The Women who Worked for SOE

By Hilary Green

In my last blog (Click here) I wrote about the work of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry during the First World War. When the conflict was over the FANY did not disband, although there was some difficulty in keeping membership buoyant in the inter-war years. Nevertheless, a loyal core continued to train, although now the emphasis was not so much on nursing as on transport. It was clear that there was no longer any need for mounted nurses, the function for which they had been founded in 1907, but their ability to drive and maintain motor vehicles had been crucial during the 1914-18 period. So now they concentrated on this aspect of the training and shortly before the outbreak of World War II it was suggested that they should come under the aegis of the ATS as the Women's Motor Transport Company. And it was in this capacity that many of them did sterling work driving ambulances and chauffeuring high ranking officers during the war. (It was into this corps that Princess Elizabeth, now our Queen, was recruited in order to 'do her bit'.)

Princess Elizabeth in the ATS - Public domain Image

Some long-standing FANYs, however, refused to be subsumed into the ATS. Their independence from other authorities had always been a matter of pride and they insisted on maintaining it, becoming known as the 'Free FANY.' It was this independence that made them ideally suited to working with SOE.

When the Special Operations Executive was first set up at the behest of Winston Churchill to 'set Europe ablaze' by dropping secret agents behind enemy lines, its existence was so secret that not even the army high command was allowed to know about it. So when a need arose for help on 'the home front' with such activities as radio communications and coding and decoding messages to and from agents in the field it was impossible for them to turn to the ATS or any other recognised women's service. Fortunately Colin Gubbins, who was in charge of operations, knew that a neighbour of his, a Mrs Phyllis Bingham, belonged to the FANY and he turned to her for help. So was born 'Bingham's Unit', a branch of the FANY whose function was known only to a few.

Member of ATS - Public Domain image

In order to fulfil their new tasks it was imperative to recruit extra personnel. What was required were young women with experience of wireless telegraphy, perhaps those who had worked for the Post Office, or who had a mathematical background or an aptitude for crossword puzzles. These last, it was felt, would have the right kind of brains for dealing with codes and cyphers. Girls with the right attributes found themselves being referred to a vicarage in Wilton Place, in London, where they encountered the redoubtable Marion Gamwell. (Marion and her sister Hope were long-standing members of the FANY, having volunteered in the First World War, when they provided, from their own funds, a mobile bathhouse in a converted lorry where troops could bathe and get their clothes washed.) Other young women who applied to the Women's War Work Bureau in Oxford Street were sent to Bingham's office in Baker Street. None of them knew what they were being recruited for, but if they were considered suitable after an induction course at Overthorpe Manor, they were then asked to sign the Official Secrets Act. Not even their parents knew what they were doing. They were told that their daughters were being trained as drivers.

Potential radio operators were sent to Fawley Court, near Henley, for four months’ intensive training. If they passed they then went to SOE's communications centre at Grendon Underwood, one of the many country houses taken over for the duration of the war. Conditions were grim. They lived in Nissen huts in the grounds and were often cold and hungry. They worked six hour 'skeds' or schedules in shifts round the clock and each girl was allotted her own agent (or Joe as they were fondly called). In this way, she would get to know his 'fist' – his unique touch on the Morse key – so that she could detect if someone else was impersonating him. Messages were in code and sent in groups of five letters which did not make words, so if one letter was missed it was impossible to guess what it should have been, and they were often sent in haste and in poor atmospheric conditions. It was intensive and demanding work.

Fawley Court via Wiki commons - click here for attribution

Once the message had been received it was handed over to the coding section to be rendered into plain English. Codes were based on poems. Each agent was asked to memorise two or three lines of verse and each message was based on one or two words from those lines, the letters of which were then transposed by using a cypher on a silk sheet which could be folded very small and concealed. The process is described by Leo Marks, a brilliant young man who was SOE's Head of Coding in his book 'Between Silk and Cyanide'. (Those who have read or seen '84 Charing Cross Road' will be interested to learn that Leo was the son of the man who owned the eponymous bookshop.) Many agents maintained that they were unable to remember even short pieces of poetry, so Leo suggested that the girls at Grendon might make up verses that would be easier for them to learn. Some of the results were scatological in the extreme -but presumably all the more memorable for that!

Leo Marks at the opening of the Violette Szabo Museum
Image via Wiki Commons - click here for attribution

Because the messages were sent under very dangerous and difficult conditions they often arrived garbled, making the decoding almost impossible. Marks describes how, on his first visit to Grendon, he told the girls the story of a young Belgian radio operator who was caught while transmitting by the Nazis and suffered terrible tortures in an effort to make him reveal his associates. He pointed out that the longer an operator was at his set, the greater the chances that the enemy detector vans would be able to pinpoint his location. It was vital, therefore, that no operator should be asked to send a message twice. After that, it became a point of honour among the decoders that, no matter how garbled, every message was decoded – even if they had to sit up all night to solve it.

