Churchill's White Rabbit (2 page)

A second secretary received a typewritten note reading ‘
CHEVAL est a FRESNES
’: Cheval is at Fresnes. Cheval is an unofficial codename of Shelley’s used for secret communications with his secretaries, and Fresnes is a prison. Whoever sent the message is a mystery. It is unlikely to have been Shelley himself, but at least it goes some way to confirming his capture and where he is. His secretaries live in hope that the Germans are ignorant of Shelley’s real identity and that he has avoided the hardships of Gestapo interrogation.

Time, however, reveals the truth. An SOE agent, who is a close friend of Shelley’s and had seen him only four days before his arrest, arrives in England in May, going by the name of Polygone. He is interviewed by SOE and is able to give an accurate account of what has become of Shelley. British hearts despair as they hear that Shelley was arrested by the same Gestapo men who had shot another agent, Galiene II, quashing hopes that he had been picked up by accident. Polygone is damning of his friend’s security precautions and describes him as indiscreet. He carried a revolver in a holster at all times, which Polygone deemed unwise. Furthermore he had the dangerous habit of frequenting the same restaurants, but to allay the British disappointment at finding their best agent so fallible, Polygone assures them that on the whole Shelley’s security was good and he rarely carried important documents on his person unless absolutely necessary.

Unfortunately Polygone also knows that the Gestapo have raided Shelley’s apartment and it is widely thought that they have taken a microphotograph of Shelley’s mission orders and another document that includes a sketch of Shelley’s railway sabotage plans. Polygone is also concerned that at least thirty coded telegrams Shelley had sent to England have apparently gone astray; what has become of them no one seems to know, but with the Gestapo breathing down resistance necks, the missing messages are cause for grave concern.

SOE finally know most of the truth about Shelley’s disappearance. He is in the hands of the Gestapo, being held at Fresnes and more than likely enduring the worst kinds of interrogation the Germans can mete out. Rescue is an unlikely option as SOE takes the pragmatic view that they could easily lose more good men trying to regain one lost agent, and they simply do not have the resources for such high costs. Instead they begin to try to unravel where the blame for Shelley’s loss might lie. In any secret organisation betrayal is always at the back of people’s minds.

Polygone is of the firm opinion that there is an informer in their midst. He finds it highly alarming, let alone suspicious, that three
agents de liaison
have vanished at the same time as Shelley was arrested. One reappeared a month later but the other two remain unaccounted for. Then there is Antonin, who Polygone knows is missing but is unaware that he has been arrested with Shelley by the Gestapo. Lastly, a fifth
agent de liaison
who worked between Shelley and another important resistance member has vanished without a trace. Polygone cannot imagine that all these disappearances are pure coincidence and now SOE fear that they have a mole in their network.

This is not the first time that SOE’s French operations have been so badly compromised. Two of their resistance networks dealing with the introduction of Allied agents have in fact been completely infiltrated by the Germans and at least one has been operated and run by the Gestapo pretending to be a resistance network. On other occasions agents have been caught and forced to transmit false messages back to the British; sometimes this is spotted, but on many other occasions it is not.

Damage limitation is now key: whatever contacts Shelley made, whatever arrangements, need to be protected. SOE know that even the hardest of agents will break under the intensity of interrogation; there is a reason that the Gestapo use torture, even if it is considered a fallible system by more conscientious interrogators. The assumption has to be made that Shelley has been broken, and the relevant security precautions must be taken, especially if a traitor still loiters somewhere in the network.

Despite knowing that rescue is almost impossible, SOE continue to search for their lost agent. He is by no means the only one they are trying to track information on, but he is special in that he has a powerful reputation within the secret service community. Even a budding spy novelist working with the Admiralty is caught up with the mystery of Shelley’s loss and discusses it over dinner with colleagues. His name is Ian Fleming and he follows Shelley’s story with great interest.

SOE is rife with rumours about the missing agent. A telegram arrives with a strange jumble of information; the source is a member of a sub-unit of 72 Wing, engaged in wireless jamming operations. The source, in turn, heard his information from a liberated prisoner of war called Corporal Stevenson, who had been held in the Bad Homburg camp by the Germans. Stevenson had met a man going by the name Maurice Chouquet, who claimed he was actually SOE agent Wing-Commander Davies. Stevenson did not relate how he had earned Chouquet’s trust enough to learn such dangerous information (it was unwise for an SOE man to confide in anyone who was not also a known agent), but the significance of the message is that this could have been Shelley going by two assumed names.

Shelley is in fact making great efforts to convince his superiors and loved ones that he is still very much alive. He slips out whatever messages he can in the vain hope that they will reach home, and amazingly quite a few do. One finds its way into the hands of Sister Eanswythe of St Mary’s Mission. She comes by the information via her contact with Warrant Officer John Lander, a wireless navigator in the RAF who was shot down in early 1944. He had sent his son to the mission’s school before the war and regularly confided his family problems to the nun. When he failed to receive any post from his family during his confinement he complained in a letter to the good sister and asked her to see what she could do. In a short postscript he asked that she write to Mrs Thomas (Shelley’s wife) to let her know that he had met her husband and that he was alright. He failed to elaborate any further and SOE are disappointed that the nun is a dead end.

There are other letters, and SOE acquires them as soon as they can in order to analyse them. Agents are taught secret codes that can be innocently dropped into letters to family should they be caught, and Shelley’s letters are scrutinised for any clues. There is a feeling that SOE is clutching at very thin straws and their strained desperation even seeps into their analysis reports.

We are sorry, but [the letter to Mrs Thomas] does not contain a message according to the innocent letter conventions arranged here with [Shelley].

