Author: Alan Malcher

Military historian and defence commentator

Francis André aka Gueule Tordue, Twisted Face and Crooked Mouth: Klaus Barbie’s most loyal collaborator.

Francis André (Musée de la Résistance Nationale)

Much has been written about Hauptsturmfuhrer Klaus Barbie, the head of the Gestapo in Lyon who became known as the “Butcher of Lyon” after personally torturing men, women and children, but little as been written about Francis André.

Francis André was born in Lyon on 25 February 1909. At school he gained a reputation for intimidating other children and his face was disfigured during a car accident when he was a teenager and after leaving school became a petty criminal with a long record for robbery, swindles and assaults.

Photograph taken after the war when he was arrested for war crimes.

During the Second World War he was exempt from military service because of deafness and left facial paralysis and continued his criminal career. In June 1943, three years after France was occupied, he was approached by a senior officer of the Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, the intelligence arm of the SSS and Nazi Party, to lead a small movement of collaborators in Lyon called the Anti-Terrorist Movement (MNAT) to work against the resistance, Jews, freemasons, Jehovah Witnesses, and people the SD believed were ‘ethnically’ inferior.

The MNAT engaged in a campaign of assassinations, intimidation and its members also looted homes and shops following arrests. ’Crooked Mouth’ is known to have killed 20 members of the resistance and placed signs on corpses saying, “Terror against terror. This man pays with his life. MNAT assassinations are justified by the law of retaliation responding with murder to murders committed by resistance fighters. Signed MNAT.”

A police report written after the war states, summary killings were the dominant activity of the MNAT. They believed all jews were rich in the pretext of their robberies, in addition many of them had taken refuge in Lyon with their transportable goods such as jewellery, cash, gold etc and used this statement to justify their persecution and arrest of jews.

Crooked Mouth left the MNAT and became Klaus Barbie’s trusted personal assistant and like Barbie enjoyed torturing men, women and children and during his trial after the war in January 1946 at the Court of Justice in Lyon Crooked Mouth admitted to killing 120 people whilst working with Barbie and was later estimate the figure was around 160.

A French journalist who attended the trial wrote, “His stranglers hands run over his mouth with every question he was asked. A gesture that seemed to wipe away the horrors of the answers… He was the abominable murderer, Barbie’s most loyal collaborator, a blood thirsty beast, the most sinister collaborator in the Lyon Gestapo”.

After being found guilty for treason, mass murder and other war crimes, on 9 March 1946 Crooked Mouth was executed by a French firing squad.

Alan Malcher.

Irene Arckles: Air Transport Auxiliary Pilot during WW2.

(DB colour from original unknown B&W image)

Irene Arckless was described as an ordinary working class girl determined to obtain her pilots licence who passed her flying test just before the start of the Second World War. During the war she was a pilot with the Air Transport Auxiliary delivering all types of aircraft from factories to operational RAF airfields throughout England.
On Sunday 3 June 1943 she was flying a twin engine Airspeed Oxford when one of the engines malfunctioned during take off and crashed into a house on the outskirts of Oxford. Arckless was rushed to hospital but pronounced dead on arrival.  

27-year-old Irene Arckles is buried at Carlisle, Stanwick Cemetery. Ward 2. Section A. Grave 31. (Commonwealth War graves Commission)

Brian Stonehouse: SOE Wireless Operator. Nine minute film interview released in 1997.

Brian Stonehouse was 24-years old when he parachuted into France on the night of 1 July 1942. This interview briefly examines his war service in France but leaves out many of the difficulties he faced and overcome as a clandestine and his experiences after being incarcerated in five concentration camps. Brian Stonehouse died in London on 2 December 1998 at the age of 80.

1949 Newsreel of HMS Implacable being scuttled.


HMS Implacable was originally the French Navy’s Téméraire-class ship of the line Duguay-Trouin, launched in 1800 that survived the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and later captured by the British during the Battle of Cape Otegal.
During the Anglo-Russian war (2 September 1807- 18 July 1812) HMS Implacable helped capture the Imperial Russian ship of the line Vsevolod. When Implacable was being used as a Royal Navy training ship she was the oldest ship in the RN after HMS Victory, Lord Nelson’s flagship during the Battle of Trafalgar. After her decommission this newsreel dated 1949 shows HMS Implacable being scuttled whilst flying both the Royal Navy White Ensign and the French flag as she sank.

 

RSM ‘NOBBY’ Arnold Parachute Regiment.

RSM ‘Nobby’ Arnald. A legend in the Paras whose sense of humour helped install discipline. I recall a story of him putting his bicycle against the Guardhouse wall and after it fell over in the wind had his bicycle arrested and locked in a cell for not obtaining permission for falling over. Typical RSM banter.

