Susan Ottaway - Sisters, Secrets and Sacrifice - The True Story of WWII Special Agents Eileen and Jacqueline Nearne

Francis left and again positioned himself outside so as to be able to see Jacqueline before she entered the building. Twelve hours after the raid had begun he was horrified to see the Germans arrive yet again and go back into the apartment. They remained there for four agonizing hours while Francis kept watch for his sister’s arrival. 8 She didn’t turn up and by the time the Germans left again at two o’clock the next morning he realized that she must have found out about the raid. Exhausted, he hid in an outhouse, where he remained for the rest of the night. In the morning, having had a little rest and feeling slightly calmer, he managed to contact Jacqueline.

With the terror of the Gestapo raid haunting him, Francis began once more to suffer badly from his nerves. The self-confidence that had been growing with every mission he had successfully completed vanished and he shrank inside himself all over again. Then came the news via Maria, the concierge of the Nerault family’s apartment block, that she had received a letter, written in German supposedly by a family friend, to say that M. Nerault was in Germany, and that he was well and able to receive food parcels. Soon afterwards a card arrived from Mme Nerault and Colette, also saying that they were in a camp in Germany but giving no actual location. Whether or not these were genuinely from the family was unknown, but Maria chose to believe that they were and consoled herself with the thought that at least they had not been shot. This proved to be of no comfort to Francis, who still tortured himself with thoughts of what had happened to them, and what might have happened to his wife and son if he too had been caught. He was sure that Thérèse and Jack would have been targeted because his wife knew about his undercover role.

Despite Jacqueline’s best efforts she could not help her brother. He was so tense and worried that he couldn’t function effectively and, much as he wanted to, was no longer able to undertake any courier missions. Jacqueline was so concerned that she enlisted the help of Maurice Southgate. He was sympathetic towards Francis and did not want to lose his services as, until this setback, he had been a most reliable and trustworthy courier. He contacted Baker Street with a request that Francis be sent to London for training and to enable him to receive some medical help for his bad nerves. He stressed that he was sure that, given the right treatment, Francis would regain his self-confidence and be able to resume his courier work. Then he, Jacqueline and Francis waited to hear what London would decide.

Back in England, Didi was unaware of her siblings’ problems and was delighted with the news she received in the autumn of 1943. After her countless attempts to persuade her bosses to release her from her listening station, she was told at last that she was going to be sent for training as an agent. Buckmaster had broken his promise to Jacqueline and decided to send Didi to France where, he hoped, she would be as effective in the field as her sister.

Quite why he had chosen this moment to release Didi from her mundane work is not recorded. Jacqueline had made it quite clear to both him and Vera Atkins that she was strongly opposed to Didi going to France; and she, after all, knew her sister better than anyone. She had stressed her sister’s naivety, and her lack of experience in many aspects of life. She had never doubted Didi’s courage, but she felt that she had perhaps looked at the role of an agent through rose-coloured glasses and that when faced with the reality of the situation, she might find herself out of her depth – and by then it would be too late.

The pragmatic view might be that here was a young woman, fluent in French and English, completely used to the French way of life and eager to return to her homeland to do her bit. Was it not ridiculous for Buckmaster to waste this valuable resource simply because of a promise made to the girl’s sister? Perhaps so, but if Jacqueline was right and her sister wasn’t up to the task, Buckmaster would have to answer not only for his deception but also his own bad judgement. With Jacqueline preoccupied by her own heavy workload and her concern for the welfare of Francis, he perhaps hoped to have Didi well into her training course before her sister got wind of what was happening back in England.

The whole situation was becoming a tangled web of deceit, as Didi was still not aware that her sister had extracted the promise from Buckmaster to keep her in England; nor did she know that the age restriction that Jacqueline had told her about was a lie. She was just very excited that she would soon be in France, like her sister, and was impatient to start the training course.

Before long she was released from Bingham’s Unit and transferred to the SOE French section of the FANY. Having already learnt Morse code and worked in the listening station it was felt that all she now needed was a finishing course, and for this she was sent to a house called the Drokes on the Beaulieu estate in the New Forest, in a party numbered 27.OB. 1 Unlike the finishing courses for couriers, this one, for wireless operators, not only concentrated on the security aspects of the role but also allowed time for the students to study and practise the technicalities of transmitting and receiving messages every day, to ensure that the transmissions were sent swiftly and efficiently and that the messages being received could be quickly understood. Speed was of the essence for a wireless operator.

A new syllabus had come into being a month before Didi’s course began. It was not extensive but it highlighted one or two things that might not have occurred to a novice wireless operator. It said of a wireless operator, for example, that ‘Other agents should not go to his residence or place of operation. It is even better if they do not contact him direct.’ Since most people crave the company of others, especially when they are feeling frightened or stressed, it would seem natural to seek out other agents who would understand the pressures of the job, but it would be unsafe for all concerned. The syllabus went on to decree that a wireless operator ‘Should live with friends as key-taps [are] audible’. This, of course, made a difficult task even trickier. On the one hand the agent was rightly being told that he or she should not have much contact at all with other members of the circuit and on the other that they should live with friends to reduce the risk of the tapping of Morse code being heard by strangers. Where they were supposed to find these friends if they were not to have much contact with their colleagues appears not to have been considered. It was certainly dangerous to assume that friends from outside the Resistance groups, even if they had been known to the operator for many years, could be relied upon in dangerous situations. The Germans had ways of turning the most patriotic French citizens into collaborators, and the most devoted friends into enemies. They only had to threaten the friend or his family with torture or a horrible death to make the friendship untenable. Like many ideas that look good on paper, in practice it didn’t work, and many wireless operators found themselves living solitary and boring existences while in France.

The part of the syllabus that told each operator about their own specific plan to which he or she must adhere was also flawed. This plan, or ‘sked’, as it was known, meant that even if there were an urgent message to be sent, the operator could only transmit it at one of two scheduled times each day. For London this made sense. It ensured that Baker Street could keep a check on its agents and, when messages were sent hurriedly and sometimes came through garbled, it enabled those decoding the transmission to sort out what was actually being said by applying their own knowledge of who it was that had sent it and what the general situation in the circuit concerned had been. On the downside the regular broadcast and reception times gave the enemy, who used fairly sophisticated direction-finding equipment, the knowledge of when to expect an operator to be transmitting. This made it far easier for them to locate the place from which the broadcast was being sent. To circumvent this danger, agents were told to ‘constantly move set and/or aerial’. This again seemed sensible until one realized quite how difficult it was to find a safe house from which to transmit. Having several places was an almost unheard of luxury. Didi, who worked hard on her course, was yet to discover the anomalies of the security training she was receiving.