Tag: Alan Malcher Military Historian

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.

Adolphe Deniset: Weapons instructor SOE F (French Section)

Adolphe François was a French Canadian whose parent unit was the Royal Canadian Artillery who began his SOE selection and training in October 1943.

His training assessment describes him as very intelligent, mature minded, serious and of good motivation and stated he could do good work in the field. A later report added, whilst he has certain powers of leadership and has a pleasant and unaggressive manner his personality lacked the forcefulness to be fully effective and would be best used as an instructor or a subordinate organiser.

Though his French was excellent it was said his accent could sometimes be identified as French-Canadian, he also had no knowledge of France and was even surprised to learn the French drunk coffee out of a glass in cafés and was therefore decided he did not have the knowledge to run a circuit but would make a good lieutenant. Consequently, Deniset was sent to join the PHONO circuit in the Chârtres area as its second in command and arms instructor.

During his operational briefing Deniset was given a list of targets to sabotage which included locomotive sheds, railways and roads and was told to pass the list onto Emile Garry the leader of PHONO. On the night of 28 February 1944 (but like many SOE documents, dates vary according to sources at several archives) he boarded a Halifax bomber of 161 Special Duty Squadron RAF at Tempford with three other agents sent to establish a circuit in Brittany. It had been arranged for the agents to be dropped to a reception committee from PHONO circuit, but London was not aware the circuit had been destroyed and was under German control. The area where they were going to be dropped had been cordoned off by SS troops under the command of SS Sturmbannfurther Joseff Kiefer, head of the Paris SD and the three agents were arrested as soon as they landed.

It is known Deniset was interned at Frésnes prison and according to some accounts was taken to an underground solitary confinement cell with no lighting, no bed and no water and the only person he saw was a guard once a day who brought him weak soup.

On 2 June 1944 Deniset was seen by other captured agents at 3 bis Place des États Unis, a street located in the Chaillot district of Paris.

A post-war investigation found it extremely difficult to discover what happened to Deniset after leaving Frésnes Prison. Some witnesses said he was transported to Ravitsch concentration camp in northern Germany around 56 miles from Berlin but was later recorded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission that Deniset was executed at Gross-Rousen concentration camp but there is no accurate date of his execution.

Alan Malcher

Northern Burma, troops of 2nd Battalion The Buffs cross the Shweli River before the assault on Myitson, with machine gun, mortar and artillery fire in support, as the divisional commander watches.

The full clip and other film archives can be found at: https://www.iwm.org.uk/

2nd Battalion the Buffs

Private Henry Tandey VC, DCM, MM awarded during the Great War.

Private Henry Tandey was among the most decorated soldiers who survived the First World War and the question remains whether he could have changed history if he had not shown compassion towards a wounded German soldier.

It is widely believed the wounded German soldier was Adolf Hitler but some historians claim it was not Hitler and the myth was promoted by Hitler himself to impress his political followers and the German military. Debate as to the identity of the wounded German soldier continues.

Jan Baalsrud MBE (1917-1988) SOE Norwegian Section

(Image source Unknown)

In early 1943 Baalsrud was part of Operation Martin consisting of three other Norwegian agents who were taken to Norway by a clandestine fishing boat with a Norwegian crew of eight. Their mission was to destroy a control tower at a German airfield at Bardufoss and then recruit and establish a resistance movement.

They had been given the name of a resistance contact who ran a small shop but after making contact were unaware the shop had been bought by a man with the same name. Fearing for his life and believing it was a German trick the shopkeeper reported the agents to the police who passed the information to the Germans and the Gestapo started an investigation.

The following morning their fishing boat that contained over 100 kilograms of explosives for the attack was intercepted by a German gunboat and under fire the agents placed timing pencils into the explosives to destroy the vessel and cause confusion whilst escaping in small boats that were quickly sunk by the gunboat and the survivors begun swimming ashore in the icy Artic waters. Baalsrud was the only one not killed or captured and by the time he reached the shore he was freezing cold, missing one boot and then ran into a snow gully where he was confronted by a Gestapo officer who he shot dead with his pistol before continuing his escape.