He saw active service in Palestine, Canal Zone and Suez, Cyprus and the Radfan. Many felt that Nobby Arnold should have been decorated for bravery in the Radfan in 1964, where a ridge captured by 3 PARA’s Anti-Tank Platoon was named ‘Arnold’s Spur’ in recognition of WO2 Arnold’s outstanding battlefield leadership and valour. His CO, Anthony Farrar-Hockley, is said to have told Nobby Arnold that the award of decorations was a lottery and Arnold had simply missed out. RIP ‘Nobby’

Alan Malcher.

Mary O’Connell Bianconi MM (Research by the Combined Irish Regiments Associations)

Mary O’Connell Biaconi MM (Combined Irish Regiments Associations)

Mary was born into a prominent family in County Clare, Ireland in 1896.
Known to family and friends as “Molly” she attended a convent school in Limerick followed by finishing schools in Paris and Belgium.
When war came like thousands of other women she wanted to play her part and in 1915 joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), formed to provide nursing and medical care to the military.
An important role undertaken by the VAD was driving Ambulances carrying the wounded from dressing stations close to the front back to Hospitals near the coast. Such work regularly put the drivers in harm’s way being within range of enemy artillery.
At the age of 21, having completed her medical training and been taught how to drive and maintain an ambulance Molly arrived in France in August 1917.
The historian Lyn MacDonald described girls like Molly thus
“She’s called Elsie or Gladys or Dorothy, her ankles are swollen, her feet are aching, her hands reddened and rough. She has little money, no vote, and has almost forgotten what it feels like to be really warm. She sleeps in a tent. She is twenty-three. She is the daughter of a clergyman, a lawyer, or a prosperous businessman, and has been privately educated and groomed to be a lady. She wears the unbecoming uniform of a VAD. She is on active service and as much a part of the war as Tommy”.
Molly soon transferred to the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry but continued to drive ambulances.
It was during the German offensives in the spring of 1918 that Molly and her fellow drivers faced the greatest danger as they continually ventured close to the advancing enemy to evacuate the wounded.
On the night of 18-19May 1918 heavy German bombing raids in the St Omer area caused extensive damage and many casualties. Rather than taking shelter, Molly and her comrades busied themselves rescuing and evacuating the wounded while bombs continued to fall.
For her actions that night Molly was awarded the Military Medal (MM).
“She worked for long hours under fire in the brave attempt to save the lives of those who had been buried in caves, dugouts and hospitals that had been hit.”
According to a document in the National Archives during the First World War the extraordinary women of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry were awarded 135 decorations including 18 Military Medals; 32 French Croix de Guerre; one Legion d’Honneur, and 11 Mentions in Despatches.
Molly survived the war and returned to Civilian life. She married in December 1919 and set up and ran a Hotel with her husband.
At the start of the Second World War she once again joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry and later became a Junior Commander in the Auxiliary Territorial Service for the duration of the war.
Molly died in Guildford, Surrey in 1968 aged 72.

Above written by The Combined Irish Regiments Association.

Forgotten Women of the French Resistance during WW2.

For eighty years thousands of women who were members of the resistance during the Second World War were rarely mentioned in history books. According to history professor Laurent Douzou only 6 women were recognised for their work with the resistance by being awarded the Companion of Liberation compared with 1,038 men.

Though civilian resistance was mainly the work of women they were not counted and according to Vladmir Troupin, the curator at Paris Musee de la Resistance, “Misogyny also explains why there was little attention to the role played by women and in those days women were not supposed to steal the limelight”.

From 1940 to the liberation of France in 1944, 6,700 women were transported to concentration camps, most failed to return and the vast majority were members of the resistance. According to France 24 News, eighty years later French historians are attempting to record the war service of women who served with the resistance.

Odette Nilés (top) died on 27 May 2023 at the age of 100. She was arrested in September 1941 , spent three years in an internment camp and her fiancé who was also a member of the resistance was shot.

Michéle Moet-Agniel (bottom) was arrested for assisting allied aircrews shot down over Belgium and France to escape to neutral Spain and Agniel along with her mother were transported to Ravensbrück concentration camp . Her father was sent to another camp and was not seen again.

Marie-Madeleine Fourcade was the leader of a resistance network called ALLIANCE. After becoming know to the German authorities she spent several months on the run and during this time gave birth to her third child, a son, who was looked after at a safehouse and in 1943 she was smuggled to Spain in a mailbag and was reunited with her children after the liberation.

Madeline Riffund was a sniper who was almost killed during the liberation of Paris and is thought to have been on the last transport train to a concentration camp in Germany.

Eighty years later most who served in the resistance are dead and it may not be possible to provide a full account of the women who played an essential role in the liberation of France.

