Moon Squadron (2 page)

This, then, was the overall plan. Two problems, both of them enormous, were left. The first was to recr
uit ordinary, extraordinary men and later women who, at the risk of their limbs and their lives, would be prepared to penetrate the stronghold of Europe and blow the smoulders of resistance to controlled flame. What manner of people should these ordinary, extraordinary persons be?

The first requirement was spirit. Into the mouth of Falstaff, Shakespeare put these words: “
Will
you
tell
me
,
Master
Shallow
,
how
to
choose
a
man
?
Care
I
for
limb
,
the
thews
,
the
stature
,
the
bulk
and
big
assemblance
of
a
man
!
Give
me
the
spirit
,
Master
Shallow
.”

It is never easy to be brave. But it is easier in the society of other people when a common fortitude illuminates the host. Here there could be no question
of ‘keeping up with the Jones’’. ‘The Jones’’ were a million miles away and would never know if they had been kept up with or not. This was a personal affair. The men who would launch their vulnerable bodies into the moonlit sky would do so alone; the men who paddled ashore from the dripping casing of submarines would have no reassuring companion to take a turn at the sculls; those who entered occupied Europe by other means would find themselves by themselves in the knowledge that every man's hand could be turned against them - and very likely would be. These volunteers, every single one of them a volunteer, would have to rely on the strength of their own spirit to sustain them. They would face intense loneliness; they would be wary of treachery; they would know doubt, disappointment, anxiety and fear. If they were caught and it occurred that Goring's "big battalions" were on the other side, the warriors could at best expect months or years of numbing imprisonment. At worst, they could expect the extremes of physical torture by those to whom the degradation of God's image had been elevated to a fine art. This is why, at an early date, the "L" or lethal tablet became a standard item in the equipment of British agents. Its action was reputed to be swift and death to follow its absorption in an estimated time of six seconds. As these tablets had never failed to work, there was no exact data as to how long the agony lasted. It was a lot to ask of a volunteer. The moment their feet touched the soil of an occupied country, the fiend, the firing squad, the
Genick
-
Schuss
, the rope or the gas chamber could be the reward of one incautious word.

Knowing these t
hings, realising them deeply, ‘The Firm’ began to recruit.

In war as in sport, England continues obstinately to be the country of the amateur and those who passed through the fine mesh of selection w
ere fierily proud of their non-professional status. Given their first quality spirit, the selectors looked for other attributes. Bi-lingual knowledge of the tongue of the country in which the applicant would work was not enough. Theirs had to be a capacity to melt into the background, to eat, drink, breathe, sleep and think as their neighbours would eat, drink, breathe, sleep and think. Before an applicant was accepted for training, he or she would be checked and vetted, re-checked and re-vetted; personal habits would be studied, motives analysed. There were those who came for high adventure, others who came for revenge; some came because they were bored with regimental soldiering, some to get away from intolerable domestic situations. One man volunteered - and was accepted - on the alleged grounds that he could no longer tolerate English cooking and a passion for the garlic-scented dishes of the Continent. The best of them came because they saw the fight, not as one between the soldiers of two opposing countries, but as one between freedom and slavery, between light and darkness.

