I had been unable to devote as much time as I wished to the Haute-Savoie, where I wanted to weld the groups more firmly together. As it was, there were Communist, Armée Secrète and Maquis groups, all squabbling politically among themselves and not liaising as well as they should have done. Every camp I visited asked me about my political views and which party I supported for the rebuilding of France. I told them I had no political affiliation to any party, that I was a soldier, not a politician, and I asked them to forget their politics. Cantinier and Romans’ deputy in the area, Captain Lachenal, did what they could, but they had a very difficult task.
In this disrupted area I attempted to set up a system of ‘personal’ groups, and I managed to recruit a handful of them under my direct control, quite separate from Cantinier and Romans, who knew nothing about them. They were small groups of ten to fifteen each, centred around Chaumonte and Jean Blanc, the small farmer and mountain guide I met on my reconnaissance visit to the area in September. I also arranged arms drops to him and to some of the other groups, but I found that, compared with the Ain, it was much more difficult to bind the groups together, for they were all very suspicious of the British. ‘Perfide Albion’ was always in their minds. Romans was in charge of the area and, with his great energy and drive, he did make an impression. If he had been able to remain in control of the Haute-Savoie, perhaps we would have produced the same cohesion as there was in the Ain. But, quite rightly, he left the Haute-Savoie, as the Ain was obviously the main centre of the Maquis and Resistance in the area. At the beginning of 1944, I too was forced to leave the Haute-Savoie mainly to its own devices, but still controlled their operations from the Ain.
Some of the parachute drops in the Haute-Savoie had been on the Plateau des Glières, a high mountain plateau ideal for operations but a death trap for guerrilla warfare as there were normally only one or two exits and, because of the snow, footprints showed up easily from the air. It was to this area in January that Tom Morel, my good friend, Pierrot, and Lachenal, Romans’ deputy, decided to gather together all the groups, set up a concentration of forces, and use the plateau as a base to attack the Germans and carry out sabotage. The inevitable happened, for the groups ceased to be guerrilla fighters and became a static force. Firstly, the GMRs attacked them, fighting on foot through the high mountains and deep snow as no transport could reach the area, except mules. The Maquis and Armée Secrète groups beat them off, and word seeped out of France to Britain and America that a great and glorious uprising had taken place in south-east France which was destined to control the area. The news, which rapidly spread round France, brought more groups to the plateau to join in the uprising, including some of those run by Jean Blanc.
Hundreds of Maquis and Resistance fighters made their camps on the plateau, defence in depth was arranged, ammunition and weapons hauled up, with food, clothing, and medical supplies, and the force settled in ready for a siege. The Germans, not liking the world publicity this stand was receiving in case it gave encouragement to other occupied countries, then stepped in. They bombed the area, and their fighters strafed the camps with cannon fire and machine-guns. They made frontal attacks up the two main exits to the plateau, causing casualties, but losing many men themselves. It was glorious, bloody, but not guerrilla warfare. Slowly we were losing well-trained Resistance fighters, plus their arms, and wasting ammunition by the hundredweight.
Cantinier had been against the idea from the start and sent a courier to me in the Ain telling me of Morel’s decision to fight. I told him to do all in his power to stop the operation, foreseeing nothing but disaster for our men, but Cantinier could not stop it. As the fight progressed, I got courier after courier from the Glières, asking me for support, and time and time again I sent the same message back – ‘sorry’. If I sent arms and ammunition, it would only delay the inevitable. Finally, I relented, stupidly, perhaps, but I could not harden my heart enough. I arranged two or three heavy drops by RAF aircraft, which brought arms and food to the beleaguered groups. My only hope was that the weapons might give the men a chance of breaking out of the ring of Germans encircling them.
The arms were used in the last desperate fight against airborne troops, the toughest fighting men in the German war-machine, who were parachuted in to mop up the area. Many Frenchmen, including Morel and Pierrot, died in hand-to-hand fighting and in the fire fight which developed on the ragged, snow-covered mountain top.
Looking back at this action, I am forced to take the same view I took at the time, that it was nonsensical. The groups would have done far better to have continued their normal activities, although those who praised the operation pointed out that the fight mauled two German divisions who were sent to clear up the Glières and, at least, prevented them from being used anywhere else for a period of three or four weeks. Nevertheless it was madness, a glorious stupidity which is still spoken of in France with awe and pride.
