Great Escapes (6 page)

In an effort to clear the backlog of escapees in the Pat O’Leary Line, seven operations were mounted. In one operation alone, thirty-five escapees and evaders were picked up from St Pierre-sur-Mer on the east coast of Narbonne, followed a month later by a further thirty-five from the mouth of the River Têt at Canet-Plage. One of the vessels used by the CWF was just 47ft long and on one of its missions it managed to cram eighty-three persons on board, the majority of whom had to be accommodated on the deck.

The wireless operator that Langley had found and trained proved to be worse than useless. His knowledge of Morse code was barely adequate and the first time he transmitted he went to pieces. He was obviously not suited for this kind of clandestine work, and so was returned to London. His place was taken by a young Belgian fighter pilot by the name of Alex Nitelet, who had been blinded in one eye during a dogfight. He was fully trained in the use of Morse code and knew all about the escape line because he himself had been rescued by it some months previously.

Slowly but surely the Pat O’Leary Line got back on track despite the earlier setbacks. The number of people willing to help hide the escapees grew and it was estimated that at its height, over 250 men, women and even some children were involved, from Belgium to Spain.

In Marseilles the organisation was able to provide forged identity cards, travel documents and ration cards, all within three days of being asked for them. Black marketeers, who were rife on the waterfront, could provide food for the escapees at a moment’s notice. One Jewish tailor, Paul Ulmann, could copy any uniform required within forty-eight hours of being asked. Throughout France and Belgium there were ‘letter-boxes’ that could be used to contact agents, and information came from such places as police stations, military establishments and even from inside Gestapo headquarters itself.

The Pat O’Leary Line was now the biggest escape line in Europe and the most well informed. This also made it vulnerable to infiltration by the Gestapo, who, on a number of occasions, placed their own agents into the chain. One such agent was a Frenchman who was working for the Gestapo. He arrived at
‘La Petit Poucet’
and offered Pat O’Leary information about German counter-intelligence agents operating in the area. Ever suspicious about such claims, Pat O’Leary made enquiries about the man and discovered that he had attempted to penetrate the Spanish end of the Line. Picked up by the Resistance, the man was questioned and eventually admitted to being in the pay of the Gestapo. He suffered the fate of all traitors – death.

The Line suffered a severe blow when two key members of the organisation, Alex Nitelet and the black marketeer Gaston Nègre, were picked up by the Vichy police whilst recovering an air drop from
MI
9 containing a large sum of money and supplies.

As the war progressed the Germans decided that the Vichy government was not keeping a tight enough control of its citizens and the Resistance, and so in November 1942 the Germans moved in to take control. This meant that patrols along the borders were increased, additional detector vans moved into the area, and more and more Gestapo agents began to infiltrate the Lines.

A new wireless operator, an Australian named Tom Groome, was parachuted in to take the place of Alex Nitelet. The Germans’ grip tightened and within weeks of arriving, Tom Groome was caught in the middle of a transmission by one of the detector vans. There was some good news however when an active resistance group rescued Gaston Nègre from prison by slipping a powerful sleeping draught into the wine of the warders. Further good news followed concerning Ian Garrow. He was about to be sent to a concentration camp in Germany when Paul Ulmann made a warder’s uniform, which was smuggled into the prison by a gaoler who had been bribed. Garrow changed into the uniform and walked out of the prison to a waiting car where he was whisked away to the Spanish border and over the Pyrenees into Spain.

At the end of 1942, Louis Nouveau recruited a former Foreign Legionnaire, Roger Le Neveu, in Paris. At first he appeared to be the ideal person to be a courier, and he began to escort escapees and evaders down the Line successfully. Then, during one trip, he arrived alone, saying that his ‘charges’ had been captured but he had managed to talk his way out of the situation. Some members of the organisation were having doubts about Neveu and it transpired their doubts were well founded.

The Germans suddenly introduced special passes for travel just as the Line was about to move some of their ‘charges’. Neveu volunteered to get the passes and within hours had obtained them. In the rush to get the ‘charges’ away on the train, Louis Nouveau had not reflected on how Neveu had managed to get the passes in such a short time. It was when they changed trains at Tours, and a gun slammed into Nouveau’s ribs as the carriage was invaded by German plain-clothes police, that he realised that they had been set up.

