From the 1973 Thames Television documentary ‘World at War’ Episode 12 ‘Whirlwind’
Category: History
David Finlayson French Section SOE Wireless Operator
David Finlayson
David Finlayson was born to English parents living in France where he was educated until the age of thirteen and after his family returned to England, he studied engineering at Wolverhampton Technical College.
Finlayson entered the SOE training schools on 25 July 1943 and after successfully completing the three compulsory courses his final assessment said he would be suitable as a member of a coup-de- main party (member of a clandestine circuit) but was only 19 years old and considered too young to be placed in charge of a circuit but was ideal as a wireless operator and after volunteering for wireless training attended the Wireless and Security School at Thame Park, Oxfordshire.
David Finlayson, Maurice Lapage (aka Colin) and an agent named as Lesout arrived in France on the night of 2/3 March 1944 to organise a circuit called LIONTAMER but after parachuting into France nothing was heard from them. London received several messages sent from Finlayson’s wireless, but his personal code was not used, and no security checks were sent. London suspected a German operator was attempting to ‘play back’ his wireless but the channel remained open in case Finlayson, whilst working under pressure, had forgot to use the codes. The channel was eventually closed after London received word that MUSICIAN circuit whose members were tasked with receiving the agents had been destroyed and was under German control. Consequently, the three agents were dropped to German soldiers.
Until late January 1946 there was no information about the fate of the three agents and is now thought David Finlayson was executed at Gross-Rosen camp in Poland.
Alan Malcher
Paul Tessier SOE French Section
Paul Tessier
Paul Tessier was born in Clichy-sous-Bois, France on 15 October 1916 to French parents but was a British national at the time of his service with the British army and was married with two young children.
In 1940 he enlisted into the Royal Fusiliers and sometime in 1942 transferred to the Royal Armoured Corps where he served in a reconnaissance unit. During his SOE training and selection he was described as ‘tough and enthusiastic. Anxious to finish training so he could get down to the real thing.
His first mission to France was in August 1943 as part of the Dressmaker sabotage team that arrived north of Escoussens by parachute to attack a tannery said to be used by the Germans, but the intelligence was wrong and they found the target deserted. The team then became ill after drinking contaminated water and returned to England.
In January 1944 Tessier returned to France to become the second in command of a circuit called Musician commanded by Gustave Biéler, but after being dropped over the pinpoint (drop zone) nothing was heard from him. Shortly after his disappearance London was warned the circuit that arranged the reception committee (helpers on the ground) had been infiltrated by the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence) and Tessier had been dropped to waiting Germans.
On 27 June 1944 SOE HQ in London received a message from a wireless operator working for the Spiritualist circuit informing them Tessier was now working for their circuit. It is now known that after being dropped to German soldiers he escaped from custody after breaking through an outside wall with an iron bar and tied bedding together to make a rope to climb out of the building and did this shortly after German interrogators broke his hand. The Germans and Gestapo now had his photograph and he should have left France through an escape line or air extraction by No.161 Special Duty Squadron RAF that specialised in air landings but he decided to remain in France.
It is known he sheltered with an English born woman whilst working for Spiritualist during which he helped arrange twelve air drops of weapons and involved in sabotage attacks against the railway running from Paris to Strasbourg and Metz. Dates vary according to several sources when Tessier was with three members of Spiritualist circuit attempting to cross the German lines at Clichy-sous-Bois to recover weapons and explosives when the lorry they were traveling in was engaged by Germany soldiers. During a brief firefight Tessier was wounded, capture, then shot and allowed to die in the road.
Paul Tessier was buried at Langny-sur-Marne around 18 miles east of Paris and a town square was later dedicated to his memory.
The square named after Paul Tessier.
Alan Malcher.
Hanna Szenes: SOE (Special Operations Executive) Wireless Operator M26 (Hungarian Section)
Hanna `Anna’ Szenes was born to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary and during the war was living in a Kibbutz in British Mandate of Palestine when she decided to join the British military and is listed as serving as an Aircraft Woman 2nd Class with the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF’s) and her service number was 2992382. The date she completed SOE training at STS 102, Mount Carmel, Haifa is not documented.
On 19 March 1944 Hanna Szenes, Yoel Palgi and Peretz Goldstein parachuted into Yugoslavia to undertake operations in Hungary, but their arrival coincided with the German invasion of Hungary and after hearing the news Palgi and Goldstein decided it was too dangerous and aborted their mission and Hanna continued without them. She stayed briefly with partisans in the Balkans and used her wireless link to SOE Massingham in Algeria to arrange weapons to be dropped by parachute before making her way to Hungary to start her mission.
Hanna was captured with her wireless after crossing the border and because wireless operators where considered a rich source of intelligence was taken to the Hungarian Intelligence Headquarters in Budapest where she was stripped naked, tied to a chair, whipped, clubbed, and beaten by her interrogators. She was tortured over several months but refused to talk and according to a male prisoner her treatment was appalling even judged by the standards usually accorded to spies, but she managed to always keep absolutely silent. The source also said she had been shot, he had seen her body lying in the courtyard of Margit Korut, a road not far from the river Danube in the centre of Budapest and believed she had been executed because she refused to talk.
In 1971, her mother said that after being taken to see her daughter at the Hungarian Intelligence HQ in Budapest the door opened and she went rigid: four men led my Hannah, her face was bruised and swollen, her hair was in a filthy tangle, eyes blackened. I was shattered, all my hope for her collapsed like a house of cards. The Nazis watched us like hawks, Hannah tore herself away from them and threw herself into my arms sobbing. She asked me to forgive her. What for? One of the Nazis ordered me to talk to her, to persuade her to tell everything otherwise this would be the last time I saw her, but Hanna remained silent.
On 28 October 1944 Hanna Szenes was tried for treason and twice the trial was delayed, and whilst in prison she wrote in her diary “I played the number game. The dice I have rolled twice. I have lost” and before the Hungarian judges reached a verdict Hanna was taken from her cell and executed by a German firing squad.
Although the date of her death is listed by the Commonwealth War graves Commission as being sometime in May 1944 her execution took place on 7 November 1944 and after being placed in front of a firing squad witnesses said 23-year-old Hanna refused to wear a blindfold because she wanted to look her killers in their eyes.
Charlotte Wood the famous Canadian War mother of World War One.
Charlotte Wood was born on 27 September 1861 in Chatham Kent and later emigrated to Canada. In 1914 eleven of her sons and stepsons served during the Great War (1914-1918) and five of them were killed. It is known her son Peter was killed near Vimy Ridge with the Saskatchewan Regiment and is among the 11,000 Canadians listed as having no known grave and her son Frederick was killed during the Battle of Mons in 1914.
In 1936 Charlotte Wood was the first to place a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey in London on behalf of all Canadian mothers who lost sons during the Great War. In 1939, a few weeks after the start of the Second World War, she died and was buried in an unmarked grave in Winnipeg Brookside Cemetery and a gravestone was erected 60 years later.
Alan Malcher.
A message from the French Resistance to a collaborator during WW2.
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).
More information at at http://cvrduvaucluse.canalblog.com/archives/2021/07/15/39059668.html
Alan Malcher.
Remembrance Sunday is not only for the men and women killed in action during the two world wars and all conflicts since then.
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.
Alan Malcher
Georges Blind the smiling resistance fighter.
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.
Alan Malcher
Yvonne Cormeau (nee Biesterfield).
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.
SOE: The French Grand Prix Drivers
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 operator named 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.
Alan Malcher
Alan Malcher 