Earlier, in the Haute-Savoie, I met Andrés, a Spaniard, who had formed his own small group of fellow countrymen, and very good they were. He and I became great friends, and he was so reliable that I asked him to rent me a villa on the lake shore at Annecy, which he did. No one, apart from Andrés, knew of this hideaway, not even Romans. I used to go there for a day or two if I was awaiting a stores operation, as it gave me a break from the hurly-burly of Maquis life, the fighting, and the enormous drag on the human body of working without sleep for days on end. I used to keep in touch through Andrés who received messages from Paul, Romans, and the Ain, and left them for me in a dead letter box I selected in the yard of a garage which had a selection of used cars for sale. My hiding place was the toolbox on the running board of an old car with a ‘For sale’ notice on it, but which the garage owner never encouraged anyone to buy.
I went there one day and the owner, a good Resistance man, came up to me and said that Andrés had been shot, but he did not know if he was dead. I thanked him, and went to Albigny, to the restaurant run by Jean Saulnier’s sister, Emma, and moved in. Later I went to Annecy and saw Saulnier, who told me that Andrés was dead. Apparently he had decided, rashly, to take a radio set by road to an operator who was waiting for it, and had, of all things, chosen a main road. Rounding a bend, he saw a German checkpoint ahead, hesitated, slowed down, and then tried to turn round to run away. But the two machine-guns that the Germans always mounted before a checkpoint opened fire, and Andrés died. When they searched his body, they found a piece of paper on which he had written the address of my villa on the lakeside. When I heard this I thanked God I had stuck to the rule book and not gone back to the villa to pick up my revolver and one or two other small items. For the rule was – if anyone is shot or captured, pull out immediately.
Andrés and Morel were great characters, fine fighters. They are still remembered. As is Simon, the son of a general, who had one ambition – to kill Germans. He had a small group of about fifteen men who lived close by Annecy, and he always went about with two or three of his men, who were fully armed, even in the villages. Simon, for instance, was never without his sub-machine-gun, and he was likely to shoot down any isolated German officer or man he saw. He was an individualist and refused to link his group with any organisation, but he did sometimes listen to myself and Romans when we criticised his rashness. But our lectures made no difference.
One episode which rang round the Haute-Savoie concerned the small village of Thorens, where Simon had gone with one of his gang to have a coffee and a meal. He sat with his back to a wall, facing the door, with his sub-machine-gun on the seat beside him, when a German officer, an NCO and a soldier walked into the café and demanded identity papers. Simon had papers of a sort, but it was obvious to him that his gun would soon be seen. So he shot the three down, much to the terror of the restaurateur and his patrons. The two ran out of the café and found a German staff car outside with yet another officer sitting in the back. They shot him, took the car, headed towards the mountains and, at a quiet place, ran it over the edge of a ravine with the German dead inside.
Simon was well known to the Garde Mobile, the gendarmes, who were fine people, and to the GMR. Strangely enough, both groups allowed him to pass at will through checkpoints, after making a vague inspection of his obviously false papers. One day he came to a checkpoint run by the GMR, and the officer in charge, as Simon’s car stopped, called cheerily: ‘Ah, c’est Simon – come and show me your papers.’ Simon smiled, got out of the car, and was shot down by the GMR officer. He was taken to hospital at Annecy, where he lay desperately ill for several days with a member of the Milice at his bedside. One night he disappeared, and Romans and I believed he was taken out by the Germans and shot. His body was never found.
I was at Frangy in late January when I was asked by London if I was able to put on another sabotage raid at the ball-bearing factory, now running again. I told them that we could, and got together the gang that had blown it the first time. Pan Pan chuckled when I told him and the rest of the group our objective, and said he now knew how to set off a time-pencil. We were within a few days of setting our date for attack when I got a message from SOE which said: ‘Sorry, Xavier, factory raid is off. It will be bombed.’ The head of Bomber Command, ‘Bomber’ Harris, quite understandably, believed that his aircraft could do a job as well as a sabotage group and avoid the risk of hostages being taken and shot, which was fairly normal after sabotage by the Resistance.
I passed the news on to the group that the raid was off, but not, of course, that an air raid would be made, just in case someone opened their mouth too wide. Secretly, I was rather pleased that the groups were not going to make the raid, as security precautions had been tightened. There were many more guards about, and none that we could trust to look the other way. I felt we might have heavy casualties, and it is hard for a commander to commit his friends on a venture which might kill many of them, though of course I would have sent them in if the job had to be done.
