Moon Squadron (6 page)

Chapter Eight

YVONNE

LOOKING back from the cushioned comfort of air travel in the nineteen fifties, it is difficult to recapture a sense of the urgency, danger and discomfort that attended every voyage made through the sky in those distant, strenuous days. We have almost forgo
tten the grim splendour of take-off and the dread probabilities of landing. We accept, with¬ out any twinge of reminiscence, the present-day delights offered us. A host of air-lines competes to outdo each other in the matter of foam-soft seats, in the subtlety of cooking, in the beauty, wit and charm of air-hostesses. Aircraft have been described as "flying restaurants" where Lucullan meals are served by slender multi-lingual goddesses whose only care is the ease and relaxation of their passengers.

A visit to Paris? Or
Brussels or Belgrade or Oslo? There is nothing easier to arrange, provided one has a cheque-book. A telephone call, made from an armchair, and one is practically on one's way. A taxi to Waterloo Air terminal; a ride in a comfortable coach to London Airport; a few formalities, and one is in another armchair, air-borne this time, with a soft, feminine voice enquiring one's taste in champagne. The journey, insulated against the sharp edges of reality, is soon over, too soon. The runways are smooth at journey's end, the reception committee unarmed, welcoming and smiling.

But, if we could brutally flick back the years between, like thumbing the wrong way one of those children's books that give the optical illusion of jerky animation, we would watch the face of Europe twitching back from its present dubious and apprehensive grin to its wart
ime grimace of fear. The schoolchildren of today tour the continent for their summer holidays. Why should they notice the little, beribboned sheafs of flowers that lie pathetically on street corners, marking the spot where a member of the Resistance died. All that happened a long time ago, when the men and women of today were themselves school-children, in a continent brooding and dark by the shadow of death, separation and disappearance. There was no luxury travel then. There was no travel. It was the era of the slogan so well loved by comedians-"IS YOUR JOURNEY REALLY NECESSARY?"

The passengers carried by the moon squadrons- 138 and 161-had no trouble at all in answering this question. Thei
r journeys were necessary but they were far from comfortable. Here is a terse description of one journey made by Julian Amery, M.P. His destination was North Albania.

"It was already night when we took off. The aeroplane seemed cold and noisy; and I felt irritated and awkward, trussed in my parachute. I was tired, however, and at some stage must have fallen asleep, for it was past midnight when the dispatcher woke me u
p to say that we were over the target. We each took a gulp of
Grappa
- the fiery Italian grape spirit - and formed up by the door for the jump. Through it, I could see the signal fires, set out in the form of a cross at the bottom of a snow-rimmed trough in the mountains. The surrounding ranges made the approach to the target difficult and we knew that the pilot had overshot his mark when the bulb by the door flashed green-the signal to jump. I went out last, shrinking inwardly from the plunge, and was caught up in the slip-stream of the plane and violently shaken. Then the parachute opened; the smell and vibration of the aeroplane ceased; the tension went from me, and I felt suddenly warm. We must have jumped from near three thousand feet, for my arms soon grew tired of straining at the guiding ropes of the parachute to check its oscillation. I could see the mountains rising past me as I drifted down, but the ground was still hidden in the night. For a moment I was aware of something white, then without the slightest jar, I found myself sprawling on my face in a deep patch of snow. Luck was with me for I had fallen in a forest and might well have been impaled on a jagged pine ... Maclean and I had by some accident been issued with cotton parachutes. These were a type designed for dropping stores and, unlike those made of silk for human use, frequently failed to open..."

No armchairs here,
and no champagne- just a gulp of
grappa
. No celestial goddesses with soft, soothing voices; no smooth runway; no runway at all, but a smear of snow in a pine forest.

