Andrée's War (21 page)

B
eing caught was not the main concern of the Orion Resistance fighters; had it been they would perhaps never have achieved what they did. Nevertheless, the dangers they faced were very real and the possibility of betrayal, by an outsider or someone they trusted, was a serious concern.

Every Orion member was careful to follow Alain's strict rules, but they were young and inexperienced, and they could not always contain their impetuous behaviour. The ‘game' was about taking risks and drawing more friends into their circle to join them, but the chance of recruiting a mole or a traitor into the fold was always high no matter how careful they were. In December 1943, something went terribly wrong.

Biaggi had taken on the role of identifying men they wanted to help escape to North Africa, recruiting them mainly from Parisian student circles (though the group was willing to help anyone who came forward and asked for assistance). There were huge dangers involved in working with these young men, arming them with false ID cards and arranging meeting points in Paris and the Basque country – not least the possibility of enemy infiltration. It was to Alain's great credit that, of a group of some seventy agents, it is believed that only one of his team – Jean Xavier Escartin, father of six and, at thirty-six, older than the others in the group – lost his life at the hands of the Gestapo.

Xavier, the owner of a haberdasher's shop in the rue St Martin in central Paris, was a lively and warm-hearted, generous man. He and Biaggi worked closely together to make sure their recruits were looked after; Biaggi handled the prospective escapees' travel arrangements from Paris to the Basque country, including all the necessary false ID cards and travel permits, while
Xavier was responsible for everything once they arrived in the Pyrenees and until they reached Spain.

They had detailed security rules. Besides Biaggi and Xavier, no one ever knew the name of the escapee, the
passeur
, or the safe house, until the very last minute. Meeting places and times were kept vague and always at night. No one working on the project ever had a problem recognising the men as they arrived from northern France because of their fair complexions and the way they dressed, but even so they were always asked for a password, which had been given to them just before they left Paris.

In the capital, depending on the personal circumstances of the escapee, a fee was charged. It covered the costs of their lodging, food, transport, ID cards, travel permits and some money for the guide who would help them cross the Pyrenees. The group was not out to make a profit; instead, as Biaggi once explained to one of his recruits, those who came from a wealthy background would be asked to pay for other recruits. Gandy notes that after arriving at their prearranged meeting places in the Basque country, ‘clients' were taken to the village of Itxassou, from where their trip through the mountains to Spain would begin.

To celebrate her husband's birthday that December, Madame Escartin organised a dinner party at their home in Paris. Among the guests was le comte de Montreuil, otherwise known as Guy de Marcheret d'Eu, a recent acquaintance and newcomer to Paris who had made his way into Escartin's group of friends as a close friend of Madame B,
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the wife of a famous sportsman from the Basque country. The ties between Basque people were famously strong, and such a connection was therefore treated as a seal of approval.

At the dinner, to which Michel Alliot had also been invited, the count told Escartin and his friends that he wanted to use their escape route. He explained that he had been born in Russia in 1917 and that, when the revolution began, his family moved to China, where he had been educated by the
Jesuits. He said that he had returned to France before the war to claim the family seat, following his elder brother's death. Over dinner they discussed politics and de Marcheret described himself as a Gaullist.

There was no obvious reason to doubt his credentials, but when Biaggi met the count he sensed that something did not quite add up and stalled in organising his departure. He decided to make further enquiries into the man's background and phoned Madame B, who knew Escartin well. They arranged to meet at the Café Weber opposite the Tuileries Gardens on the rue Royale, so that he could question her in person about whether de Marcheret really was who he said he was. Unwisely, however, on this one occasion Biaggi did not abide by the usual rules that he and Alain had been so keen on enforcing. As he later explained, ‘I was doing too much and wanted to find as many candidates as I could.' That same afternoon, he had also arranged a meeting at the same time and place with two recent recruits, Roulleaux du Gage and Guy de Frollé, to give them their papers and further details of their forthcoming trip. At this point it was not uncommon for Biaggi to have up to fifteen meetings a day in his never-ending search to find as many candidates as possible.