With Louis Nouveau in custody, Neveu contacted Paul Ulmann and suggested that he contact Pat O’Leary and arrange a meeting in a café in Toulouse, where he could explain the circumstances surrounding Louis Nouveau’s arrest. Pat agreed and went to meet Neveu, but the moment he walked into the café the Gestapo were waiting for him. Both Neveu and O’Leary were arrested, although Neveu’s arrest was a sham in an attempt to throw suspicion off him; it fooled no one.

Arrest after arrest followed but despite being tortured viciously by the Gestapo, Pat O’Leary said nothing. However, the Line had been damaged beyond repair. Roger Le Neveu was tracked down after the liberation of France and executed by the French Resistance. Pat O’Leary survived the war and was given the highest civilian awards possible by the grateful governments of France, Belgium, Britain and the United States.

The Shelburn Line started life as the Oaktree Line in 1943. The idea was to organise the evacuation from the beaches of northern Brittany using MGBs (Motor Gun Boats) of the Royal Navy.

The place selected as the collection point was the beach at Anse Cochat near the town of Plouha, northern Brittany. To co-ordinate the mission, two men – Vladimir Bourysschkine aka Valentine Williams and Sergeant-Major Raymond Labrosse of the Canadian Army, a French-Canadian – were parachuted in from an SOE (Special Operations Executive) Halifax of 161 Squadron, RAF. The two men landed in a field near Rambouillet, southwest of Paris. Within seconds, the two shadowy figures quickly raced for the safety of the trees. The two men shook hands with a group of figures amongst the trees, exchanged a few words and then left. The two men were to play a key role in the escape of 307 allied airmen and secret agents out of Nazi-held territory.

Labrosse stayed in the area, whilst Williams headed for Brittany and the home of Countess Roberta de Maudit at the Chateau de Bourblanc, Chauny, near Paimpol, a town 50 miles north of Paris. The town was just 15 miles from the headquarters of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, the commander in chief of all German forces in the Atlantic sector.

The two men organised the Oaktree Line with the help of the French Resistance, creating an escape network that returned 175 allied airmen back to England. Unfortunately the Gestapo had infiltrated the organisation and Williams was arrested, but Raymond Labrosse escaped and managed to join up with a group of escapees and evaders and crossed into Spain. After a brief stay in Gibraltar, Labrosse returned to England on 3 September 1943. Williams was interrogated by the Germans in Rennes prison and beaten on a number of occasions. While there he got to know some of the other inmates – Russian soldiers. Val Williams had been born in Moscow, but raised in the United States and spoke both fluent Russian and French. Together with a Russian officer by the name of Bougaiev they managed to escape during a very heavy air raid. During the escape Williams fractured his leg whilst jumping down from a wall. Despite this, he managed to evade capture and was picked up by the Resistance and taken to a safe house to be treated. After getting him to Paris he was taken to Brittany and placed in the care of the Shelburn Line and returned to England.

Meanwhile back in London, Labrosse had met up with another escapee, fellow French-Canadian Sergeant-Major Lucien Dumais, at
MI
9 where they were assigned another mission.
MI
9’s top-secret section
IS
9 (d) was better known as ‘Room 900’ and was the War Office branch concerned with allied prisoners of war. Its function was to aid their escapes, to supply agents and helpers with money, radio communications and supplies, and to arrange pickups by aircraft and naval evacuations from the coasts of France. Labrosse and Dumais’s mission was to organise a new escape network, codenamed ‘Shelburn’, involving evacuation by sea by Royal Navy Motor Gun Boat (MGB) from a beach at the Anse Cochat, near Plouha, Brittany, to Dartmouth. This operation was given the codename ‘Bonaparte’.

The MGB was a high-speed launch powered by three diesel engines which cruised at 33 knots, but with a top speed of 40 knots. The launch was 128ft in length and carried a crew of thirty-six. Its armament consisted of one six-pounder gun aft, twin machine guns in turrets, which were mounted on either side of the bridge, and a two-pound gun just in front of the bridge.

