23-year-old Philip Amphlett was recruited from No.2 Commando, but his SOE training report said he was unsuitable as a clandestine agent and was better suited for direct action and parachuted into France on 16 August 1943 with a small team as part of Operation Scullion II after a similar operation (Scullion I) had failed. The team was sent to sabotage a distillation plant near Autun, France that was making synthetic oil but after reaching the target their demolition charges caused little damage.
Amphlett was last seen in Dijon on 23 August 1943 whilst making his way to an extraction point to escape from France and nothing more was heard from him. Over a year later it was discovered Amphlett had been captured and after being interrogated by the Gestapo was transported to Flossenburg Concentration Camp where he was executed,
In October 1945 Vera Atkins, SOE French Section intelligence officer who after the war went on a personal crusade to track down missing members of her section, wrote to his father saying ‘his son had shown exemplary courage and an uncompromising attitude towards his jailers’. Philip Amphlett has no known grave.
The capture and execution of Jack Agazarian is complex, surrounded by conspiracy theories; is beyond the scope of this brief essay and is covered in great detail in my forthcoming book.
Jack Agazarian was the second of six children of an Armenian father and French mother and was a British citizen when he joined SOE on 30 May 1942. He arrived in France by parachute on the night of 29 December 1942 and worked as the wireless operator for the Physician circuit operating in Paris. Physician is sometimes wrongly called Prosper: Prosper was the code name of its circuit leader Francis Suttill and to avoid confusion the circuit is sometimes referred to as Physician/Prosper.
During the six months Agazarian was in France he maintained contact with London and arranged weapons and sabotage stores to be dropped by parachute; received orders and arrange the arrival of other agents by parachute and air landings by Lysander aircraft.
Lysander pilots needed a specially trained agent on the ground called an air movements officer who ensured the field was suitable for the technical specification of the aircraft and commanded members of the resistance responsible for laying out signal lamps in a recognised pattern indicating wind direction and where the aircraft needed to land, and the local air movement officer was an agent named Henri Déricourt.
It is known Jack Agazarian and other agents suspected Déricourt of being a double or even a triple agent working for the Gestapo and Abwehr and after Agazarian returned to London he reported his suspicions.
Henri Déricourt. Photograph thought to have been taken during his trial.
Agazarian was on leave when he was asked if he would volunteer to return to France with Nicholas Boddington to investigate his claims and it later transpired Boddington was a pre-war friend of Déricourt and recommended Déricourt to SOE. Agazarian arrived in France on the night of 22 July 1943 and after meeting Boddington there is no explanation why Agazarian volunteered to visit Déricourt’s safe house after saying it was dangerous and after arriving was arrested by the SD.
It is known Jack Agazarian spent time at the SD Paris headquarters at Avenue Foch and Fresnes Prison before being deported to Flossenburg Concentration camp in Bavaria, Germany where he was executed. After the war Déricourt was tried in a French court for treason but was not convicted after Boddington gave evidence for the defence, and after an investigation by MI5 Boddington was cleared of any wrongdoing.
Henri Déricourt returned to his flying career and is thought to have been transporting illegal opium throughout Asia. On 21 November 1962 Déricourt took off from Vientiane, Laos with a load of gold and four passengers and after the aircraft crashed his body was never recovered. In 1986 Colonel Morris Buckmaster, the former commanding officer of SOE French Section, was asked whether Henri Déricourt was a German agent and he replied “Nobody knows. He’s dead and the truth died with him.”
When the Lancaster is seen at air shows many are not aware this aircraft is a flying memorial to the 57,000 aircrew killed during WW2. There was also a further 8,903 wounded due to enemy action and 9,838 POW’s. (no image source but possibly from the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight)
Alfred Wilkinson. Circuit organiser serving with the French Section SOE
Alfred Wilkinson had duel nationality British/French and was born in Paris and left his wife and young child in France to join the British Army.
Wilkinson parachuted into France on 5 April 1944 to organise the Historian circuit in the Orléans area where his wife and young child were still living, and SOE documents described it as “an area where German repressive measures had effectively checked all previous attempts to develop a resistance network. After receiving arms and other war materials by parachute Wilkinson and his Historian circuit prepared for large scale sabotage for D-day and by 6 June (D-day) the railway lines and telecommunication targets his circuit had been ordered to sabotage had been destroyed and added to the major disruption of the German military caused by other circuits.
It is known Wilkinson was captured towards the end of June at Olivet a commune in the Loiret department in north-central France and for the first fortnight was kept at the Eugéne Prison in Orléans. He was then taken to Frésnes Prison outside Paris where he was described by other SOE prisoners as looking well and Wilkinson was among a large batch of SOE agents and resistance fighters taken from Frésnes to Buchenwald concentration camp to be used as slave labour.
On 24 August Allied aircraft bombed the Gustloff armament factory outside the camp where many prisoners were forced to work. Several bombs hit the SS barracks killing 8 and injuring 300 SS soldiers and many prisoners. It was later said that in retaliation for the air raid the camp commandant Obersturmbannfuhrer Herman Pister ordered the execution of all British and French ‘terrorists.’
Seven prisoners were executed on 14 September and on 5 October more prisoners including Alfred Wilkinson were executed and according to a post-war investigation before being hung the men stood rigidly to attention whilst shouting ‘long live France. Long live England.’
Notorious Hermann Pister. Image taken after being arrested by American forces.
After the war Pister was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death but died of a heart attack before being hung.
