INTRODUCTION

Barbara Bertram always said she felt sick when the moment came for her guests to leave for the aerodrome at Tangmere. It must have felt as though she were standing over a dark, dizzying abyss into which they were disappearing. These were young Frenchmen and women of her own age, many of whom she had come to know well during their shared anxious days and nights waiting for the message, ‘c’est on’ or ‘c’est off’. And they were heading off to an existence about which she was allowed to know nothing other than that many would encounter torture and death. Even after the war, when she wrote and lectured about the bizarre role she played, she kept her audiences rapt mainly by the account of her own daily routines, only occasionally giving anecdotal glimpses of what it was like for the pilots and the agents they served.

So the book you are holding is an attempt to place my great aunt Barbara’s efforts into a broader context, to shed light on the dingy world that awaited her guests and to demonstrate how her contribution, although far from the front line, provided a crucial, revitalizing link in the often murderous chain of wartime intelligence gathering. Although there are chapters which describe life at Bignor Manor, this story is not so much about Barbara Bertram but because of her. It is also a reminder that the agents of the Secret Intelligence Service and its Free French equivalent had as great, if not as explosive, an impact on the liberation of Europe as their more celebrated counterparts in the Special Operations Executive.

My greatest regret is not having begun this study fifteen years earlier when many of the main protagonists who survived the war were still alive. But despite being unable to ask them now how they felt at the crucial moments of their adventures, there has been a wealth of highly readable autobiographical material to draw upon, particularly from the French. Their accounts of their relations with officers of the SIS are likely to be the only publicly accessible record of such encounters, the Official Secrets Act and MI6 security (even over events of eighty years ago) being what they are.

I make no apology for having produced a chronicle rather than an analysis of this intriguing aspect of the war. By following a handful of individuals through their extraordinary experiences, I leave it to the reader to draw conclusions about the magnitude of their achievements. The story poses other questions too. What persuaded some of these individuals to expose not just themselves but their loved ones to such danger, especially in the early days of the occupation when help from abroad seemed so remote? Are people who are prone to extreme political standpoints greater risk takers? Did a paucity of schooling in intelligence-gathering techniques help or hinder the likes of Renault and Fourcade in their prodigious network building? And how much more difficult or simple would the SIS’s task have been without General de Gaulle and what he stood for? Please ponder at your leisure.

And you might want to ask yourself what sort of effect the sight of a tiny British aeroplane, bumping down into a moonlit field after its lonely plod over a hostile land mass, had on a man about to make his escape from occupied France. Many such Frenchmen and women who survived would go on to follow important careers in public life after the war. Most of them had very mixed feelings about the British and their apparent desertion of France in 1940. Some would even harbour a degree of jealous hatred for a nation that had so far escaped the Nazi jackboot through no show of strength or courage — or none that was obvious to them, at least. How much did the skill and daring of the Lysander pilot that delivered them to safety, or the homely and heartfelt welcome encountered on the doorstep of Bignor Manor, help to dispel their Anglophobia and seal long-lasting international friendships?