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

Despite Jepson’s instruction not to discuss her interview with anyone, Jacqueline knew that she would have to disclose some details to Didi. So, impressing upon her that she mustn’t tell a single soul, she admitted that she had been selected to work for a new organization called the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the French Section. Enrolling in the FANY was a cover for what she would actually be doing. Didi, of course, wanted to know what that work was, but Jacqueline said that she had already told her too much and really couldn’t tell her anything else.

While she waited to hear when she would be starting her SOE training, Jacqueline kept in touch with her friend Jimmie, mostly by post, as he had been sent on a training course, although they spent a day together in July, after which Jimmie wrote to Jacqueline expressing the hope that ‘you managed to get back safely on Monday and that your sister etc had not telephoned all the Police in order to discover the wandering one’. He later wrote to ask Jacqueline to

tell me more about your life and your thoughts. I am very interested in your life and want to hear all about it, if you will tell me. How do you really like your new life?

It is a pity your location appears to be a closely guarded secret – why I don’t exactly know – yours is certainly the first training centre that has not had a proper address … I hope that you will not forget me now that you are making lots of new friends. The F.A.N.Y.s had the reputation at the beginning of the war of being rather select and snobbish. It never pays to be like that and I hope very much that you won’t get that way – always remember that old friends are the best. 2

This letter appears to have been the last one that Jacqueline received from Jimmie. It may, of course, just have been the last one that she kept but, by the time she read it, she had already started her SOE training and she was determined not to let anything interfere with that.

Frustrated that she was still unemployed and beginning to believe that she knew what Jacqueline was going to be doing, Didi was delighted when she too received a letter asking her to attend an interview at the War Office with Captain Jepson, a month after her sister’s.

Jepson was a 43-year-old Army captain. A well-known playwright in peacetime, he was also the author of several books. When he joined the SOE as a recruiting officer in early 1942, he was found to be very good at picking the right sort of person for undercover roles within the organization. Calm and efficient, he managed to put prospective recruits at ease while asking questions that would reveal whether or not the person concerned would be good at the job. A report from the SOE to Military Intelligence placed on his file in March 1942 described him as being ‘far ahead of anyone as [a] talent spotter’ 3 and he himself said of his role: ‘I was responsible for recruiting women for the work, in the face of a good deal of opposition, I may say, from the powers that be. In my view, women were very much better than men for the work. Women, as you must know, have a far greater capacity for cool and lonely courage than men.’ 4

When Didi attended her interview it didn’t take her long to realize that her suspicions about her sister’s new job were correct and she told Jepson that she wanted to do the same as Jacqueline. He felt that she was, perhaps, a little young to be sent to France as an agent but asked her to tell him about herself. She told him that she had been born in England but had lived in France since she was a baby. She talked about her parents and brothers and sister, and described how she and Jacqueline had escaped from occupied France to come to England and obtain war work. She said that she knew several areas of France quite well, and was fluent in spoken and written French. She also stressed that although she liked people and generally got along well with them, she also liked her own company and was sure that she would be able to work completely alone should the need arise. She simply wanted to do something worthwhile for the war effort.

Jepson could see that Didi, although lively and enthusiastic, had a serious side as well. She was obviously intelligent and sincere, but he was still concerned that she might be too young. Being the baby of the family and having had a convent education, she had obviously led a sheltered life and he worried that she might not stand up to life in occupied France, alone and with no family support. He did, however, feel that there was about her a hint of the cool and lonely courage he was seeking. He told her that the SOE needed to recruit wireless operators who would send and receive messages to and from agents in France. There was also a requirement for decoders to interpret the messages, all of which had been encoded before transmission. He believed that Didi would be effective in either role and asked her which she would prefer.

Although disappointed that she would be staying in England, Didi decided that of the two positions offered, she would rather be a wireless operator and Jepson recruited her as such. She also decided that she would continue to press for a job as an agent whenever an opportunity arose. It had occurred to her when making her decision that the training she would need to be a wireless operator would be more beneficial to her than becoming a decoder, should she manage to persuade Jepson at a later date to send her to France.

Satisfied that she wouldn’t be remaining in England for long, Didi was also enrolled in the FANY, joining what was known as Bingham’s Unit. This unit had been established by a member of the FANY, Phyllis Bingham, at the behest of her friend Major-General Colin Gubbins, Vice-Chief of the SOE Council, because of the necessity for absolute secrecy in the SOE; those who joined Bingham’s Unit were the SOE women selected to serve as wireless operators and decoders in the United Kingdom. One of the sponsors who recommended Didi to the FANY was Mrs Bingham herself. This was done, of course, as with Jacqueline’s sponsors, to keep the paperwork straight and believable, and the undercover roles secret; Mrs Bingham did not know Didi personally and at the time she recommended her to the FANY they had not even met.

Didi then went off to learn how to receive and send Morse code. She proved to be quite a good student and passed the course satisfactorily. 5 She then settled down to life in the listening station. 6 Although she had a flair for the work, she found it tedious and longed for the day when she would be able to do something more exciting. With the impatience of youth, Didi began to send in requests to be transferred to the French Section of the SOE so that she could train to become an agent like her sister.

When she had told Jacqueline that she had guessed what her real role with the SOE was to be and that she intended to join her as soon as possible, Jacqueline had responded with a lie, saying that Didi wouldn’t be allowed to go to France until she was 25 years old. Didi was still only 21, and Jacqueline hoped that the war would be over by the time Didi reached this fictional minimum age. But knowing Didi so well, she also knew that the small detail of an age limit would not stop her from asking to be sent overseas. She worried that Didi might discover her lie and, worse still, manage to persuade someone to allow her to go to France, so she asked to see Colonel Maurice Buckmaster, head of the French Section of the SOE.

A meeting was arranged that was also attended by Buckmaster’s assistant, Vera Atkins. Jacqueline explained to them that she was worried that her sister Didi wanted to go to France as an agent and that she had told her she was too young. She asked if there was some way that her lie could be kept up so that when Didi applied she would be told that she was too young. As well as explaining that Didi had led quite a sheltered life, she wanted them to know that Didi was unworldly but very strong-minded, impetuous and stubborn, so they could expect several more requests from her if her first request was denied. It was obvious to Buckmaster and Atkins that Jacqueline was very worried about Didi, and since she was in the middle of the training herself they agreed to go along with the story so that she could concentrate on her work and not worry about her sister.