The volunteers found their way to Baker Street by devious routes. They came from the four corners of Britain, from neutral Eire, from the French province of Canada, from Mauritius. Some arrived by mysterious invitation, others because they knew a man who knew a man who had some sort of comic job near where Sherlock Holmes used to live. Many, after their first interview, were sent away again without the slightest knowledge as to why they had been interviewed or what the whole thing was in aid of. Even those who were selected for training were on probation and were given the minimum of information. They were presented with code
names: Pierre, Jan, Otto, Raoul, Denise, Helene to name a few, and by these names they were known both to their teachers and their companions. They were instructed never to reveal their true identities to anybody during their time "at school." This was a school whose curriculum was unlikely to receive the benevolent approval of the education authorities. Former schoolmasters, travelling salesmen, poets,
maitres
d'hotel
, housewives and
debutantes
were instructed by experts on the art of picking locks, forgery and confidence trickery and other anti-social activities. They learned how to assemble, fire and repair a complex range of noisy weapons and how to use silent ones without suspicion. Instruction in wireless telegraphy was all-important and those who were destined to be W.T. operators muttered Morse in their sleep. Wreaking came high on the list of subjects and plastic explosives, time pencils and detonators were handled with ever-increasing familiarity. At this place, this school of lost identities, observation was carried on ceaselessly. The pupils' reaction to every situation was noted, bar and mess bills were scrutinised, emotional complications assessed. The stakes were too high to take risks and there were those who, to their numbing disappointment, were summoned to the Commandant and were told in the kindliest possible manner that, upon reflection, their qualities though high, were not exactly suitable for the work that had been envisaged. They were enjoined - and scientifically helped - to forget all that they had ever learned and returned to their units. The others, those who had made the grade, travelled joyfully to the Highlands of Scotland to be physically toughened and to put into practice those theories of sabotage which they had learned in the too populous south. Here again the fine tooth comb came in operation and more went sadly back to their units, spanning from the Highlands to the parachute school at Ringway. Normally seven drops were done, two from a silent, swaying captive balloon, five from aircraft in flight. The last port of call was in the New Forest. Here, with frightening realism, the vital need for absolute security at all times was drummed and re-drummed into those who had survived the many pitfalls of their training. Even at this, the final stage, some fell by the wayside. Those who fortunately did not reported to Baker Street. They were the answer to the first of ‘The Firm's’ problems. The second was how to transport them to occupied, guarded Europe.

Like the parody of a travel-agent's peace-time brochure, a choice of routes and of transport was offered.

There was the submarine from which agents could row ashore and land on deserted beaches. This involved surfacing within hazardous distance of the enemy coast, an operation which their Lordships viewed with the greatest displeasure. These vulnerable and expensive mechanical mermaids could be put to far better use than the conveying of one or two anonymous passengers in cheap French suits to what might be called the ‘scene of the crime’. To get the allocation of a submarine from the Admiralty was like a visit to the dentist for the extraction of a deep-rooted molar. Nevertheless it was done and my friend ‘Raoul’ made two separate underwater journeys to his shadowy destination. In each case, the Commander, clapping a blind eye to his orders to stand well out to sea, obligingly put out ‘Raoul’ and his rubber dinghy within easy paddling distance of the shore.

There were fast motor launches that could dart across the Channel under cover of darkness, deliver their human cargo and dart back again. But the sound of their engines, picked up and pin-pointed by our ever-listening enemies, made these forays highly dangerous. These craft, despite their speed, were vulnerable to attack by the watchful,
ever-prowling
Luftwaffe
directed to their position by shore radio, and even if they reached base safely, the fact that they had been in a certain place at a certain time, indicated that ‘something was going on’. It was comparatively easy for the
Abwehr
, the counter-espionage section of the German Armed Forces, to cordon off with troops and police and Gestapo the area where the motor launch had touched and simply wait until the agent walked into the net. More than one good man was caught that way, but, on the other hand, good men got away that way. The ‘boat service’ was called into action when-to use the phrase of one of its intrepid members - “the hot breath of the Gestapo was on one of our chaps' necks.” More inherently glamorous were the ‘
feluccas
’. The
feluccas
were pre-war sardine fishing boats, dirty craft. Some forty feet long, and narrow in the beam, carrying one tattered sail, a malodorous engine, the flags of half-a-dozen South American republics in the locker, a Polish Skipper, some whisky, a revolver, camouflaged depth charges and as many secret agents as happened to be going their way. Theirs was a two-way passage. They set the new entry down and took the old hands back. The
feluccas
put out from Gibraltar and were prepared cheerfully to set down and pick up anywhere between Mal'Seilles and Monte Carlo. They were dangerous craft from every point of view.