The two agents, Labrosse and Dumais, were given extensive training in operating, repairing and building wireless sets, then given a large amount of francs together with forged identity papers. Lucien Dumais became ‘Lucien Desbiens’, whilst Raymond Labrosse became ‘Marcel Desjardins’.

The two men were flown to France in a SOE Lysander aircraft, which landed in a meadow 80km north of Paris. After meeting with members of the local Resistance, the two men separated. Labrosse travelled the countryside looking for various places in the area from which he could transmit and receive coded radio messages. Dumais also travelled the countryside, but his job was to find safe houses for the airmen who would be brought into the area by other escape organisations. In addition to the houses, he had to find doctors who would be prepared to treat any sick or wounded airmen; people who would be prepared to feed and cloth them; printers who would create false identity papers at short notice; and all knowing that they would be putting the lives of themselves and their families on the line if discovered.

Lucien Dumais (Lucien Desbien) who had been appointed to command the whole Shelburn network in France, was now posing as a mortician. Raymond Labrosse (Marcel Desjardins), his second-in-command and radio operator, was a salesman of electrical medical equipment. Labrosse made most of his transmissions from the apartment of Monsieur Dorré, the stationmaster of the Gare Pajol, who, because of his position, was able to gain valuable information and give practical assistance to the organisation. Mr Dorré’s daughter, who Raymond Labrosse married when Paris was liberated, often assisted in the transmissions. With the help of dedicated and patriotic Frenchmen, the Canadians gradually pieced the organisation together.

A great deal of work still had to be done before the organisation’s network could be up and running. Procedures and routes for the escapees and evaders had to be worked out, together with a system of relays and safe houses. Couriers had to be recruited together with equipment and supplies.

When everything was in place, the escape organisation radioed London, asking for an operation. They would then select dates of moonless nights and if agreed, ‘Room 900’ would then confirm the date.

On the appointed date, a BBC message would be sent at 7.30 and 9 p.m. This would mean that the MGB had already left Dartmouth and was making for ‘Bonaparte’ beach. The airmen would then be collected for embarkation. The message was:
‘Bonjour tout le monde á la Maison d’Alphonse
[Hello everyone at the House of Alphonse]’. If the operation was to be delayed twenty-four hours, another message would be sent by London:
‘Yvonne pense toujours à l’heureuse occasion
[Yvonne always thinks of the happy occasion]’. For the next few months the two French-Canadians worked tirelessly realising that everything had to be in place before the first operation could take place, which hopefully would be in the December.

Throughout France ordinary people were also needed to watch for downed airmen, to pick them up and send them on their way to Paris; guides had to be provided to escort the escapees in stages to Paris and then to Brittany; and countless other details had to be looked into.

In Paris, Paul-Francois Campinchi headed the responsibility for Shelburn’s Paris sector. It was here that downed airmen were to be screened, processed and interrogated by security agents who could speak English. Somebody would also have to teach the allied airmen to act like French workers and labourers. Many Frenchmen, who refused to speak to the enemy, became ill humoured and sullen and the airmen would have to be taught to behave in this manner. There were also certain idiosyncrasies Frenchmen possessed, how they smoked their cigarettes and some of their typical mannerisms. Fake identity papers and everyday items found in the average Frenchman’s pockets would also have to be provided. They would have to be fully briefed for the various trips they may have to take, and all this under the very nose of the Gestapo and German counter-espionage organisations.

Security was paramount for the agents and their helpers to ensure maximum secrecy. Information was on a need-to-know basis and no one was told more than what was absolutely necessary. The identity of Resistance workers and their helpers were discreetly shared and even then it was limited to just one or even two names. The airmen were given no more than the barest essential information that they needed. The success of this organisation was highlighted when, at the end of the war, many of the airmen who had escaped had almost no knowledge of the Shelburn organisation and its structure. They had always assumed that the French Resistance had been behind their escape. At the end of the war when the Gestapo records came to light, it became clear that they had no idea of the existence of Shelburn and its part in spiriting escaping airmen away. This was due entirely to the excellent security of the organisation.