By chance I was at Albigny when the raid took place early one morning. I heard aircraft and went out on the balcony and looked towards the town to see what I could of the bombing, so I could pass on details to London later. The aircraft were from the United States daylight force and their approach seemed rather casual and haphazard, but there were certainly a lot of bombs dropped. During the raid, Janine, aged about thirteen, one of the Saulnier family, came running up the outside stairs to my balcony, obviously rather frightened, as this was the first raid in the area. She took my hand and said: ‘I know I shall be all right with you, Monsieur Xavier, for the bombers must know you are here and they wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.’ I agreed with her to give her confidence, but breathed a quiet prayer that the pair of us would not be hit by a stray bomb.
I went into Annecy after the raid, saw various contacts from the factory, and found that the USAF had not scored one hit, or even a near miss. I sent a message through to Paul telling him this, and a week or two later, the RAF raided the factory again. This time ball-bearing production was brought to a standstill.
But, as I explained, I had to leave the Haute-Savoie and concentrate on the Ain, where it was obvious I was most needed and where it was also obvious that more attacks would be made during the weeks ahead. The Germans could not risk letting thousands of trained, armed men rampage around in their rear if France was to be invaded.
We had to wait, in fact, until the beginning of April for the next major attack. There were several small actions against the GMR meanwhile, but nothing to cause any real trouble. Romans and I were in one of the mountainous command posts in the north of the Ain with Montréal, our area commander, when news came through that thousands of German troops were moving into the sector. We heard that they had gone into Nantua, Oyonnax, and Bellegarde, and were pouring through the Jura, down the Col-de-la-Faucille, wreaking havoc in the villages, and venturing into the Maquis country on the hunt for maquisard camps. Reports talked of ‘several thousand’ motorised troops, and we knew that we were in for a dose similar to that received in the southern part of the area. Montréal sent couriers to some of the main camps passing on the information, and the whole area was warned to stand by. I also sent news to Chabot’s headquarters in the south so that he could carry out diversionary raids on railway lines and trains to harry the Germans and, perhaps, make them reduce the strength of their attacks in the north. Chabot did exceptionally well. The Germans were so pressed in his area that they were forced to send an armoured train ahead of any other train. But that did not stop Chabot. He cut the lines in front of the armoured train, then cut the lines behind it, so that it became isolated and of no further use until the tracks had been repaired. That took up more German time.
The Armée Secrète in the Belley area came to aid us when we called on them. Under their chief, Plutarque, they sabotaged the railways, and on one day, 8 April 1944, they derailed two trains laden with German troops, and another troop-train filled with Milice, in the area to the east of Ambérieu, causing many casualties and blocking the line for a considerable time. All in all, the liaison between the Armée Secrète and the cooperation between our northern and southern sectors was excellent, and showed Romans and myself that all our journeyings and talks over the past months had been well worthwhile. We had a force which was well-balanced, well-trained, and fighting for the same end. I felt very proud.
Fortunately for the Maquis, the Germans concentrated their attention on the towns and villages. They fired some villages, took hostages, shot Resistance men known to have been involved with either the Maquis or Armée Secrète, and tortured others in attempts to learn more about the Maquis. They terrorised the population, and there was nothing we could do, for our weapons were too light to take on Germans armed with mortars, artillery and tanks. But when they came into Maquis country they paid heavily for their bestiality; the Maquis showed no quarter and fought savagely to revenge the townsfolk. The Germans took hostages and warned the countryside that they would be shot if there was any resistance. We ordered a proclamation to be drawn up in German and French which was posted on all the notice boards in the towns and villages. It told the Germans that we had soldiers as prisoners in the Maquis – they knew this, of course, as word was sent to them by comrades of these men – and that for every hostage shot, two German soldiers would die. We also offered to exchange prisoners and hostages, but this offer was not taken up.
One group of Germans in Nantua went to the hospital where Dr Touillon had under his care nine wounded maquisards, as well as some German soldiers, also wounded. The German officer bitterly reviled the doctor for looking after ‘French terrorists’ and demanded that he throw them out of the hospital. Touillon, a very brave man, stood on the steps of the hospital, refused to let the Germans in, and told them that his task as a doctor was to heal people irrespective of race or creed. ‘I shall continue to nurse and doctor both French and Germans here,’ he said emphatically. And he did, for a time. But another German group came during the fourteen days of terrorism sparked by their major attack and took away the nine injured Frenchmen. They were put in a tip-up lorry, driven to a lay-by outside the town, tipped out, and massacred by machine-guns.