There was even an overland route. A few agents, a very few, crossed the Pyrenees on foot to enter France at Perpignan. But the Pyrenees were regarded more as an exit than an entrance. It was one of the recognised escape routes for crashed R.A.F. crews. Wing-Commander Bob Hodges - later to command the first of the Moon Squadrons got out by this route and, like most of his brother officers both before and after him, languished for a space in the Spanish gaol of Mirandez.
‘Raoul’ had a spell in there too. For British agents, a period of incarceration in Mirandez corresponded roughly to Matriculation. Once you had passed, you could consider yourself a member of the University. There were numerous colleges you could enter once this hurdle had been jumped; Fresnes;Cherche-midi; Buchenwald, Maut- hausen, Belsen. You were even qualified to enter the grisly portals of 84 Avenue Foch.

Finally, there was the air.

Chapter Three

“
I
know
that
I
shall
meet
my
fate
,

Somewhere
among
the
clouds
above
.”

W. B. YEATS

With almost the whole jagged coastline of Europe under enemy surveillance, submarines were too precious to risk and too vulnerable to the aerial bomb or the shore battery. Small boat operations bristled with hazards. The
felucca
only set its tattered sail in Mediterranean waters. The Pyrenees provided a bolt-hole rather than an entrance. There remained the infinite steeps of the sky.

So, in contradiction of all cloak-and-dagger tradition, the sea gave way to the air. Only on very special occasions could be heard the soft splash of muffled oars in a deserted cove, the sleepy calling of a gull, the scrunch of sea-boots on wet shingle. These hallowed sounds, dear to the imagination of us all, were drowned by the surge and roar of aircraft flying high on a moonlight night. No longer did one catch a breathless glimpse of a mysterious figure melting into the blue-black shadow of the rocks. Instead, one saw a tiny, toy-like puppet dangling and jerking from the vast, spread umbrella of a parachute.

The first of the problems confronting ‘The Firm’ had been solved. Agents had been found, sifted and trained. They were hard, eager and ready to go. The method of getting them there had been decided, or rather dictated, by the condition of overrun Europe, and time was short. The occupied peoples were looking to Britain for a sign. Churchill’s words, noble and inspiring as they were, that filtered through on forbidden receiving sets, were not enough. Physical leadership was required and the restraint that leadership could impose. Resentment was growing and groups were forming. It would be disastrous if these groups, confused and practically unarmed, were to engage in a premature uprising. Defeat would be certain, followed by reprisals and bloodshed. It would have meant the quenching of all hope and the negation of ‘The Firm's’ long-term plan, perhaps for weary years to come.

‘The Firm’
put in a bid for arms and for the use of aircraft. There were vapour trails then in the English sky as the Battle of Britain was waged against the massed squadrons of the
Luftwaffe
. These were still the immortal hours of ‘The Few’. On the ground, armament factories, working night and day, were still unable to supply anything like the basic requirements of the swiftly expanding army. A number of units had come back weapon-less from the beaches of Dunkirk and these had to be re-armed. Other armed men had to stand guard on our own shores lest the church bells should ring. The darkened convoys that sailed to the Middle East had seemingly insatiable requirements. To allocate either weapons or desperately needed aircraft to sustain a pack of foreigners who, in the opinion of many, had already let us down once, was regarded as impossible and undesirable. Inside the banks, S.O.E - a new and unknown customer - was asking a hard-pressed bank with meagre coffers for an overdraft for an unspecified purpose somewhere abroad, and offering no security whatsoever. No explanations could be given for ‘The Firm’ and all its proposed activities were hush-hush and its curtain of security impenetrable.

Suppose, by a miracle, aircraft could be found and lent for this mysterious purpose - what then? Who would fly them, to what use would they be put, and for how long would they be required?
To these and other questions, ‘The Firm’ gave evasive answers. They knew, but they couldn't dare answer.

A special operation required hair-spring planning and timing, and conditions had to be perfect. Weather, wind and moonlight had to be harmonious and the most labyrinthine coded arrangements made by wireless with those who, in peril of their lives, would await the aircraft's arrival. This could (and frequently could) mean (that agent, aircraft and crew would have to stand by night after night without being able to take off. It could mean long hazardous flights through flak in vain search for the one field where an L shaped trio of torches would glimmer skywards, unless the ubiquitous Gestapo swooped first. It could mean that enemy fighters, alerted by the engines' sound, would be waiting to pounce and destroy on the return journey. If those who had the power to allot aircraft and crews had known of their desperate purpose, opposition would have been even stronger. As it was, it required a command from the highest quarter before aircraft were grudgingly released.

