In the autumn of 1940 a French citizen named Mathilde Carre (aka Cat, Victoire and Le Chatte) was recruited by Roman Czerniawski, a Polish air force officer who escaped from Toulouse and formed a resistance network called Interallie which mainly consisted of Poles living near Paris. Due to its members not being trained in clandestine warfare the network was not secure and was easily infiltrated by the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence) under Hugo Bleicher who was responsible for crushing resistance and it was not long before Carre and a small number of other members were arrested.
In return for her freedom along with financial incentives Carre agreed to work for Bleicher as a double agent and later admitted to pointing out around sixty of her former comrades who were arrested by the Abwehr. As they were political prisoners they were handed to the Gestapo and it is not known how many were tortured and later executed. After proving herself to be a loyal and useful agent Bleicher had another mission for her in the Paris area.
After the Abwehr arrested an SOE wireless operator Bleicher was aware there was a British controlled underground network in or near Paris which needed to maintain wireless contact with London, and Carre was told to find the network and then infiltrate it.
Carre had to convince the leader, who was still to be identified, she was working for a Polish resistance group before many of its members were arrested. She was not present when the Germans swooped on their safehouse and their wireless operator was still in contact with London from a safehouse outside Paris.
How she contacted the leader of AUTOGIRO circuit, SOE agent Pierre de Vomecourt, is complicated and beyond the scope of this article, but after gaining his confidence she offered to pass messages to London through the Polish wireless link and de Vomecourt gave her messages requesting arms, explosives and money. This was an Abwehr deception: after the Polish wireless operator had been captured along with his personal code’s messages being received in London were from a German operator ‘playing back’ his wireless.
According to de Vomecourt he and a resistance contact began to suspect Carre after several requests for arms and sabotage stores never arrived, they also found inconsistencies in her back story and after being confronted she broke down and told them everything.
After de Vomecourt discussed the precarious situation with two other SOE agents it was decided not to kill her because everyone she was known to have contacted would be arrested and a number of ideas were discussed before eventually agreeing to use the Abwehr wireless link to their advantage.
After Carre agreed to work for the British she was told to tell Bleicher London wanted her to go to England to be trained and also needed her to advise a British General who would be in France for a few hours to brief the heads of all the underground networks. London had already been informed of the plan through another SOE wireless operator in southern France who had a secure link to London and the wireless station in England was already sending messages to the Abwehr supporting the deception. As her reports were supported by wireless traffic from London Bleicher and his superiors could not miss the opportunity to capture a British General, the heads of the underground networks and also have an agent in London.
Unaware London was playing them at their own game the Abwehr supported her extraction from the southern coast of France by ordering their patrol vessels to remain in port and under German surveillance Carre and de Vomecourt were observed boarding a Motor Torpedo Boat bound for England.
When she arrived in England Carre was interrogated by SOE and MI5 and they gained valuable information about Abwehr counter resistance strategies and her intelligence also helped MI5 during their ‘Operation Double Cross’ which consisted of German double-agents in England passing false information to Germany. The German wireless link continued to be used for several weeks to send false information to mask the location of SOE clandestine circuits.
After France was liberated Carre was deported to France where she was tried for treason and received the death sentence. Three months later the sentence was commuted to 20 years, but she was released in 1954 after serving 12 years.
In 1959 she published her version of accounts which was revised in 1975 and entitled m’appelait La Chatte {My name was La Chatte} in which she protested her innocence although there was sufficient evidence to the contrary. Carre died in Paris on 30 May 2007.
Alan Malcher 