The Germans also took our friend Dr Mercier, who had given us such great help in the mountains, and shot him outside Nantua, after a traitor denounced him. His wife, the pharmacist who did so much work for us, later came into the Maquis to work at our hospital.
The northern sector attacks lasted longer than the attacks on Chabot’s sector earlier, but although the Germans had overwhelming superiority and used four or five hundred men to attack a camp sixty strong, their successes were fewer. This was partly because the ground they fought over was much more mountainous than in the south, but mainly because the Germans had become chary and, perhaps, frightened at the losses they incurred. Not once did they overrun a camp, although several had to be abandoned under pressure of attacks, and the camp barraquements were duly burnt. I was with Romans at the command post with Montréal during this period and was delighted to see that the sector held together. There were no stories of lost maquisards wandering the country, no disruption of communications between the commanders and headquarters. It was a very disciplined force, hitting hard and often, in true guerrilla fashion, and then disappearing into the trees. I found Montréal had everything so much under control that there was little for me to do; so I decided to go into the Saône-et-Loire area, which was north west of the Ain and the Department next to the Haut-Jura, where groups I had been unable to visit were clamouring for arms. I spent three to four days touring the area and selected two dropping zones between the two rivers. They were ideal, flat and level, and well away from towns. On the whole, I found the groups well-disciplined and had no hesitation in recommending to London that arms and supplies be dropped. I supervised several drops myself.
My guide was a young milkman in his early twenties, who took me about on the back of his motorcycle, which was very frightening. One morning I had to go into Macon. He drove me on to a long, wide bridge over the river Saône and halfway across we saw that there was a big collection of police at a checkpoint on the other side, and with them, a group of plainclothes men – which meant either Gestapo or Miliciens. My milkman slowed down, and muttered: ‘Merde – les policiers.’ I liked to avoid all checkpoints if it was possible, and I suppose here, because it was quite a busy bridge with heavy traffic we might have turned round and got away with it. But my milkman said: ‘Let’s go and get it over with.’ The police checked our papers, asked him where he was going, to which he replied ‘my early morning milk round’, and we were through. It sounds easy, but I felt the usual tightening in the stomach and, as usual, found my guts had tightened after we passed through.
I returned to the command post in the northern Ain without any real difficulty, and found that fierce fighting was still going on. Montréal was still very calm and still had the situation firmly in his grasp. He told me, without a flicker of a smile: ‘Xavier, I have just learned that we are under attack by two divisions amounting to some 20,000 men. They must think we are important.’
I knew there must have been several thousand Germans involved because they had gone into so many towns and villages. But 20,000 trained infantry was quite a number to set against the 1,500 men we had in the northern sector. I was very pleased we had provoked such a German effort and even more pleased that my maquisards held firm and fought so well.
The Germans pulled out at the end of a fortnight as though they had been given orders to create hell for fourteen days, and then quit. After they pulled out, we set to work to find out exact figures of troops involved, German casualties, and the numbers of Resistance men and hostages who had been shot. The figure 20,000 was correct and this force had killed seventy civilians in the towns and villages, and eighty-five masquisards, while we had killed a thousand Germans, including several officers. We were unable to get an accurate figure for their wounded, but a conservative estimate was one injured for every one killed. In other words, we had achieved a minimum of 10 per cent casualties on two divisions. A very creditable effort, I thought. In addition, of course, were dozens of Germans and Miliciens who had been killed by Chabot on 8 April when he derailed the three trains. I know, from what I learned later, that the German command was appalled at their losses and decided that the Maquis de l’Ain must be exterminated. This they tried to do at a later date, using three divisions.
I arranged more arms drops for the sector to replace the ammunition expended in the fourteen-day fight and we found some more camps to replace those burnt down by the Germans. Within a week we were fully prepared again to take on whatever might come next.
We were ready, and our successes brought a flood of recruits to the Maquis, not all of whom could be trusted. There were many Frenchmen, unfortunately, whose loyalty was in doubt, either because they believed in a German victory or because they had been frightened into betraying their fellow countrymen by threats of torture against them or their families. These traitors, for they were all traitors even if they were working under duress, and the too inquisitive German, caused me much heart searching during my stay in France.