While Biaggi was meeting Madame B in the Rue Royal, Alliot had a rendezvous of his own – at La Source, a popular café in the Quartier Latin. He was meeting a man called Gosselin who, he had been told, was a member of the Mouvements unifiés de Résistance zone sud, a Resistance group based in the South of France. As Alliot walked into La Source, he was surprised to see de Marcheret there, talking to another man. Upon greeting him, he discovered that this other man was Gosselin. Alliot sat down at their table and as he did, de Marcheret gave him some leaflets to distribute to his friends. Alliot glanced at the papers, containing articles in support of de Gaulle and calling for Parisians to join the resistance. To be found with such material would mean instant arrest and likely death; exactly why most Resistance groups avoided such pamphlets. Alliot sensed danger. He left the café immediately, dropping the leaflets under the table, but outside on the street he was apprehended at gunpoint by three men who searched him roughly and, even though he had nothing on him, pushed him into a waiting car that took him to Gestapo headquarters for questioning.

While Alliot was being arrested, a Citroën drew up outside Escartin's shop in the rue St Martin and three men wearing Gestapo raincoats jumped out and forced their way aggressively to the front of a line of customers waiting in Escartin's shop. They grabbed him by the arms and pushed him out of his shop and into their car. Madame Escartin and her mother heard the commotion from their flat on the first floor. They rushed up to the maid's room at the top of the house
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and were able from there to get into the corridor that linked the building to another block on a different street. They made their way down the stairs safely, and Madame Escartin caught the
métro
to Concorde and walked to the rue Royale to warn Biaggi. She was too late.

Minutes after Alliot's arrest, de Marcheret was taken by car to the Rue Royale where he joined Madame B; Biaggi saw them together in the café window as he approached, but did not have time to figure out what was going on. As he entered the café, he was grabbed by two members of the Milice. With no time to warn the two new recruits he was also meant to be meeting there, he was manhandled out to the street and into a waiting car. He recognised the Corsican accent of one of the Milice and tried to engage him in conversation using the local dialect as part of an attempt to persuade the man to let him go, but to no avail.

The coordination of the Gestapo operation to arrest Biaggi, Escartin and Alliot was brilliant; they had successfully picked up three leading members of the escape ring without any of the men being able to warn the others. Roulleaux du Gage and Guy de Frollé, along with everyone else in the café, had their papers checked and were searched by members of the Gestapo who were now crawling all over the building. Du Gage already had a false ID card Biaggi had given him a few days earlier. Both men were taken in for questioning; de Frollé was released due to lack of evidence, but du Gage was tortured to find out how he had obtained his ID card and was later deported to Buchenwald, from where he would not return.

The Orion Group was desperate to find out whether any of the men had
talked – and indeed, how and why the group had been betrayed. They were worried, particularly, that Biaggi's war wounds might make him vulnerable to torture.

Several days later, they learnt that the three prisoners were to be moved from Gestapo headquarters to the prison at Fresnes (the main Paris prison where political prisoners were detained). Since no one else from Orion had been arrested and no one had paid the offices of Vaudevir a visit, they assumed the Gestapo had not been able to get anything out of the men. The person (or people) who had betrayed them was presumably still at large, however, and the group needed to find out who the mole was.

Andrée was hugely worried about Biaggi, of whom she was extremely fond. She decided that she would go to the prison to see if she might be allowed in to see him. It was risky, but the prospect of being able to find out any news about their betrayer outweighed the danger. She discussed the plan with her friend and Orion colleague Marthe, and also told her mother, hoping Yvonne would give her some practical advice; she was nervous, and wanted to make sure she looked utterly inconspicuous. It would be disastrous if she herself were to be suspected of working with Biaggi and subsequently arrested. To her surprise, Yvonne took the news calmly and without protest, possibly aware that there were many group members who could still be rounded up if they did not find out who had betrayed them.