Radio communications was not the only area where the FANYs gave invaluable help. Agents in training or those waiting to be sent into the field, were housed in more great mansions taken over by SOE. In fact, there was a standing joke among them that the letters stood not for Special Operations Executive but for Stately 'Omes of England. While there, they had to be looked after, fed and above all entertained to keep their minds off the dangers ahead of them. Here the more traditional FANY personnel were ideally suited. Many of them had come from backgrounds where social life was at the hub of their existence, but this did not mean they were not prepared to roll up their sleeves and get down to hard work. But at the end of a long day cooking and cleaning they would change into evening dress and after dinner the carpet would be rolled back and they and the agents would dance till midnight to the music of a gramophone.

It was not long, of course, before some of them developed the urge to become agents themselves. Once SOE became convinced that women could play a useful role they began to train with the men, and many of them who were not already members of the FANY were enrolled into their ranks to give a cover to their real purpose. One such was Violette Zsabo, whose exploits form the basis for the film Carve Her Name With Pride.

[This is an Editor's Choice archive post which was originally published on EHFA on 6 December 2018]
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One aspect of this change in the role of the FANY that particularly interested Hilary was the social implications. When they were founded the FANY was unashamedly elitist. It was a Yeomanry, an organisation for the daughters of the land-owning classes. To a great extent it had preserved that ethos up to the beginning of World War II. Many of the young women had been 'debs', had been presented at court and 'done the season'; some even had titles. But the expansion of the work had required the influx of a large number of girls from very different backgrounds. The heroine of  'We'll Meet Again' is a working class girl recruited into Bingham's Unit who becomes a coder for SOE, ultimately finding herself parachuting into enemy-occupied Italy.
The heroine of Never Say Goodbye is  Frankie's best friend, a girl from the opposite social background, who volunteers to be dropped into France as an agent.

Connect with Hilary: www.hilarygreen.co.uk

The 'Mystery Boats' of Tresco Island

By Mike Williams

Five inhabited islands of outstanding beauty, together with over one hundred islets and large rocks rising out of the Atlantic make up the Isles of Scilly. Lying some 28 miles west of Lands End, they provide an ideal anchorage for flotillas of small boats engaged in covert operations. During the English Civil War Royalist privateers operating out of Scilly became the scourge of both Parliamentarian and foreign merchant ships - especially the Dutch. It eventually took an uneasy alliance between Cromwell’s General-at-Sea Monk and the Dutch admiral van Tromp to bring the piratical Royalists to heel.

Almost 300 years later, Churchill’s rallying cry to “Set Europe ablaze!” did much to galvanise both SOE (the Special Operations Executive) and the SIS (the Secret Intelligence Service) into action, following the fall of France in 1940. One immediate result was the emergence of many so-called small “Special Forces” units. While SOE quickly began to regard itself as a striking force, attacking the enemy wherever it could, SIS was intended to be responsible for the infiltration and exfiltration of Allied agents and vital intelligence, between Great Britain and Nazi-occupied Europe.

Working under Commander Slocum RN, who had been tasked with re-establishing direct communications with Resistance groups in Nazi-occupied Europe, RNVR Officers- Stephen Mackenzie, Daniel Lomenech - a Breton - and others began exploring the use of converted fishing boats to convey both agents and intelligence to and from Brittany.

The idea quickly turned into workable reality as two such “spy-boats” were quickly developed with the professional help of British marine architects and small boat manufacturers. The traditional style of fishing boat was chosen because they were accepted by the Germans who allowed them to remain at sea for up to three nights at a time. This relaxation of rules played right into the hands of British intelligence.

A major issue was the need for far greater speed than the usual plodding pace of a genuine fishing boat. In order to enter the coastal waters of occupied France and mingle with the large fleets of Breton fishing boats, without raising suspicion, the British boats would need to race from Scilly across approximately 100 miles of sea, under cover of darkness, to arrive off the Breton coast by early dawn. Coded radio messages and mast-head pennants of pre-arranged colours would identify which of the local Breton boats would be the contact vessel for the inshore transfer of agents, crucial intelligence, or weapons and explosives, off the Breton coast.

Lomenech who was familiar with the Breton fishing industry personally oversaw much of the conversion work to ensure as much authenticity as possible in the transformations He knew that the real test was not to convince the Germans, but to avoid raising questions in the minds of the patrol boat crews of the French Harbour Gendarmerie.