Yolande Unternahrer was born in Paris to a Swiss family in 1911 and moved to London as a child.
After the declaration of war in 1939 she enlisted into the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAFFs) where she trained as a wireless operator. Due to her language skills, she spoke fluent English, French, German and Italian, Yolande came to the attention of the Special Operations Executive and whilst attending the wireless and security school to become a wireless trained agent that required skills not found in other branches of the military she met a trainee wireless operator named Jaap Beekman who was serving with the Dutch Section of SOE. Shortly after they married, on the night of 17/18 September 1943 Yolande Beekman parachuted into France to join the Musician circuit in Saint-Quentin in the department of Aisne as their wireless operator.
It is known Yolande Beekman was in regular contact with London and arranged the delivery of over 20 parachute drops of weapons, ammunition, and explosives before breaking wireless security procedures: it was later said Beekman transmitted from the same location, on the same frequency and on the same three days of the week and was eventually located by German direction finders. Beekman along with her circuit organiser Gustave Biéler were arrested at the Café Moulin, Saint-Quentin on 13 January 1944.
At Gestapo Headquarters in Saint-Quentin both were tortured but refused to provide useful information. Beekman was then taken to Gestapo Headquarters at Avenue Foch in Paris and was later sent to Frésnes Prison near Paris and shared a cell with a nurse called Hedwig Muller who had been arrested by the Gestapo and after the war said Beekman seldom left her cell because her legs were weak and her leg injuries are thought to have been caused through torture.
At Frésnes there were three other SOE agents: Madeleine Damerment, a courier with Bricklayer circuit; Elaine Plewman who worked as a courier with Monk circuit and Noor Inayat Khan a wireless operator assigned to the ill-fated Prosper/Physician circuit.
Elaine Plewman, Yolande Beekman, Madeleine Damerment, Noor Inayat Khan
At 01:30 hrs on the morning of 10 September 1944 the women were handcuffed and taken to a railway station and eventually arrived at Dachau Concentration Camp. On 13 September Obersturmbannfuhrer Fredrich Wilhelm Ruppert executed the three women and after the war a member of the Gestapo named Christian Ott gave the following statement to American investigators:
“The four prisoners had come from the barrack in the camp where they had spent the night, into the yard where the shooting was to be done… The death sentence was announced to them…. The German speaking English woman {Beekman} had told her companions of the death sentence. All four had grown very pale and wept… Beekman {he called her the major!} asked whether they could protest against the sentence. The Kommandant declared that no protest could be made against the sentence. The major (Beekman) had then asked to see a priest. The camp Kommandant refused on the grounds that there was no priest in the camp.
The four prisoners now had to kneel with their heads towards a small mound of earth and were killed by two SS, one after another shot through the back of the neck. During the shooting the two English women held hands and the two French women likewise. For three of the prisoners the first shot caused death, but the German speaking English woman (Beekman) a second shot had to be fired as she still showed signs of life after the first shot.
After the shooting of these prisoners the Lagerkommandant said to the SS men that he took a personal interest in the jewellery of the women and that this should be taken to his office.”
It was also later stated the four women had been badly beaten before their executions.
SS Officer Wilhelm Ruppert. Image taken after being arrested by American forces.
After the war SS Officer Wilhelm Ruppert who was in charge of executions at Dachau was convicted of war crimes and executed by hanging.
This stone plaque called ‘Tyburn Tree’ will be found on the large traffic island on Edgeware Road near Marble Arch in London and is one of many historical reminders of London’s dark history which often goes unnoticed. Though called the ‘Tyburn Tree’ there was no tree at this location and refers to the name given to a wooden scaffold used for public executions which could accommodate three prisoners at a time. From 1196, the first recorded execution, to 1783 this part of London was open countryside and hangings were considered popular entertainment. For instance, when highwayman Jack Sheppard was executed, there is said to have been an excited crowd of around 200,000. Two expressions used during this period continue to be in popular use: “one for the road”, originally meant the last pint of ale before the condemned was transported by cart to Tyburn with excited crowds following them, also associated with alcohol is the expression ‘hangover’. Public hangings were abolished in 1868.
Belgium fighter pilot Eugene Seghers RAF (VR). His memorial plaque in Walden Uckfield, East Sussex states: “Flight Lieutenant Seghers took off in his Spitfire from RAF Deanland to intercept V1’s (Anti-driver patrol) South of Uckfield. He failed to destroy a Doodlebug after intense cannon fire, its engine cut out, meaning that its terrible descent towards the town was imminent. Flight Lieutenant Seghers courageously attempted to deflect the high explosive flying bomb away from Uckfield using his aircraft’s wing. Near this location at 14:22 he made contact with the bomb causing it to detonate, destroying the Spitfire and killing the brave airman instantly. Sub Alis Gloria” (Under Wings of Glory) 26 July 1944.
Part of the Shuttleworth Collection. The Lysander with distinctive extra fuel tank bolted between its undercarriages to allow the aircraft to fly deep into occupied France and return to RAF Tangmere during ‘pickup’ operations (delivering and extracting SOE, MI9, SIS, RF agents). Also distinguishable by the matt black fuselage and underside of wings to allow the aircraft to blend in with the moonlit sky and tops of wings camouflage to blend in with the ground when night fighters approached from above.
Nancy Wake GM, Officer of the Legion of Honour (France), Medal of Resistance (France), Medal of Freedom (USA). SOE agent aka Helena Andree and called the White Mouse by the Gestapo in France who failed to catch her)
Alan Malcher 