From the Museum of Resistance in Caen. A miniature coffin sent by a member of the French Resistance to a collaborator warning them of an impending visit!
Translation of the French text by Dr Christine Quintlé: First line: Mort à l’informateur (death to the informant). In the middle the senders: Cross of Lorraine and FFI. In the last line, which continues the first one: de la Milice et des Boches (for the Militia and the “Boches”. Boches was a pejorative nickname meaning Germans).
On 24 October 1940, 16 year old Aircraftman 1st Class Harry Clack was two days into his military service with No.54 MU RAF when he was electrocuted whilst recovering a German Dornier DO 215 bomber shot down near St Neots when the crane he was operating touched overhead power cables. Harry Clack is thought to be the youngest RAF fatality during the Second World War.
Georges Blind was a fireman from Belfort, France who was arrested for being a member of the resistance. After the Gestapo failed to make him talk he was placed in front of a mock firing squad and told if he refused to provide information he would be shot – his response was to smile at his executioners.
After this failed he was deported to a concentration camp and is thought to have been executed in late November 1944.
As well as being a military historian I have written about defence and security; advised journalists, authors, discussed the subject on television and radio and the following is my take on the current geopolitical situation.
At the time of writing (10 October 2023) Hamas terrorists have entered Israel and killed around 1,000 Israeli citizens and it is thought the numbers will increase. There are graphic accounts of babies, toddlers, entire families being massacred; it has also been claimed the Israel Defence force (IDF) found forty babies with their heads cut-off, others with their throats cut, and people burnt alive. The IDF recently announced that around 130 men, women and young children have been taken to the Gaza Strip who Hamas has threatened to execute. There is also evidence of women being beaten and raped sometimes Infront of their families.
In June 1967 war broke out between Israel and a coalition of Arab nations consisting of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Pakistan who were defeated by Israel within six days and consequently became known as the Six Day War. In 1973 there was the Yom Kippur War against Israel by Egypt, Syria and expeditionary forces consisting of Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Kuwait, Tunisia, Morocco, Cuba, and North Korea. Although often volatile and politically complex there continues to be no open hostility from these countries towards Israel.
A period of international terrorism
Dawson Field Hijackings by the PLO. Four airliners bound for New York and one for London were forced to land at Dawson’s Field, Jordan and blown up.
PLO hijacker Leila Khaled
After military action failed to destroy Israel the conflict was spread to Europe by international terrorists such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command who attacked overseas Israeli targets and hijacked western airliners, but this increased support for Israel from western nations and attacks are now seldom outside Israel. There continues to be emotional language such as occupation and apartheid going back to 1948 but conventional war and the many terrorist attacks against Israel are seldom mentioned by people of protest who often overlook modern geopolitics as the driving force of continued violence.
Hamas. Their original manifesto was antisemitism blaming Jews for all wars supported by Jewish international bankers. This was later removed but continued to call for the destruction of Israel.
Hamas dominate the political life of Palestinian and is widely believed Iran has been providing finance, weapons, and training for Hamas terrorist since they took over the Gaza Strip and like the so-called rejection front Iran and Hamas share the same moto ‘Death to Israel’. According to the Wall Street Journal (8 October 2023) Iran help plot the attack on Israel over sever weeks and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard gave the final go-ahead.
It is inevitable the massacre of 1,000 Israeli citizens mainly in their homes and the brutal nature of their deaths will lead to a disproportionate military response against the densely populated Gaza Strip resulting in mass casualties among the civilian population. It may also be argued Iran and Hamas have used Palestinian civilians as pawns in an attempt to destabilise the region, further escalate the conflict and damage forthcoming talks and possible closer political relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel which would be a game changer in the middle east. Most Palestinians are not responsible for the massacres of Israeli men, women, and children but will pay the price because there is no such thing as a none military target in Gaza where weapons are hidden in mosques and residential buildings.
Many protesters continue to express anger over what they call Israeli occupation and expansionism but for Israel controlling Gaza is regarded essential for protecting their country. It is clear from current and ongoing events a One-state solution sometimes called a bi-national state is impossible until the people of Palestine have a stable political system that firmly rejects the Iranian proxy war supported by Hamas and Hezbollah. The massacres of Israeli citizens, the taking of hostages and hate speeches from Iran suggest many more generations of Palestinians will be used as pawns by state and non-state players, consequently, the barrier to peace is not connected with 1948 and many of the events that followed, a political solution leading to lasting peace is impossible under the current geopolitical landscape.
Yvonne Cormeau (nee Biesterfield). In 1937 She married Charles Cormeau who joined the Rifle Brigade at the outbreak of war and in 1940 was wounded in France and returned to England. Shortly after his return Charles was killed when their family house was destroyed during a German air raid on London and Yvonne escaped serious injury after a bath fell on top of her and protected her head but their unborn child was killed. After recovering she joined the WAAF’s and was later recruited by SOE and sent her 3-year-old daughter to live in the countryside to avoid the bombings.