Several days later, on a cold, damp morning, Andrée queued outside the prison wall with a group of women, most of whom must have feared that this might be the last time they saw their relatives. She wore no make-up and was dressed in an old grey coat with a scarf over her hair, hoping to avoid attention. She spent all day waiting but to no avail; the guards would not let her see Biaggi.
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He spent ninety-five days in solitary confinement, after being questioned over several days by the SS, who used his old stomach
wounds as a means to torture him. During one period he was put on a starvation diet as a punishment for having made contact, using Morse code, with his cell neighbour, the duc de Rohan-Chabot – President of the Red Cross.

Having tried and failed to get Biaggi to speak, the Germans eventually transferred him on 19 March 1944 to a holding camp near Compiègne. On 3 June, he was on a deportation train bound for Germany when he, with some of his fellow prisoners, jumped off the train to freedom. (By all accounts he had to threaten some of his companions not to raise the alarm.)
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His story was not yet over. Alliot had been similarly transferred to the Camp de Royallieu, and had managed to escape a few weeks before Biaggi. Sadly Escartin was not so fortunate: he was sent to Germany on another deportation train, and never returned.

 

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Her name remains unknown.

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It was customary in Paris for the maid's room to be located at the top of the apartment block and referred to as ‘la chambre de bonne'.

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Though not from Biaggi, Orion may have found out somehow who the mole was, as no one else from the group was subsequently arrested. There is no record of any form of retaliation by Orion against the count, though presumably they made sure that all agents were warned about him. Guy de Marcheret d'Eu was executed after the war. Madame B, meanwhile, was forced to make financial reparations to Escartin's wife and children.

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Gandy provides an interesting account of the escape. There were roughly 100 prisoners in the carriage with Biaggi. They knew they were being taken to camps in Germany but many believed they would eventually be saved by the Allies. Biaggi and a few other prisoners, including a priest named Le Meur, argued that there was a strong chance they would die in the camps and that they therefore had to try to escape from the train. They had been warned by the guards that any such attempt would be met by the shooting of other prisoners in retaliation. A fierce argument broke out between those who wanted to take the risk and those who didn't, with Biaggi threatening to kill anyone who called the guards. According to Gandy, the abbé Le Meur told Biaggi that if he did kill another prisoner, the priest would give him absolution afterwards. Le Meur had previously bribed a guard to smuggle a small saw onto the train, which the prisoners used to unlock their carriage.

I
n January 1944, after Alain had completed his training in North Africa, Henri d'Astier and the head of the French Security Service, Jacques Soustelle, introduced him to Henry Hyde, head of the Algerian section of the OSS. Hyde was looking for agents in France to work for the American intelligence services.

Hyde was aware of Alain's intelligence-gathering network in Paris and Marseilles and asked him to start an OSS network in south-western France. He promised to supply Alain with the money he needed to fund Orion, now led in Paris by François Clerc and in Marseilles by Raoul Maillard. It would enable them to bribe members of the Wehrmacht, pay their informants and cover their agents' expenses. Alain couldn't refuse. He was officially enlisted on 15 January. For intelligence purposes, occupied Europe was divided between SOE, the Special Operations Executive branch of British Intelligence, and OSS, the Office of Strategic Services branch of the US intelligence services. France mainly came under SOE, but the Americans wanted their own agents in the field. Under Alain's deal with Hyde, Orion would supply information to OSS.

On 4 April 1944, as he prepared to leave US Air Force base Blida, on the outskirts of Algiers, Alain met William Casey, head of OSS operations in North Africa and later to become head of the CIA in President Reagan's administration. Casey was eager to see this young Frenchman whose network was of such interest to Henry Hyde and who had been trained for several months as one of their agents. Casey was aware that, after a five-hour flight over Spain, Alain Griotteray was to be dropped ‘blind' by parachute into occupied France with no one in the country aware of his arrival. It had been agreed that he would be dropped into the Pyrenean village of Orion, his Resistance headquarters and an area he knew well.