[However] it would seem that an investigation of the names and addresses [mentioned in the letter], and possibly replies, containing hidden messages on [Shelley’s] conventions might achieve good results.
¹

SOE is beginning to piece together a timeline of Shelley’s whereabouts during his absence. He has left clues wherever he can to let them know that he is still alive – scratched missives on walls, short messages, even contact with other British prisoners – but while they can pursue his route, SOE can do nothing to bring him home: that is up to the man himself.

But why is Shelley so important to SOE that they are pursuing him so diligently? Other agents vanish from official papers when captured, only being vaguely mentioned in a report about a more favoured agent. The files on Shelley are a bumper crop of information on one very special agent, but what made him so important? Who was he and why was his role so significant to SOE?

Note

1
.  Extract from interrogation report from Forest Frederick Edward Yeo-Thomas’ SOE personnel file.

– 2 –

The Secrets of a Tailor

SHELLEY’S REAL NAME WAS Forest Frederick Edward Yeo-Thomas, something of a mouthful, but a name that incorporated his French and British origins. Born on 17 June 1907 at a nursing home in Holborn, London, Yeo-Thomas was a child of two nationalities. Though British citizens, his parents, John and Daisy, spent the majority of their time in Dieppe, a tradition that went back to Forest’s grandfather, John Yeo, who had abandoned South Wales in the 1850s to travel to Dieppe and marry his sweetheart, Miss Thomas. The move had been spurred on by disapproving parents and to spite them further John incorporated his new wife’s surname into his own – the Yeo-Thomases were born.

The first Mr and Mrs Yeo-Thomas settled into Dieppe life, with John selling high-grade Welsh coal to the railways and securing his fortune; by 1895 they were so accepted within the community that grandfather Yeo-Thomas was able to form and become honorary president of the Dieppe Football Club, as well as becoming vice-president of the Dieppe Golf Club. Both his son and grandson were known as good amateur football players and in the 1960s players in the Dieppe area were still competing for a Yeo-Thomas Cup.

Despite being well integrated into the local French community Forest’s family still had strong British roots: they were ex-pats with firm loyalty to their king and country. A large photograph of Edward VII presided over mealtimes, inspiring obedience from Forest, who learned to sing ‘God Save the King’ as soon as he was able. When the king died his effigy in France was draped with black and the household remained in a state of mourning, talking only in whispers, for several weeks.

The influence of France could not be ignored, however. Forest spoke to his father in French, and it was natural that a child born into a foreign culture would tend to pick up its habits and quirks.

Forest’s parents chose to correct this by giving their son an education in England so Forest was sent to Westcliff School in Sussex, a typical boarding school and terribly English in its attitudes and methods. John hoped that this would instil some Britishness into his young son, but Forest was not the doting patriot that his father was, and Westcliff seemed totally alien to him. Switching cultures, despite the stern gaze of Edward VII looking over him since birth, was impossible for the young boy. He refused his school porridge in disgust and snuck out of his dormitory at night to sit on a nearby railway embankment to watch the trains. No doubt he was punished for his excursions, but Forest already had the stubborn streak that had taken his grandfather from Wales to France, and no beating could take that away from him. Fortunately his parents saw sense (or realised that it was hopeless) after a year, and he happily returned to France.

However, Forest’s French life was changing too. In 1908 a brother, Jack, was born and quickly became John’s favourite, pushing Forest further and further away. Forest attended the College de Dieppe in 1910, enjoying its naval links, before going to the Lycée Condorcet and the University of Paris. Forest was already favouring his French side and in Paris he studied history, eventually taking his
Bachelier ès Lettres
. His loyalties were now truly divided, with France’s influence being the strongest. The gulf between him and his father only increased his independence and made him favour French interests over British.

Forest may have felt awkward with his strange dual life, in essence living in two countries, but that would change with the First World War. The first advance of the Germans served to draw France and Britain together to stand against a common foe and suddenly being Anglo-French was a boon, rather than a disadvantage.

Naturally John Yeo-Thomas joined the British Army as soon as he could and quickly became a staff officer due to his fluency in French. Daisy also volunteered for the British Army as a nurse. While Forest felt proud of his family’s contribution, he could not have been unaware of the strain the war work put on his parents’ already fragile marriage. In fact Daisy and John were becoming virtual strangers to each other, a situation that only worsened when Jack contracted meningitis and died in 1917. John, devastated by the loss of his adored son, blamed Daisy for being too occupied with her war duties to properly care for the boy. In the bleak atmosphere that penetrated the family home, Forest saw one way out – joining the army.

His father was not oblivious to this desire and, understandably desperate to protect his remaining son, contacted both the French and British recruiting offices in Paris to make it clear that if a young Forest Yeo-Thomas were to arrive he was to be turned away for being underage. Forest was only thwarted for a short time, however.

The entrance of the Americans into the war gave Forest the opportunity he needed. The American troops were under-manned and under-equipped. Desperate for troops, their recruiting examinations were minimal, to say the least, and in late 1917 Forest joined up under the name of Pierre Nord, declaring he was 19, despite barely looking his real age of 16. He was accepted, and so Forest enjoyed his first success at subterfuge, which would become such an important part of his life later on.

Anyone who has even a passing knowledge of the First World War will realise the horrors that Yeo-Thomas was marching into – he could hardly have been unaware himself – but Forest was eager and determined. He was also lucky, which was a trait that would carry him through a second war. By 1917 the war was coming to its conclusion, not that the ordinary soldiers realised this, and life in and out of the trenches, the fears of no-man’s-land and the horrific death tolls seemed just as great that year as any year before. But Germany was weakening, and in another year they would be defeated and signing an armistice that would become the basis for grievances that would spur more conflict.