Yvonne Baseden is a young and attractive woman. Those who witnessed her submit to the ordeal of appearing, without a syllable of warning, in the sadistic television programme called ‘This Was Your Life’ will well remember her grace and her unassailable dignity. These, briefly, are what are known as her ‘vital statistics.’ She was born in Paris on the 20th of January, 1922, daughter of an English father and a French mother. She trained secretly as a wireless operator and was parachuted into France on the 19th of March, 1944. She was captured by the Germans on the 26th of June of that year and, after a spell in Dijon prison, was sent to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp for women. In that evil and unhallowed place, over a hundred thousand women perished in the space of five years. "The only way out of here," said the senior medical officer humorously to a group of starving and desperate inmates, "is by way of the Crematorium chimney." This was not the route taken by Yvonne. She had spent her twenty-third birthday in the camp, daily expecting to hear the tread of her executioner. But his footsteps miraculously passed by her cell door and, as Hitler's Reich disintegrated into chaos in April, 1945, this indomitable girl was evacuated by the Swedish Red Cross. She returned to England in May, to spend ten weary months in hospital, healing the fearful ravages of the Camp.

She told me her story, sitting before a blazing wood fire in a Hampstead drawing-room, a glass of claret in her slim but most capable hand. On the wall was a pre-Waterloo painting of a young Ensign in the Goldstream, elegant and bewhiskered; on the other wall, a Picasso, a Picasso painted long before Yvonne was born, in his tender period, of a Spanish woman giving suck to her child. What did the artists themselves or either of their painted images know then of the 20th century conception of war or of giving as illuminated by the baleful glare of Adolf Hitler's paranoiac eye? Yvonne spoke quietly and dispassionately, as if speaking of another person whose body she had once inhabited. "Another war-time Christmas was over, the Christmas of 1943. It had been a blacked-out Christmas, with no turkey, no ham, no crackers, few carols and even fewer soya bean sausages. But it had been more than a day in the calendar. It was a day on which one had to pause and look both backwards and forwards. I remembered joining the W.A.A.F. very early on. During the Battle of Britain, I had been stationed at Kenley near Croydon and had
met a great number of air and ground crews. Little did I think then that I would ever be their passenger on my way to France. I didn't even know that such things went on, agents and supplies being dropped into Occupied Europe. Naturally, I spoke French and because of this, I was asked to help pilots of the First Free French Squadron to brush up their technical English." Yvonne smiled. "I had to learn the technicalities myself before I could translate them, but I did my best.

"I was commissioned in 1941 and was commissioned. After that, I joined the Directorate of Allied Air Co-operation and Foreign Liaison where I made friends with a girl called Pearl Witherington who was later to become one of the pillars of the French Resistance. Pearl had already been picked for work of a highly secret nature but I knew nothing whatsoever about it. But it was through her that I finally made contact with the French Section of the War Office. I had I don't know how many interviews before I was sent for training as a wireless operator. I knew then that-some time-I would be parachuted into France. That's what had happened to me before that Utility Christmas of 1943. I had had a reasonably quiet life.

"There were about twenty of us, waiting to go. We all knew what the past had held for us. None of us knew what the future would hold. There were those amongst us who would not see another Christmas, or, if we did, we would see it through the bars over the window of a cell. That's how I did in fact see my next Christmas but I couldn't know that then. Like everybody else, I suppose, I thought I would be one of the lucky ones who would get away with it. It is always somebody else who is run over by a tram ...But I said my quiet prayers all the same.

"January went by and I was introduced to my future 'partner in cr
ime.' His code name was Lucien and he was to be in charge of our sector in the Eastern area of France. We were briefed and given our cover stories and told to stand by. We had to report to Baker Street every third day by telephone as from February 16th. Once this recurring duty had been done, our time was our own. It lay heavy on our hands.

"We saw all the shows that there were to be seen, and all the films and all the news-reels. We took most of our meals in Soho
- and very good meals they were too- for Lucien knew where to go. We spoke French all the time and rehearsed our cover stories constantly until our two false identities became, in our minds and memories, a living part of us. We schooled ourselves to forget all that had gone before and to convince ourselves that this masquerade was true. As for me, my thoughts and my hopes were already in my beloved France. I still had no idea of the existence of the Moon Squadrons and was possessed of a fine curiosity as to how I would get there. By parachute, I knew. But how and where from I didn't know.