In consultation with Lomenech and other RNVR Officers, British boat designers cleverly re-configured the boats’ underwater hulls and fitted new far more powerful engines, giving the boats a top speed in excess of 30 knots. Because of its remoteness, privacy from prying eyes and sheltered waters, Tresco Island’s New Grimsby Sound was chosen as the base for the new secret flotilla. The former World War One flying boat base also conveniently situated at Tresco provided storage facilities, workshops and also some accommodation. . . .

One of the secret flotilla’s first tasks was to deliver two key French agents to the Resistance movement, close to Concarneau, during April 1941.The French Resistance had talked about using a submarine for the job, but were over-ruled by the British Admiralty who viewed such craft as pure gold. Instead it was agreed to deliver the agent by Angele Rouge one of the two “doctored” fishing boats newly arrived in Tresco’s New Grimsby harbour anchorage, under the shelter of Braiden Rock.

The boats were delivered to Tresco painted British “Pusser’s grey” so that they blended in with other RN boats at anchor, giving the impression to curious observers that they were some sort of minor naval auxiliary vessel. It was at the eleventh hour, before a cross-Channel operation into enemy waters that, under Daniel Lomenech’s expert direction, the boats were painted in the garish colours typical of Breton fishing vessels. One trick devised by the crews painting the boats was to mix iron filings in with the paint. On contact with the sea the fresh paint quickly took on a convincing weathered appearance. Locals quickly dubbed them “The mystery boats”.

Aerial View of the Scilly Isles (Public Domain Image)

Lobsters, crabs and other fish freshly caught in Scillonian waters were packed in barrels, in ice, to add a touch of authenticity and crew members filled the strategically placed “operations boxes” with their personal weapons also covered with fish. These ensured that should they be stopped and fail to convince the Authorities that they were Breton fishermen, they could call upon significant firepower in a fire-fight. Adding to the illusion of Breton fishermen, RNVR personnel wore similar working rig to their French counterparts. All boats carried at least one Breton who could speak his native tongue, as well as French.

A model of a Breton fishing boat, built & photographed by the author

At midnight Angele Rouge, slipped her moorings at Braiden Rock, the secret flotilla’s anchorage below Cromwell’s Castle, on Tresco’s western shore, heading south. The incoming tide saw her cautiously navigate the shallow waters of Tresco Flats, before she opened up her two 500 hp Hall Scott engines and began punching her way, at over 20 knots, through the rolling whitecaps of St Mary’s Road. Once through St Mary’s Sound and with St Agnes astern to starboard, her youthful skipper ordered his coxswain to maintain maximum revolutions, to arrive off the Breton coast in time to mingle with the French fishing fleets around dawn.

Below decks, each with their private thoughts and fears, the two agents sat huddled in silence, sipping steaming mugs of “kye”, the Royal Navy’s own glutinous chocolate nectar. Both were SOE French Section recruits. One was a former French army lieutenant, code-named “Antoine”, who had escaped from France in the evacuation from Dunkirk. The other, “Marie-Claude”, a young woman of Anglo-French parents, had been selected for espionage operations by SOE’s formidable Vera Atkins.

Vera Atkins (Public Domain Image)

SOE’s creative technologists - the real-live versions of James Bond’s “Q” - developed the weaponry and kit essential in covert operations - some of them so bizarre as to beggar belief. One such example was that of ingeniously crafted dummy lobsters, to be used for carrying secret intelligence.

Unfortunately the design team had only ever seen cooked lobsters, which turn pink as a result of boiling. It was a fisherman who told them in no uncertain terms that lobsters, as caught in the sea, are dark blue! Many an SOE face turned bright red when the error was spotted. On this trip, Angele Rouge carried no fanciful confections from the “Gadgets” Section - only radios packed in tobacco and sealed in French petrol drums, for the Resistance.

With the first signs of dawn beginning to lighten the sky, Angel Rouge was some 12 miles north of Ushant. To preserve the anonymity essential to her cover, her skipper ordered “Reduce speed to six knots, we’ll shortly be joining the locals.” Poring over their charts, with Ushant astern, the skipper and coxswain navigated Angele Rouge through the scattered islands and rock outcrops west of the Brittany coast, maintaining a course due south.

