In researching the naval side of this story, the role of the 15th Motor Gunboat Flotilla and detail of the gunboats, I was fortunate in having the most expert of advice from Commander Christopher Dreyer DSO DSC* RN (Rtd.), and through him (as President of the Coastal Forces Veterans’ Association) further help from John Townend VRD, Charles Milner DSM and W.R. Cartwright DSM, respectively Navigating Officer, Leading Telegraphist and P.O. Motor Mechanic of M.G.B. 718. I was also privileged to see some autobiographical notes left by the late David Birkin, another of the flotilla’s navigating officers; for this I have to thank his widow, the actress Judy Campbell.
In June 1944 718’s first lieutenant, Guy Hamilton, who had landed on ‘Bonaparte’ beach (near Plouha) with two ratings, was unable to rejoin the gunboat – she’d dragged her anchor. They had to be left ashore, and were suspected by the Resistance of being Nazi decoys. He writes – in January 1955 – ‘we were several days and nights on the run… Suspicions were mutual. When at last we cast our lot, I remember a long walk through the night led by a young and equally suspicious lady. Was she just walking us into a trap? We entered a darkened cottage, and I heard a sigh of relief. The blackout curtain was of rubberised canvas. The material used by S.O.E. to pack agents’ stores and equipment. I knew we were in good hands.’
In later years, Guy Hamilton was to become famous as a film director, one of his major successes being Goldfinger.
Into the Fire is a novel, and all the characters in it – except for Maurice Buckmaster and Francois Mitterrand (who did travel with the 15th Flotilla, on occasion) are fictitious. The real-life leaders of the L’Abervrac’h réseau were Paul Hentic, code-name ‘Mao’, Pierre Jeanson – ‘Sarol’ – and their radio operator ‘Jeannot’. David Birkin recorded in his notes that soon after Christmas of 1943 all three were arrested, tortured at Gestapo headquarters in Paris and sent to their deaths in concentration camps; but happily it has more recently emerged that this is not so at any rate in the case of Paul Hentic, who in the summer of 1993 was alive and well and living in the south of France.