Whilst evading German troops Baalsrud wandered through a snowstorm for three days, his feet froze and used a knife to amputate nine of his frost-bitten toes to stop the spread of gangrene, an avalanche then buried him almost to his neck and was entombed in snow for four days. After being found by Norwegian villagers he was tied to a stretcher and for seven weeks was close to death as they dragged him across mountains in the snow.

 A villager contacted the resistance and was told to leave him on a high plateau on his stretcher and people would be sent to rescue him but because of bad weather and many German troops in the area he was there for 27 days suffering from snow blindness, he had not eaten and was close to death. After being found by the resistance he was carried to the border with Finland where villagers put him on a reindeer sledge and eventually reached neutral Sweeden.

Baalsrud then spent several months in a Swedish hospital before returning to England aboard an RAF aircraft. After being passed fit to be an instructor he helped train and select recruits for the Norwegian Section at the SOE phase two training school on the remote Scottish Highlands and after learning how to walk with only one toe with a walking stick, he volunteered to return to Norway as an agent and continued his clandestine work until Norway was liberated in May 1945.

Jan Baalsrud died on 30 December 1988 at the age of 71 in Kongsvinger, Norway.

Four Square Laundry: Northern Ireland (Operation Banner) surveillance and intelligence during the 1970s.

Intelligence operations during Banner remain a closely guarded secret, true accounts have often been replaced by Sinn Féin/IRA propaganda and the Four Square Laundry is a good example of the propaganda found in pro- Sinn Féin/IRA publications.

To combat terrorism by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) in 1972 the British Army created the Mobile Reaction Force (MRF). This clandestine unit was based at Palace Barracks, Hollywood Northern Ireland and consisted of around forty men and women from the army who were specially trained and selected for intelligence and surveillance operations which journalist at the time called plain clothes soldiers.

Four Square Laundry (Intelligence Museum)

Four Square Laundry collected washing from parts of Belfast where terrorists were known to live and before being cleaned and returned to customers were forensically examined for traces of explosives and gunshot residue.

Double agents Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee.

Two MRF double agents, Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee, were discovered by PIRA and whilst being tortured for information provided details about the army operation, both were later shot in the back of the head and their bodies were thought to have been buried somewhere in the border region of South Armagh.

Sapper Edward Stuart (Royal Engineers whilst serving with MRF)

On 2 October 1972 the laundry van was being driven by Edward Stuart whose home unit was the Royal Engineers and was accompanied by Lance Corporal Sarah-Jane Walker. Walker was returning laundry to a customer and standing at their front door when a car drew close to their van, three gunmen got out whilst the driver remained in the car ready for a quick getaway and Sapper Edward Stuart was killed instantly by automatic weapons thought to be Kalashnikovs recently supplied by Colonel Gaddafi of Libya.

According to Sinn Féin/IRA propaganda Sarah-Jane Walker ran into the house hysterically screaming Protestant paramilitaries were trying to kill them and was given refuge, but this is not true.  During the first sound of gunshots Walker turned round, faced the terrorists and engaged them with her 9mm Browning HP automatic pistol and the gunmen fled. Plain clothes officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary in an unmarked car quickly arrived and secured the area. It is also not true undercover soldiers were hiding in the roof of the vehicle and were killed or wounded, Stuart and Walker were alone when they were ambushed. The following year, Sarah-Jane Walker, which for security reasons is not thought to be her real name, was awarded the Military Medal by the Queen and the first awarded to a WRAC serving in Northern Ireland.

According to the Guardian dated 8 September 2015: “DNA tests have confirmed the remains of two bodies found in an Irish bog are those of Séamus Wright and Kevin McKee, two of the IRA’s “disappeared.

The men, who were members of the Provisional IRA in west Belfast, vanished in 1972. They were believed to have been kidnapped, interrogated, then shot dead by the PIRA. Their bodies were buried in secret across the border in the Irish Republic.

The organisation in charge of locating the remains of 17 people whom the IRA killed and then disappeared during the Northern Ireland Troubles said DNA examination of samples taken from the bog in County Meath proved they were Wright and McKee.”

Alan Malcher