Bunty Macklin-Van Duyn

SECRET AGENTS (Special Forces.)

I think before I actually get on to the subject of training Secret Agents I had better explain how I got involved in such a strange job. It was really quite by accident and not my own choice at all.
I joined the FANY’s, which stands for ‘First Aid Nursing Yeomanry’, with the strict intentions of becoming a driver. Way back in the Boer War the FANY’s mounted their horses and gathered up the wounded from the battlefields. In the first world war they lost their horses and did the same thing with ambulances and earned a worldwide reputation for their courage and bravery. Well, in our war, right at the beginning we did not exist at all as a separate unit. The ATS grabbed the Motor Companies and there were no free FANY’s. When two of our old type commanding officers heard of this, they mounted their camels and rushed across the Sahara home to remedy this state of affairs, their Eton cropped hair standing on end and quite ready to start a war of their own for ‘our rights’. To their intense annoyance they found the MTC had got in first and collared all the best jobs; but the Gammels (After Brigadier Gammel)rampant were not easily daunted. The British Red Cross were coerced into having FANY drivers, then the Duchess of Northumberland’s Unit was formed, also large numbers were despatched to Scotland to drive for the Poles. Then quite by chance the War Office asked for a few odd drivers, well to cut a long story short the ‘Red Tabs’ liked our girls’ ‘reliable and good sorts, what, and able to keep their mouths shut’. And so we were in. And that was the start of Bingham’s Unit, as it was called, the War Office FANY’s.
Every FANY has to do a two weeks training course ay FANY H.Q. when she joins up, this includes driving, mechanics, first aid, anti-gas drill and oh so important, corps history. You then pass tests in all of them, you hope; visit Simpsons or some plush place and get a uniform made and Scott’s for a cap and a free FANY bonnet for walking out. Now you are really and truly a FANY. All this happened to me. One thing I learned that rather shattered me and put me well in my place was to hear that our official standing was - ‘Camp Follower, grade two’! Rather bad for our morale, but to make up for it we were considered to be a par with the guards, an officer corps and that bolstered us up quite a lot.
We had a few days leave to recover and then reported back to FANY H.Q. to be posted. I considered that as I had passed first in driving I should become the personal driver to a General at least and no nonsense, but no, I was cross questioned, my birth certificate examined and then, in almost a whisper, asked if I would like to be one of the first in an almost new section of the War Office or Bingham’s Unit. I agreed with rather bad grace, insisting that if there was a general to spare I would immediately transfer back to being a driver. This was passed over rather hastily and, with some others from my course, I was hustled into a truck for a destination unknown. It turned out to be a rather insignificant building in Baker Street, with a notice over the door saying, “Inter-Services Research Bureau”. Inside it was a warren of passages and offices with apparently hundreds of FANYs, male officers and a few odd looking civilians all rushing in all directions.
We were escorted to a room under the eaves where a rather nice but intense looking young man bade us be seated and then he started talking. He told us in a rather sketchy fashion what we had let ourselves in for. We were working with the cloak and dagger brigade and it was all very hush-hush. We would be stationed in various country houses in the best counties of England, but never, never, by word or deed must we let our nearest and dearest know what we were doing or where we were living. And would we now please come up in turn and sign the Official Secrets Act? Then we could go and find some lunch. We signed and, in rather a dazed fashion, departed to get lunch. This was terrific, we were young and madly excited, but also slightly apprehensive; what had we let ourselves in for?
Eventually Baker Street became very familiar ground to us, it was the Head Quarters of the “Racket”, as we soon learnt to call our unit. Though this was disapproved and very firmly discouraged by the powers that be. I think every one of us, in our time, had standing orders posted saying that, “The organization was not to be referred to as ‘The Racket’”.
After lunch we rather diffidently reported back to Baker Street and our course was split up; how heart breaking it was to part from seemingly old friends of two weeks. We pledged lifelong friendship and swore we would meet again; which of course we always did, one always ran into someone in Baker Street, if not there in Harrods - a happy hunting ground of the FANYS - or other more remote corners of England. (I actually ran into one in Guildford High Street only a few weeks ago.)
I was given a railway pass to Thame in Oxfordshire, with another FANY I had never met before. There a truck met us, and so began a somewhat strange and unreal life.
Thame Park was a lovely old country house, part Elizabethan and part monstrously Victorian, standing in the middle of a very beautiful park. We arrived in time for tea and the place was a hive of young men, looking not unlike students in any university town, except that some were wearing bits of uniform. There were a few FANYs about too and everyone looked very happy and gay. It would be hard to picture anything less like an army unit!
Our FANY officer rescued us and carted us off to the FANY flats, which were the converted lofts over the stables, and very nice they were too, the mess a charming room. Here over a cup of tea we heard for the first time exactly what the organization was. I will try and explain as it was explained to me then and as I gradually learned of it for myself.