One of the first cases which Romans and I had to judge concerned a gendarme at Pont d’Ain near the village where the family Leopold lived. The police, of course, had to try to discover the whereabouts of young men, liable for forced labour, who disappeared before they were due for call up. The large majority of gendarmes made cursory inquiries and simply reported the boys were untraceable. But not the one at Pont d’Ain. He had tracked down two or three lads who were sent to German labour camps. After the last capture, the local group sent him at least six warnings in writing, telling him to stop his activities, but reports kept coming in telling of continued zeal in his search for lads. I decided we would send him one final warning telling him he would be shot if he went on. He would not stop, and we said he must be killed.
A boy aged eighteen volunteered for the job, and I saw him with Romans in our command post in the Ain. He was a member of the Maquis whose brother had been caught by the policeman and sent to Germany. The boy’s father suffered many interrogations and threats by the gendarme, who was trying to find out where both his sons were. I asked the boy how he would carry out the killing. ‘It is easy. I have seen him morning after morning leave his home on his bicycle at 7.30 a.m. to ride to the gendarmerie. I shall ride up to him on my bike, taunt him about catching my brother, and then shoot him with a .45 revolver which will be hidden in my pocket.’ I told him to go ahead, and it went as easily as he predicted. I wondered over the years whether becoming a gunman had affected the lad, but I was pleased, when in France a year or two ago, to find him working contentedly on his farm. I asked him if the shooting had changed him. He shrugged and said quietly: ‘The war was the war.’
On another occasion, a Maquis patrol sent out from our command post in the southern part of the Ain, came across a young French girl aged nineteen to twenty walking with a man in plainclothes aged about thirty-six. The two were surrounded and brought back to the post, as we did not like people wandering in the woods near our headquarters. I questioned the man, who eventually said he was a captain in the German Army on a day’s leave, which he had decided to spend in the woods with his little friend. I did not believe him, as we had received more than one report in the past week of a couple wandering around various parts of Maquis country. He finally confessed that he had been sent to spy out our camps.
The girl, we found out later, was well known in the area for her affection for various German officers. But we faced a problem: we could not let the girl go as she would certainly pass information to the Germans, and we obviously could not let her live in the women-starved Maquis. The German was a problem as it was impossible to keep him a prisoner in the headquarters. Romans and I talked it out, and in the end I said: ‘They’ll have to be shot. There’s no other course.’ Romans agreed.
We told Romans’ bodyguard, a young killer by the name of Bede de La Butte of our decision, and late at night he took them, one at a time, into the woods, shot them in the back of the head and dug a grave.
These were very difficult decisions to have to make. It was against our principles to shoot people – it was one of the very reasons that we were fighting the Germans – but we were under pressure, and if the lives of our own patriots were jeopardised it was necessary to kill. It was not a matter of revenge, but survival.
There were other times when I had agreed with the order to kill – once at a small hamlet where the local gendarme was too inquisitively anti-Resistance and had been warned many times. I was given the details of his activities, checked them with other Resistance people in the area, and we finally ordered him to be shot. Every day the gendarme went to the hamlet’s only café which stood beside a mill stream. One day the executioner walked into the café, shot the gendarme through the heart, and walked away.
Towards the end of May, with the invasion date approaching, I was increasingly aware of the need for security and I talked with all the commanders and many of the camp commanders about the need to keep as silent as possible on our future plans. I also emphasised, as did Romans, the problems caused by the increasing number of very pretty girl couriers we were using in the Ain and Haute-Savoie and of the importance of there being no involvement with them by the men. Love and sex could play no part in guerrilla life, for a man in love might take undue risks to go to visit a girlfriend in a town or village and lead traitors, Gestapo or Milice to the site of a Maquis camp.
La Brosse, one of our top saboteurs, became very fond of Jo, the courier who went with me to the command post near Brénod just before the major attack, but he had sufficient sense not to prejudice our security by rushing off to visit her whenever she was in our area. I received a personal message at this time to say that my wife had given birth to our first child, a daughter, and I was, of course, delighted, so planned that the next BBC message announcing an arms drop would be: ‘I see everywhere green eyes – Je vois partout des yeux verts.’ This was in honour of my wife, Vi, who had green eyes.
I told one or two people about this message and Romans said: ‘Ah, La Brosse is going around saying that he sees nothing but Jo. She has green eyes. We’ll have them both in the command post and when the message comes through we can have a laugh at the pair of them.’