Winston Churchill had said "Set Europe Ablaze." The kindling wood for this inferno was laid at North Weald on August 20th, I940.

No newspaper headlines announced the formation of Number I4I9 Flight R.A.F. No cocktail party was given to launch it, no bottle of champagne was uncorked, no message of ‘good luck and God-speed’ was published by the Air Officer Commanding. "Even the walls have EARS," said the posters, pictorially ramming the idea home. The whole work of the Flight, the lives of the crews and of their passengers depended on utter secrecy. There would be no fuss and no publicity. Everything had to be commonplace and routine- so commonplace that there would be no discussion and no speculation in other R.A.F. messes. Flight Lieutenant so-and-so was simply posted to somewhere near London, a lucky devil thought by most. He vanished into the ever-shifting maelstrom of war and, in the urgency of the days and nights, was soon forgotten. His next appearance would very likely be in the columns of
The
Times
when the award of a D.S.O. or a D.F.C. would be announced and his former brother officers would wonder what old So-and-So had achieved for such promotion. Up to Squadron Leader too! Some people had all the luck.

It was a cold and bitter winter. Across the narrow twenty mile spit of the Channel stood the massed war-might of the
Reich
, terrible with weapons. Dusk and the advent of night, heralded by the wailing of air-raid sirens and the night itself, shuddered to the impact of the bombs of the Luftwaffe. The defences of London seemed pitifully meagre and the "all-clear" a benediction. The day brought ever-changing rivulets of rumour, that the bodies of invading Germans were being washed up on the south coast beaches, that the R.A.F. had spread a film of petrol over the sea and set it alight, consuming whole regiments of our enemies. These were rumours. The fact was that the mothers of Britain were troubled by fears of a diphtheria epidemic and distracted by the emotional conflict caused by evacuation. The unity of the family was broken and the future seemed dark and unending. But, if the situation in these islands was bad, that of Europe was infinitely worse. Fundamentally, subject to the restrictions of war, we were still free. Europe was enslaved.

From North Weald, throughout that hard winter, aircraft went out on every suitable night to beleaguered Europe. In their ones and twos, members of the British Forces were returning to the Continent. To the embryonic resistance groups, to the desperate partisans, to the anxious, bewildered and disorganised patriots, the silhouette of Royal Air Force wings against the
canvas of the moon meant a renewal of hope. England was fulfilling her promise. The pilots had no knowledge of the names, false or true, of their passengers. They called them ‘the Joes’.

The first of ‘the Joes’
was George Noble. He had originally been one of a group of ten sent for training. Of these, six had survived the rigorous tests imposed by ‘The Firm’ and the other four had been returned to their units. Noble reported to Baker Street. He had undertaken to drop ‘blind’ into France. He knew a man there, a man on whom he thought he could rely. But for all Noble knew, this man, this friend, might be dead or in a concentration camp. He might even have diverted his loyalty, for the German Lorelei sang a beguiling song to those who were prepared to listen. The risk was appalling but Noble was prepared to take it. He was given his cover story, his forged papers, his transmitting set. With two companions, he settled down in an accommodation address to await the moon period. On the night before the operation was scheduled to take place, Noble left the house in the evening. He may have gone for a walk, to buy a paper, to have a glass of wine in Soho. It is impossible to know how these things are ordered, or why. During his absence, the sirens whooped and the house he had recently left received a direct hit. When he returned, his two friends were dead in the rubble. It was a numbing disaster, for the dead were his tried, trusted and intimate friends. To him, it was all the more important that he should go, and seek to do single-handed the work of three. Let there now be no delay. He was taken out to the airfield and submitted to the final search. No English cigarettes, matches, bus tickets, letters or money. Silent with grief and shock, he put on his parachute and got into the aircraft and took off in the dusk before a rising moon.