"Late in February, Lucien and I were told to report to Baker Street, personally this time, not by telephone. We were told that a car would be waiting there to pick us up an
d take us somewhere. Destination unknown. We had to be there at one o'clock.

"We turned up. Our cases were there, already packed. My three wireless sets, in their innocent-looking fibre suitcases, had already been sent on. I had a short talk with Colonel Buckmaster and he gave me a farewell present, a precious silver powder compact. The Baker Street headquarters seemed very normal. It was we, Lucien and I, who were abnormal. We were conscious of the ordinary daily routine of the office which went on and would continue to go on after we had jumped into the night sky and landed in France. It was rather like looking at a scene from a play, waiting in the wings for the moment when we would go on. Telephones were ringing, doors opening and shutting, people hurrying about with files in their hands, a sprinkling of very odd-looking loafers in civilian clothes and neat, cheerful

F.A.N.Y.s who looked jolly healthy as if they'd just come in from a swim after playing squash.

"And there was Vera."

It is remarkable how often in these accounts the presence of Vera is manifest, sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly.
Eminence
grise
of the French section, she seemed to be ubiquitous. I first met her in Baker Street, cool, detached, single-mindedly preoccupied with the interests of those who had or had not come back from the field. Later, we were to work together, in the rubble of Berlin and in the deep, bitter snows of Hamburg. I found in her a passionate desire that justice should be done. Untiringly, she worked to that end and her reward lies in the affection of those whom she sustained and cherished.

Here Yvonne takes up the tale once again. She was drawing nearer to her first rendezvous with the Moon Squadrons of Tempsford.

“
We drove away from Baker Street, up the Finchley Road, and turned to the north. Vera came with us. We were-and we looked like-very ordinary civilians being driven to spend the weekend in a country house. There was nothing very special about the day-except in our own minds. It was cold and drizzling, a typical afternoon in February. Lucien, I remember, sat in front beside the driver and read a book the whole way. It was a book of verse. Within a matter of a few weeks, he was to die. I sat beside Vera. We didn't talk much for I was busy with my own thoughts. We took the Great North Road, through Hatfield and on. We arrived at a large and very comfortable house in time for tea. I had no idea then where it was. We met several self-contained groups of men and women, each group consisting of two or three, and all of them seemed to be irresistibly drawn to a large blackboard over the chimney-piece in the drawing-room. On this blackboard were chalked up our various code names and instructions were periodically put up as to when we would be called forward.

"We were allotted large rooms, three or four women in each, similar groups of men in others. The food was magnificent and we ate as we only remembered from pre-war days. Looking back, there is no doubt that we were all living on our nerves. There was a strong sense of tension. Conversations were extremely guarded. Nobody spoke of his or her particular mission, remembering those already in the field, knowing that the same silence would be preserved by others when we had gone.

"The long day ended. Two groups, each of two men and one woman, had left. They were just no longer there. Nobody had noticed their going. In my heart, I wished them God-speed on their journey and a safe landing. I went to bed but not to sleep. At some time, I must have dozed uneasily for I dreamt of a never-ending parachute jump, being perpetually tossed in a slip-stream, falling and falling. The girl in the bed next mine had, I think, a similar dream for her hand kept clutching for imaginary lift webs. The third girl in the room talked in her sleep. Thank God, she talked in French. For all of us, it was an un-tranquil night and in the morning, none of us felt rested. But it was a clear and windless day and I looked forward eagerly to the moment of departure. Lucien and I played endless sets of table tennis and, in a small briefing room, rehearsed our cover stories for the thousandth time. The blackboard drew us like a magnet. Yes. There we were. We were to leave at five o'clock.