On the night of 22-23 August 1943 Cormeau arrived by parachute at Saint-Antoine-du-Queyret to join Wheelwright circuit as their wireless operator in the Gascony area. She frequently cycled 30 miles a day to avoid direction finders and passed over 400 messages to London. In June 1944 she was shot in the leg during a firefight but managed to escape with her wireless and the dress she was wearing and her blood-stained briefcase is on display at the Imperial War Museum.
IWM
Yvonne Cormeau died on 25 December 1997, aged 88 in Fleet Hampshire.
William Grover-Williams was born in Montrough Hauts-de-Seine, France on 16 January 1903 to an English father and French mother and spoke fluent French and English. By the age of 29 he was a well-known racing car driver who had won several Grand Prix’s for Bugatti including the 1929 Monaco Grand Prix and during the same year married Yvonne Aupicg who later worked for the resistance. Following the occupation he escaped to England and joined the Royal Army Service Corps and was recruited by SOE on 17 November 1941.
Shortly after completing training Grover-Williams returned to France and established the Chestnut circuit consisting of pre-war racing friends among them being SOE agents Jean-Pierre Wimille and Robert Benoist and both had previously raced for Bugatti. Chestnut was based on the Benoist family estate in Auffargis, a commune in the Yvelines department in north-central France, and throughout 1941 the Germans did not suspect them of being involved in resistance because they were regarded as respected sportsmen.
Jean-Pierre Wimille
Robert Benoist
In March 1942 Chestnut received a wireless operatornamed Robert Dowlen who began transmitting from a farmhouse on the road to Pontoise situated north-east of Paris and in keeping with wireless security his location was unknown by other members of the circuit and his only contact was through a courier and the wives of Wimille and Benoit worked on reception committees. Chestnut received several arms drops but little sabotage was undertaken but useful intelligence from well-placed contacts was regularly passed to London through their wireless link until 31 July when Dowlen was found by direction finders and arrested whilst still in contact with London. On 2 August Benoit’s brother, Maurice, was arrested at his Paris flat and this was followed by German soldiers searching the Benoit estate during which they found fifty-one weapon containers hidden in an old well and a further forty-seven containers hidden behind a false wall in a stable. Benoit’s father, wife and several servants working for the circuit were arrested, Grover-Williams was later found hiding in the stables and beaten for information but refused to cooperate and was taken to 84 Avenue Foch, the Paris headquarters of the Sicherheitsdient (SD) the counter-intelligence branch of the SS.
The fourth floor (top) had a guard room and cells where Grover-Williams was held along with other political prisoners and an interrogation room containing instruments of torture. It is known Grover-Williams was tortured throughout the night by Ernest Vogt, a Swiss-German civilian translator and interrogator working for the SD at Avenue Foch from 1940 and because there were no further arrests it is assumed Grover-Williams refused to identify members of his circuit. It is known he was transported to the SS Reich Security headquarters at Prinz Albrecht Strasse in Berlin for ‘advanced’ interrogation which often included torture by electricity and later transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp and in March 1945 Berlin ordered he be shot. There is no evidence to support the claim Grover-Williams survived the war and worked for MI6 until he was killed in a road accident in 1986.
Three days after the arrest of his family Robert Benoit was arrested on a Paris street: four Gestapo officers with weapons drawn bundled him into the back of a large car and one officer sat either side of him but they neglected to handcuff him and secure the rear door. As the car sharply turned left Benoit pushed the officer out of the moving car whilst diving headfirst from the vehicle and during the confusion escaped down a narrow passageway. After receiving assistance from friends he later joined an escape line to England.
In October 1943 Benoit returned to France by parachute and later returned to England for a few weeks to attend advanced training before returning to raise resistance in the Nantes area and was arrested on 18 June 1944 and taken to Buchenwald concentration camp and on 14 September was executed by slow strangulation after being suspended from piano wire from a hook on the crematorium wall. This barbaric form of execution was intended to make death as slow and painful as possible for political prisoners. The other agent, Jean-Pierre Wimille, survived the war and died in 1949 after crashing his car during the Buenos Aires, Argentina Grand Prix.
Hooks on the crematorium wall used to strangle political prisoners.
Staff at the SOE training school in Scotland called William Fairbairn and Eric (Bill) Sykes the ‘Angelic twins’ and some students called Fairbairn the ‘Shanghai Basher’ or ‘Dangerous Dan’. The fighting system they developed was sometimes referred to as gutter fighting because there were no rules or so-called gentlemanly conduct.
I recently found this brief documentary on the internet.
After Belgium was occupied Villiers reconnoitred German airfields in Belgium and northern France and passed the intelligence to London. She also worked for an escape line rescuing allied air crews shot down over Belgium and assisted them to reach neutral Spain but after several members of the resistance were arrested Villiers was warned the Gestapo knew her identity and was high on their wanted list. She then obtained forged identity papers, dyed her hair black and escaped to England though Spain and Portugal.
Dr. Mark Felton is a well-known British historian, the author of 22 non-fiction books, including bestsellers ‘Zero Night’ and ‘Castle of the Eagles’, both currently being developed into movies in Hollywood. In addition to writing, Mark also appears regularly in television documentaries around the world, including on The History Channel, Netflix, National Geographic, Quest, American Heroes Channel and RMC Decouverte. His books have formed the background to several TV and radio documentaries.
Alan Malcher 