When the radio message came through we told La Brosse that it had been aimed at him. He took it well, but poor Jo did not know where to look.
I sent several messages through the BBC which had sentimental value to us in the Maquis. One was in honour of Miguet and le garage. They were magnificent throughout my whole time there and never failed to get through with stores and arms after drops or in clearing an enemy train after it had been wrecked. This message read: ‘The garage hands are full of guts – Le garage est gonflé à bloc.’ It went down very well.
Another one concerned Michette, Cantinier’s cousin, who at the beginning of my second visit to France, helped me to find a safe place to hide if ever I was forced to leave the Saulniers. She walked with me through snow up to our knees, for miles above Lake Annecy, until we came to a small shepherd’s hut which had one plank to take a palliasse, a stove, and a cupboard. It was the ideal place for a man to hide out, as it was never occupied, like many other small huts in the area used either by shepherds or climbers. We set out back to Annecy and in the darkness at about eight o’clock, we approached a small alpine hamlet. Michette asked if we might stay in the small hotel there, a place with two or three bedrooms and a large kitchen where the guests ate with the owners. As we were both exhausted from the heavy work of walking through the snow, I agreed and asked the owner for two rooms.
‘I have one room with a double bed, that’s all,’ he said.
We looked at one another and shrugged.
‘We’ll take it,’ I said.
Michette and I had an enormous meal, a bottle of wine, and were nearly asleep over our food. We finally went up to bed. I did not know whether to get into it first or let Michette, but we eventually slept in the vast bed in the small hotel called the Soleil d’Or. We were very good and treated each other as soldiers, true comrades, and completely sexless.
Later, when another drop came along and Michette was at the headquarters, I asked for the BBC to send the message: ‘I’ll see you again at the Soleil d’Or.’ She grinned as she heard it, but it was not until long after the war, when she, Jo, and about a dozen other ex-Maquis types were gathered in Paul Johnson’s, my radio operator’s, lounge in Paris that that story was repeated. Michette told it and then turned to me and said: ‘Just to think, you and I went to bed and didn’t do anything.’ This was the nearest I got to breaching my own security rules.
These seem trifling incidents now, but in wartime Maquis life there were few amusing events and these trifles did bring some light relief.
I faced another problem just before D-Day and this concerned my own courier, Elizabeth Devereaux-Rochester, the American girl who looked so like an Englishwoman, who wore a tweed suit, carried a knapsack on her shoulders, and strode through the countryside. She had worked very gallantly for me and was always on the search for work. She never liked to sit about and if she had to stay in the command post for any length of time she would pester me to give her a task to get her moving again.
But as the weeks went by I had more and more discreet and diffident inquiries about her. A person would say: ‘Ah, Elizabeth, what a wonderful girl she is and how well she’s liked. But doesn’t she look English.’
Romans, too, made one or two remarks about her Englishness, until I felt that it would be wise to have her sent back to London, partly for her own sake and partly to relieve the minds of those she worked with, who were anxious lest their activities be compromised if the girl was captured.
I did not want to sack her because of the great assistance she was to me, and anyway I did not have the heart to. I took the coward’s way out and asked London to recall her, having explained in my cable the growing concern about her Englishness.
When the cable arrived ordering her to return to SOE, Elizabeth asked me why she had been recalled, but I was evasive and embarrassed and made some poor excuse. She then pleaded to stay, but I told her it would be folly as her mother was under constant surveillance by the Gestapo and French police as she was known to be a foreigner. Reluctantly Elizabeth agreed to stay away and finally she left me.
A few days later I heard that she had been arrested and taken to Fresnes Prison. I guessed that she had disobeyed my instructions and had been caught while visiting her mother, and I found later that this was correct. She had a good cover story, a simple one, which was that she had taken a false identity and had lived in the Haute-Savoie for months. She was not badly treated, because the Germans did not consider that she had been involved in the Resistance, and later she was freed when the troops liberated Paris.
Some months later I was in Baker Street in Buckmaster’s office, when one of the staff told me that a girl wanted to see me in the next room. I went in, and before I had shut the door, Elizabeth had stood up and said: ‘Xavier – you were right, I should never have gone near Mother, it was folly.’
I have always been very fond of Elizabeth, I have to this day a great respect for her work and for the guts she showed in France. If only she had not looked so English…
If any blame is to be attached for this incident, it must lie with London in recruiting a girl who looked so un-French. But it was wartime, and Elizabeth did have the qualifications for the job.