone.
Happily, Simon (Pierre Fayol) and his wife, Dolmazon (Marianne), Désiré “Dédé” Zurbach, Estelle, Léa and Edmund Lebrat, and Serge Nelken survived their wartime ordeals.
I was especially fascinated by the complicated, singular, and private Vera Atkins. It isn’t clear if she remained in contact with Virginia throughout their lives, but I’d like to think she did. Vera spent the years following the war seeking information for the families of every missing and deceased agent in her employ. She conducted hours of interviews of Nazis, which were used extensively as evidence in the Nuremberg trials, and she worked for UNESCO. An often criticized and controversial figure, she retreated to her cottage in Winchelsea in 1961, and led a somewhat reclusive life until her death in 2000 at the age of ninety-two. It is thought Miss Moneypenny of James Bond fame (author Ian Fleming was in the SOE) was modeled after Vera. Upon her death, even many of those who were close to her did not know she was Jewish.