Tag: SOE

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.

See my YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/@AlanMalcher-MA

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

See my YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/@AlanMalcher-MA

Noreen Riols MBE (Née Baxter) talking about her service with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War.

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.

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

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

Force 136 (SOE). In 1944 around 150 Chinese Canadians were dropped by parachute behind Japanese lines and most were later denied full rights of Canadian citizenship.

Force 136 was the Far East Region of SOE that was established in 1941 as part of the Indian Mission. The section worked under the cover name GSI and was later absorbed into SOE’s Oriental Mission.

Cicely Lefort: SOE Courier in Occupied France

Cicely Lefort sometimes wrongly spelt Cecily

Cicely Lefort passed through the SOE training schools towards the end of 1942 and was described by the training team as “Being very lady like and very English in spite of her French background.” Lefort was born in London and married a Frenchman in 1925, they lived in Brittany and escaped to England shortly before the occupation.

Using the field name ‘Alice’ Lefort arrived near Tours by RAF Lysander of 161 Special Duty Squadron on the night of 16 June 1943 to join the Jockey circuit operating in south-east France.

On 15 September 1943 Lefort was at a safehouse being used by Raymond Daujat, the leader of the local resistance operating in the Montélimar area along with Pierre Reynaud, a sabotage instructor working for the Jockey circuit, and the two men were in the garden when the Gestapo raided the property. Daujat and Raynaud manged to escape but after finding the safehouse surrounded by German troops Lefort hid in the cellar and was eventually caught.

It was later said the only incriminating evidence found on her was a piece of paper which she could not explain.

Lefort was taken to the Gestapo prison in Lyon before being sent to Frésnes Prison and was eventually transported to Ravensbrûck Concentration camp. According to Maurice Buckmaster, the commanding officer of F Section, “Although severely interrogated and ill-treated she gave no vital information away and requested she be awarded the military OBE.”

After almost a year of hard labour Lefort become very ill and eventually could not stand during the daily role call during which the women were often forced to stand for seven hours each day and many collapsed and died from exhaustion. It was later stated that more than 100 women a day died from illness, exhaustion or were executed.

After Lefort was unable to work she was selected for execution and it was later claimed before she was executed she received a letter from her husband requesting a divorce but this is unlikely because prisoners did not receive letters and nobody would have known she was at Ravensbrûck. However, if she did receive this letter it mostly likely arrived by Lysander before she was captured because there are several accounts of agents receiving letters from home after being censored by HQ.

The date of her death is not known and it is believed Cicely Lefort was among a group of women sent to the gas chambers.

Alan Malcher.

Operation Josephine B: Sabotage of Pessac Power Station in France. June 1941

One of the transformers destroyed during the attack (German Federal Archives)

In May 1941 the Special Operations Executive (SOE) received a request to sabotage the power station in Passaic near Bordeaux but the French Section had no agents available: most had already been deployed to France on various operations and others were still being trained at the school for advanced industrial sabotage in Hertfordshire. SOE HQ then approached the Polish Section (EU/P) which came under the jurisdiction of the Polish Government in Exile in London, and after agreeing to undertake the mission six Polish volunteers boarded a converted Whitley bomber of No.138 Special Duty Squadron at RAF Tempsford to infiltrate France by parachute.

Shortly after entering French air space the aircraft suffered an electrical fault which caused their container loaded with weapons and explosives to be jettisoned over the Loir and were forced to abandon their mission and return to England. Unbeknown to the aircrew the electrical fault was far more serious than first thought and eventually caused the aircraft to crash land and catch fire at RAF Tempsford: all the crew were either killed or injured and the six Polish agents suffered serious burns.

SOE HQ then asked RF Section (the Free French equivalent to SOE under General de Gaulle) whether they were willing to attack the power station and after de Gaulle agreed, on the night of 11-12 May 1941 three agents from RF Section, J Forman, Raymond Cobard and André Vernier (aka Jacques Leblanc) successfully infiltrated France by parachute.

After hiding their weapons and explosives the team reconnoitred the power station: there was a high-tension cable very close to the top of a 9-foot wall they needed to climb over and it appeared there was a large number of German and Italian soldiers protecting the power station. They also failed to obtain the bicycles they intended using for the getaway so decided to postpone the attack.

Before leaving England Forman was given the Paris address of an RF agent called Joêl Letac who remained in France after a failed mission called Operation Savanna, the elimination of Luftwaffe Pathfinder crews whilst they travelled by coach to their airfield, and after meeting Forman Letac encouraged him to continue the mission and the following day Letac travelled with the sabotage team to the power station. After the old lorry they obtained broke down they continued the remainder of the journey on stolen bicycles and eventually recovered the equipment they had buried around 100 yards from the power station.

On the night of 7-8 June 1941 during pitched darkness due to the blackout Forman climbed the perimeter wall and crawled under the high-tension cable which was dangerously close. After ensuring he could not be seen by the guards Forman entered the compound and opened a side door, the rest of the team entered the grounds of the power station and then sprinted across open ground to the main building.

In less than thirty minutes the team placed magnetic incendiary devices on eight large electricity transformers and then made their getaway on the stolen bicycles. It has been said the explosions were so violent flames rose high into the air and illuminated the entire area and searchlights started probing the sky for bombers.

Seven of the transformers were destroyed and this seriously disrupted the Bordeaux submarine base, numerous factories used to supply the German military were forced to stop production for several weeks. The electricity grid from another region was diverted but the overload caused more damage and all electric trains in south western France had to be replaced with steam locomotives, and all the transformer oil in France was used during the repairs.

Some writers claim the team was picked up by a RAF Lysander of 161 Special Duty Squadron, but this was not the case. The team arrived in France with one million francs (said to be about £1,400 in 1941 and roughly £71,000 in 2021) and the money was unaccountable! Instead of requesting an extraction they remained in France for a further two months and according to historian MRD Foot “They left behind them broken glass and broken hearts” before escaping to England via neutral Spain. Before they crossed the frontier Cabard was captured but later escaped and returned to England.

Jack Agazarian: SOE wireless operator

Jack Agazarian

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.”  

Alan Malcher.