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Authors: Douglas Boyd
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fast whereas the Lysander moved so slowly. This strangely was an advantage – fighters move fast but take miles to turn around and by then we’d gone elsewhere. 5
But not always. The pilot of the Lysander recalled that they were pursued by a night fighter and shot at with tracer bullets. Taking evading action, he executed a series of very violent steep turns, at the end of which he had lost his bearings, but later found them again, landing to deposit his two passengers in a field near the major German concentration camp at Compiègne. The drill after the aircraft had turned, ready for take-off, was for one passenger to remain aboard to heave the baggage out of the cramped rear compartment of the little aircraft and load that of the passengers for the return trip.
The initial intention of Section F was for Cammaerts to replace the flamboyant Peter Churchill, head of the network code-named CARTE in southern France, which had got badly out of control. Churchill’s only briefing as they brushed past each other beside the Lysander was, ‘Be careful to take some newspaper in with you when you go to the toilet. They’re very short of toilet rolls.’
Driven through the night to Paris and along the grim darkened streets of the capital under curfew, Cammaerts was horrified by the over-confidence of his guides and the general poor security in the DONKEYMAN network. Cutting all contact with it, he travelled south to Provence, where Peter Churchill had been living openly in a luxury hotel with his lover, fellow agent Odette Sansom, in flagrant defiance of their training, in which it was stressed that an agent should have no permanent ‘home’ or even regular movements, by which French or German counter-intelligence could home in on him or her.
To Cammaerts’ mind, Peter Churchill’s permanent headquarters for the CARTE network was a fatal error, as indeed it proved to be. Each day, numerous members of the network came and went quite openly, without precautions. Worst of all, he learned from Sansom that Churchill and she were in negotiations with an Abwehr officer who called himself ‘Colonel Henri’ – real name Sergeant Hugo Bleicher. Both she and her lover seemed to think they could arrange for Bleicher to be flown to London, where he would shortly end the war by serving as a direct link between OKW and the British Cabinet. Cammaerts was horrified to hear this. He had already been distressed at the lax security of some of Section F’s officers in London:
… who allowed their agents, who were supposed to be kept apart, to bump into each other and learn each other’s real names, while files were left on desks as the officer dealing with the agent left the room for whatever reason. 6
Such sloppiness was dangerous even in the relative safety of London, but the lack of security procedures of the CARTE network on the ground in France was far more reprehensible – as was proven after Peter Churchill’s return, when Bleicher pounced and arrested him, Odette and many of their agents.
Deciding to have nothing to do with any of the existing networks, Cammaerts relocated to the Rhône valley, passing himself off as a refugee schoolteacher from the north, where people were generally taller than the locals. His reason for coming south was given, to those who needed to know, as to convalesce from an attack of jaundice. Like all the best cover stories, this was as close to the truth as could be, since he had suffered from jaundice shortly before Christmas. Using whatever identities seemed most plausible to justify his constant travelling throughout Resistance zones R1 and R2, usually on a motorbike, he set up his own sabotage and espionage network.
London gave it the code name JOCKEY. It stretched 300 miles from St Etienne in central France to Marseille and Nice in the south. With not a single member recruited before Cammaerts had kept him or her under surveillance for several days, JOCKEY was organised in watertight cells of
But not always. The pilot of the Lysander recalled that they were pursued by a night fighter and shot at with tracer bullets. Taking evading action, he executed a series of very violent steep turns, at the end of which he had lost his bearings, but later found them again, landing to deposit his two passengers in a field near the major German concentration camp at Compiègne. The drill after the aircraft had turned, ready for take-off, was for one passenger to remain aboard to heave the baggage out of the cramped rear compartment of the little aircraft and load that of the passengers for the return trip.
The initial intention of Section F was for Cammaerts to replace the flamboyant Peter Churchill, head of the network code-named CARTE in southern France, which had got badly out of control. Churchill’s only briefing as they brushed past each other beside the Lysander was, ‘Be careful to take some newspaper in with you when you go to the toilet. They’re very short of toilet rolls.’
Driven through the night to Paris and along the grim darkened streets of the capital under curfew, Cammaerts was horrified by the over-confidence of his guides and the general poor security in the DONKEYMAN network. Cutting all contact with it, he travelled south to Provence, where Peter Churchill had been living openly in a luxury hotel with his lover, fellow agent Odette Sansom, in flagrant defiance of their training, in which it was stressed that an agent should have no permanent ‘home’ or even regular movements, by which French or German counter-intelligence could home in on him or her.
To Cammaerts’ mind, Peter Churchill’s permanent headquarters for the CARTE network was a fatal error, as indeed it proved to be. Each day, numerous members of the network came and went quite openly, without precautions. Worst of all, he learned from Sansom that Churchill and she were in negotiations with an Abwehr officer who called himself ‘Colonel Henri’ – real name Sergeant Hugo Bleicher. Both she and her lover seemed to think they could arrange for Bleicher to be flown to London, where he would shortly end the war by serving as a direct link between OKW and the British Cabinet. Cammaerts was horrified to hear this. He had already been distressed at the lax security of some of Section F’s officers in London:
… who allowed their agents, who were supposed to be kept apart, to bump into each other and learn each other’s real names, while files were left on desks as the officer dealing with the agent left the room for whatever reason. 6
Such sloppiness was dangerous even in the relative safety of London, but the lack of security procedures of the CARTE network on the ground in France was far more reprehensible – as was proven after Peter Churchill’s return, when Bleicher pounced and arrested him, Odette and many of their agents.
Deciding to have nothing to do with any of the existing networks, Cammaerts relocated to the Rhône valley, passing himself off as a refugee schoolteacher from the north, where people were generally taller than the locals. His reason for coming south was given, to those who needed to know, as to convalesce from an attack of jaundice. Like all the best cover stories, this was as close to the truth as could be, since he had suffered from jaundice shortly before Christmas. Using whatever identities seemed most plausible to justify his constant travelling throughout Resistance zones R1 and R2, usually on a motorbike, he set up his own sabotage and espionage network.
London gave it the code name JOCKEY. It stretched 300 miles from St Etienne in central France to Marseille and Nice in the south. With not a single member recruited before Cammaerts had kept him or her under surveillance for several days, JOCKEY was organised in watertight cells of
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