Alan Malcher.

Eugéne Gréau: French Resistance during WW2.

Tour de France cyclist Eugéne Gréau was married with four children and shortly following the occupation of France joined the resistance. After being arrested for sabotage at the Niort railway yard where he worked he was transported to Sonnenburg concentration camp under the Nacht und Nebel decree (Night and Fog). This decree targeted political activists and members of the resistance and symbolised prisoners disappearing in the night and fog and never being seen again by their families and their faint never being known.

In this respect the decree also punished families because they were regarded as being guilty by association. Eugéne Gréau is thought to have died at Sonnenburg camp in German occupied Poland on 20 December 1943 and like most of the people arrested under this decree has no known grave.

John Young: SOE Wireless Operator F (French Section)

John Young.

John Cuthbert Young was born to British parents in Newcastle, England on 25 September 1907, he was married to a French woman and employed as a fire insurance surveyor before enlisting into the British army. Young was recruited by SOE on 27 April 1942 and is said to have struggled with the physical part of the training and his suitability as an agent was called into question after SOE was informed he told a naval officer and his wife about his potential clandestine service and his wife applied to join FANY because she wanted to be  trained as a wireless operator so she could be near her husband on missions.

After being reprimanded for his serious indiscretion the investigating officer said Young now understood the importance of security whilst working for a branch of the British military that did not officially exist.

Using the code name Gabriel, Young arrived in France by parachute on 19 May 1943 to join the ACROBAT circuit near Saint-Étienne in eastern France. Around five weeks after joining the circuit John Starr, the circuit organiser was arrested by the Germans and ACROBAT, which had around 3,500 armed resisters, was in disarray and the circuit close to collapse. Young took over the circuit, stayed connected with London through his wireless link and organised several sabotage operations that supported the wider allied strategy being planned in London.

Several weeks later Young was warned the Gestapo had his description and he was on their wanted list, German wireless intelligence had detected his transmissions but in keeping with his wireless training Young did not transmit from the same location and this hampered direction finders. After receiving more intelligence London advised Young to leave France but he decided to remain with ACROBAT until London sent his replacement.

Sometime in November André Maugenet arrived in France to takeover ACROBAT and there are two accounts of the chain of events which followed. The Germans were aware Maugenet and two other agents would be arriving by Hudson aircraft because a treble agent named Henri Déricourt,  SOE’s airlanding officer for northern France, tipped off the Gestapo and the three agents were followed from the landing ground and were still under surveillance when they were travelling by train to Paris and were arrested shortly after arriving. This version of events also claims that when Maugenet was searched the Germans found a letter to John Young written by his wife that Maugenet promised to deliver. A Gestapo informer then dressed in Maugenet’s clothes and was carrying his suitcase when he arrived at the safehouse Young was using and after recognising his wife’s handwriting believed the informer was the agent London had told him to expect. However, this version fails to explain how the Germans knew where Young was staying, and it is clear they only became aware after Maugenet arrived in France.

André Maugenet

During his briefing before leaving for France Maugenet was told how to contact Young and some historians believe he was a double agent working for the Germans and it was Maugenet who arrived at the sawmill where young was staying and gave him the letter from his wife and left after a brief conversation. That evening eighteen German soldiers with SD officers arrived at the sawmill, smashed down the door and dragged-out John Young and another agent named Diana Rowden.

Diana Rowden

When Young was arrested, he was handed to the SD and taken to several locations including a prison in Lyon for interrogation, then to Cherche Midi prison in Paris and a witness said they saw him at 3 bis Place des Étas Unis. After France was liberated, it was said allied forces examined 84 Avenue Foch in Paris that was used by the SD as their Paris Headquarters and found “Lt J.C. Young arrived 20.11.43.” scrawled on a cell wall. Young spent time at several prisons before being transported to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria where he was executed but the date of his death is unknown. It was also discovered that Diana Rowden, the other agent arrested with Young at the sawmill was executed at Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in Germany on 6 July 1944.

Several years after the war it was alleged André Maugenet took part in the raid at the sawmill and was armed and according to some historians it is beyond question that he provided information about ACROBAT that led to the arrest of John Young and Diana Rowden. It has also been claimed that in 1954 the French authorities said Maugenet was protected by the Germans and during investigations discovered he was living in Canada but before he could be extradited to stand trial for treason, he escaped to South Africa and the French authorities lost him.

Due to there being no evidence to support the allegations against André Maugenet he was given the benefit of doubt, and his name appears on the Brookwood memorial.

Further information can be obtained from his file (TNA HS9/1008/2) at the National Archives and additional primary sources might be found at the Archives at the Service Historique de la Défence that is part of the Ministére Des Armées.