The entrance to the sheltered waters of Brest on her port bow, Angele Rouge flying her yellow mutual recognition pennant, slowly turned heading for Camaret, the RV with the local crabber, Monique, which would take the agents ashore. Almost right on the ETA of 07.30 hours, the crabber appeared, flying a similar yellow pennant. Three miles offshore, under the guns of the German coastal batteries, the two boats drew alongside feigning a noisy chance meeting, of old fishing colleagues. Under the pretence of energetically hauling in nets, the crew slipped the agents from one vessel to the other. The confidential intelligence and radios in the fuel drums were also transferred and after more boisterous exchanges the two boats appeared to resume their fishing. Later, under cover of darkness, mission accomplished, Angele Rouge returned to her anchorage at Braiden Rock - and a fresh coat of Admiralty grey paint, minus iron-filings, securing around 23.00.

Map showing Brest and Camaret (See Commons attribution here)

Shortly after the transfer of the two agents, the Tresco flotilla was called upon to bring to England a leading Resistance Leader - Colonel Gilbert Rénault a.k.a. Colonel “Remy” - who had been betrayed and was in immediate danger of capture, inevitable torture and execution, by the Gestapo. The operation to rescue Colonel “Remy” and his family took the fishing boat Le Dinan to the remote Îles de Glénan, lying some twenty miles west of L’Orient.

65 feet in length, Le Dinan was longer than Angele Rouge and offered slightly more civilised accommodation for the Colonel, his wife and their children - including a 6-month-old baby. Because the waters around Brittany are among the most dangerous in the world - especially at night - the date of the pick-up was influenced by the weather, as well as the risks to Remy. Up-to-date weather forecasts were relayed to the crew on Tresco via a “scrambler” telephone, hidden in the heather at New Grimsby - as were top secret calls from SOE in London, and Government Communications at Bletchley Park. Inevitably it was the Gestapo’s imminent arrest of Remy which ultimately decided the date and RV of the rescue at sea.

Until three hours before nightfall, Le Dinan was given air cover by Beaufighters which, with a farewell waggle of wings, peeled off just north of Ushant, to return to Cornwall. This time, there would be no masthead recognition pennant, to look out for, but simply a white sail above a green hull. By 10 am the following morning, with the sea unusually calm, Le Dinan was plodding slowly through the Concarneau crabbing fleets. Skirting the towering Penmarc’h lighthouse she set course east and headed for the Îles de Glénan, her RV with the small fishing vessel bringing Remy and with him, vital up-to-date intelligence about the latest German coastal defences along the Normandy coast. Some 30 minutes ahead of schedule, Le Dinan’s crew sailed in among the islands to wait.

Map showing Ushant (See here for Commons attribution)

After an hour-and-a-half, lurking between the scattered islands, while awaiting the now well overdue lone white sail of the Colonel’s small boat to appear, the crew of Le Dinan were horrified to see a flotilla of five German corvettes belching black smoke and heading straight for them. Had the Colonel been picked up by the Kriegsmarine? Had the mission been compromised? Under the guise of hauling in their nets, the British held their nerve as the Germans steamed past them, at less than a cable’s distance, binoculars trained on them.

Shortly after the corvettes passed them in line astern, the awaited green hull and white sail appeared from behind one of the islands. Minutes later the Colonel - complete with German top secret intelligence of “Festung Europa”, his wife and children - including the tiny baby was safely onboard Le Dinan. After transferring supplies of tobacco, food and much needed oil and petrol, to the fishermen who brought Colonel “Remy”, she set course for Tresco.

Some 36 hours later and with their passengers now enjoying the fresh air, on deck, after the cramped conditions below, Le Dinan sailed into New Grimsby Sound and hove-to off Braiden Rock. Colonel Remy and his family were safe and British Intelligence had top secret German plans of the Normandy beach defences, so vital for planning the forthcoming D-Day invasion. Many more such hazardous operations were to take place before peace in Europe arrived in May 1945.

At a moving ceremony in July 2000 a commemorative plaque, honouring these gallant men was unveiled at Braiden Rock anchorage. Today, over 70 years later, the “mystery boats” and their crews are still remembered by Tresco’s older inhabitants.

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Mike Williams MSc. is the published author of a trilogy of novels, based on a clandestine naval unit which operated out of the Isles of Scilly, during World War 2. Its role was to take secret agents and intelligence to and from Brittany, under the noses of the Nazis.
Published by Thorogood Publishing, London, titles are -
The Secret Channel
The Channel of Invasion
The Channel to Freedom
In September 2011 he presented his trilogy at the Marlborough LitFest. Available on Amazon.                                                  
His Cold War sequel -The Judas Trap -   is a story of counter-intelligence in response to a the insertion of Soviet spies in the Uk .
Available from the author: mrwilliams2@btinternet.com
Currently he is undertaking research for a novel about espionage in the English Civil War (In Treachery’s Shadow) set in the western counties,
Mike is a member of the Historical Writers’ Association.