Tag: Alan Malcher Historian

David Sibree: SOE Operation Scullion ll

David Sibree ALan Malcher

British born David Sibree returned to England on 5 December 1942 from North Africa where he was serving since 1937 with the French Foreign Legion and wanted to join a commando unit but because he spoke fluent French his details were sent to SOE.

A few days before the start of his agent training and selection (20 April 1943) Sibree was arrested by the police after a drunken fight in London which meant his temperament made him unsuitable to be an agent (long-term undercover missions)  but considered useful for what SOE called coup-de-main missions. These were missions of short duration similar to commando raids  after which they  were extracted from the country.

Operation SCULLION  ll arrived in France on the night of 16/17 August 1943 to sabotage the Les Telots oil refinery near Autun after a previous operation called SCULLION l had failed. Apart from David Sibree, the team consisted on eight other British operatives, four French, one American, one Canadian and an agent named George Demand had landed four days earlier to prepare the ground. The team damaged the refinery with explosives but there are differing views of how effective the operation was.

According to documents, after the raid only two members of the team, Captain Dormer and Sergeant Birch,  escaped to England . The others were captured and known to have been in Frésnes Prison as late as November 1943 before being deported to Flossenburg Concentration Camp in Germany.

Sometime in 1944 all were executed over a period of time, it  is believed two were shot and the others were hanged.

Alan Malcher

The First and Last Soldiers Killed During Operation Banner (Northern Ireland)

The number of military and police casualties during Operation Banner  (14 August 1969 to 31 July 2007) vary according to sources with one source stating 1,400 soldiers and 319 Royal Ulster Constabulary Officers were killed and 6,100 members of the security forces injured.

Firsat and lst

The first soldier killed during Operation Banner was 20 year old Robert Curtis serving with the Royal Artillery who was shot in the New Lodge area of Belfast on 6 February 1971.

The last army fatality was 23 year old Stephen Restorick serving with the Royal Horse Artillery who was shot whilst manning a checkpoint at Bessbrook, South Armagh in February 1997. His killer was found guilty of multiple murders and bomb plots and sentenced to 490 years in prison, but was released after serving 16 months as part of the Good Friday Agreement! The Good Friday Agreement allowed all convicted terrorists to be released from prison and those on the run received comfort letters. Many Banner Veterans and their supporters accuse the British Government under Prime Minister Tony Blair of betrayal and persecution after several former soldiers fifty year after alleged events appeared in court.

Many veterans also resent Tony Blair for knowingly lying to Parliament and the British people when he said  Iraq under Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s) to obtain approval for an illegal war against Iraq.

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.

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.

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.