Some hours later, the aircraft returned safely to base.
The crew reported that the Joe, who had hardly spoken a word during the whole flight, had parachuted at the spot indicated. There had been no torches to guide him, no welcoming reception committee on the ground, nothing. He had simply launched his body into the moonlight and vanished.

Some hours later, the first radio message ever to come from a Joe was received in England. Noble had found his friend. All was well. Only a very few jubilant people realised the histori
cal importance of this moment. ‘The Firm’ was in touch with occupied Europe.

Others followed. Men to organise and lead, followed by wireless operators and couriers; supplies, explosives and weapons too floated down from the sky to be collected and hidden against the day when they could be put to their proper use. Those who were on the ground whispered news of what was going on to those whom they could trust and the whispers became a warm west wind, blowing gently about villages and towns. The psychological effect was far-reaching. Ordinary men and women began to realise that Britain had not let them down. The reception committees that crouched against the hedges of freezing fields waiting for the sound of an aircraft's engine knew that they were no longer isolated and impotent. Though German soldiers might be billeted in their houses, though a German patrol might well be on the road a few hundred metres away, though a Gestapo radio detection van might be listening in the village square, they were not alone. They were in direct contact with Britain, the only power that was still fighting, the power whose great spokesman had said "
We
seek
to
beat
the
life
and
soul
out
of
Hitler
and
Hitlerism
..."

It seemed an impossible undertakin
g in those days. ‘The Firm’ was still feeling its way, testing the filaments of new networks, probing, screening. The physical sabotage operations that were then possible could be little more than flea bites on the solid, armoured body of the Colossus. But already there was planning and co-ordination. Training was under way. Cadres of future battalions were being formed. Information was coming through.

For Flight 1419, it was a strenuous and increasingly dangerous period. The crews were learning a new technique,
and there was little time for training and none for mistakes. The Germans were well aware of what was going on and their counter-espionage service was strongly reinforced. As the moon period came round, the aircraft were used to their uttermost. The days began to lengthen.

With
the advent of spring, ‘The Firm’ was ready to assess the results of its special operations. The trial period was over. Magnificent work had been done but the verdict was stark and uncompromising, expressed in only the two short words ‘not enough.’ To those of the Chiefs of Staff who were, so to speak, ‘in the know,’ Baker Street reported that agents, saboteurs, couriers and radio operators were being successfully landed not only in France but elsewhere. Explosives, weapons and supplies were going in but they were laughably inadequate in relation to the growing ever-increasing groups of patriots who would use them. The remedy, at least in theory, was simple. More of everything was needed; more agents, more crews, more aircraft, more explosives, more weapons, more supplies of every description. In practice, it seemed impossible. There were still acute shortages in every single arm of the fighting forces. How could anything else be spared for this irregular cloak-and-dagger affair? The answer was irredeemably ‘nothing’.

There was a good reason for this destroying word.

The fair weather that came with summer was a double-edged weapon, favouring us with one edge of the blade, the enemy with the other. The Blitz on England was intensified. The
Luftwaffe
, smarting under the Nazi High Command's criticism of its failure to pulverise British morale and to cripple British production, was angrily turning to the seaports. The word was being whispered in Berlin that Ribbentrop's estimate of the British character was wrong and that these ‘oxen in the furrow’ had a fibre undreamed of by His late Excellency who had based his opinion on the lick-spittle few who had been regular visitors at Carlton House Terrace. The intention now was that the
Luftwaffe
should be a supporting arm for the U-boats who should starve us of food and essential raw materials. The Principal Boy was relegated to the role of understudy. Nevertheless, to keep the vain creature happy, occasionally heavy appearances were still commanded against London, Birmingham and Coventry. With these the stage manager, Hermann Goring, had to be content, while the full weight of what had become the supporting cast was displayed in the sky over the ports, Portsmouth and Plymouth, Merseyside and Clydeside, Swansea and Belfast. But the toll of German bomber losses rose steadily as the experience and skill of fighter pilots and anti-aircraft increased. Heads were scratched in Berlin. Should one make one last tremendous effort? The Fuhrer, who took a psychopathological and it is said physical satisfaction in the shedding of Aryan as well as non-Aryan blood, was hysterically in favour of this strategy.