Now at this time Europe was completely overrun by the Germans and the time had come for large scale infiltration by the Allies. This was being done by sending over trained men and women (Agents) to occupied countries; some being dropped by parachutes, others landed by submarine or other ways peculiar to the Navy, some being landed by plane. But one of the most important things was that these men and women should be trained so that they could be completely absorbed into the life of the country to which they were being sent. They were either natives of that country or Englishmen who spoke a second language well enough to be taken for a native. The training was intense and covered everything. All the ‘students’, as they were called, had an initial training, to break them in gently! Then they started their real training in Scotland, going through a commando course of the toughest possible type, later they did parachute jumps and security courses covering every single aspect of life in the country to which they were being sent; including burglary and other illegal occupations. We even had our own forgery school!
I think here I will just mention how secret agents were found to do this rather unorthodox job. maybe a girl would be serving in the ATS, let us say in an ordinary clerical job, perhaps she mentioned to a friend in general conversation that she had lived a great deal of her life in France, that she was bilingual. Maybe that friend mentioned it to someone else in passing and so as gossip gets about, so would this information. Eventually it perhaps gets to the ear of the one person that is on the lookout for a girl with just these qualifications. The original girl would then, to her great surprise, be asked to attend an interview, probably in a dingy office in the “Ministry of Pensions” in Westminster or in an equally insignificant and dull looking hotel. She would probably leave after this first interview rather bewildered and unable to fathom at all as to why she had been sent for. Or if the plain clothes officer was pretty certain that she was of the right type, she might go away uplifted and extremely excited, but really not quite certain what it was all about. There would be several more interviews and then she would be told the whole story as it would affect her. She would be given a considerable time to chew it over, time that the interviewing officer would want, to make up his mind finally and to cross check all her statements.
The men were found in the same way, usually from the various forces, there were of course more of them to choose from. Each allied country had its own grapevine for finding personnel and seldom did they make mistakes in choosing their agents. I think Major Buckmaster of the French section is probably well known to you all as his name has come into many books written on the subject, but each country had its own section commanded by its own officers and responsible for finding its own agents. The girls chosen for the job automatically became FANYs and the men were given a certain army rank, whatever service they had been in before.
Now at Oxford Park (Thame) we had those students that were specializing to be wireless operators, which included also code and cypher work. We had it impressed upon us that these boys and girls were being sent out on one of the most dangerous jobs possible and whilst they were in England we were hostesses and must act as such, we did not need any prompting and a good time was had by all! Dances and parties of all sorts being the order of the day. It was fun but heart-breaking fun, if you see what I mean. “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.”
I was only at Thame (in Oxfordshire) for a short while this first time, just for a course in code and cypher work which we did with the students. When we were considered competent three of us were despatched to the wilds of Buckinghamshire, to a house on top of a hill (Probably Grendon Hall Station 53A). Here we helped to start a wireless station, which was eventually to receive messages from agents from all over Europe. It was just a country house and the idea seemed incredible, but it was not long before buildings were going up and down in all directions and we were able to take over the receiving and sending of all the messages. Our original three FANYs soon grew to round about a couple of hundred, plus numerous Royal Corps of Signals personnel.
It was exciting to receive messages you know were being sent under the very noses of the Germans, harrowing to receive messages telling us of German atrocities, of hearing that students with whom you had trained had been captured, probably tortured and shot. We had amusing messages too, with personal references in them, (highly discouraged because of the extra unnecessary time they were on the air). Through these messages we heard of the movements of enemy troops, ships and aircraft, of the great, their great, defences being built along the Normandy coast. It was thrilling to see a reference to something you had decoded, in the newspapers, three or four days later! One of our most galling though satisfying jobs was breaking down indecipherable messages, caused either by the agent making a mistake in his code or by bad interference which made it impossible for the operator to get it all down correctly. We would work on these for hours on end and I cannot tell you of the thrill of suddenly finding a word in a jumble of seemingly meaningless letters. I am sure our WHOOPS of pleasure echoed round Buckinghamshire and back again or our cries of despair too, when they just would not come out. We worked like niggers, no trade union hours for us, and thoroughly enjoyed it. And when, as inevitable, we had girls conscripted into the unit, I am sure we made their lives extremely tough until they got used to the idea. (I can’t tell you the hell we gave them if their ideas of the hours of work differed from ours!)
I must mention here a character with whom I had a great deal to do. He was the head of the codes department at the Baker Street H.Q.. He was a small dark Jew (Leo Marks) and looked most unprepossessing, but his brain was terrific. He invented new codes by the dozen and when he’d found a very special one, he would invite me up to H.Q. and give me a lesson in it. He would sit there looking over his shoulder all the time as if he expected Hitler and all his Storm Troopers to be peering round the door at him! He smoked those long cigarettes with gold tips and as a penance to keep him in a good humour I would have to smoke one. He was most hurt if I dared to argue or criticise his latest marvel. He’d look at me with his head on one side saying “Miss Macklin, you must see how too, too right I am”, in his soft Jewish voice. He usually was too! Actually he was a first class boxer, which completely floored me when I heard of it. He still runs around Kensington Gardens every morning, so I hear. In his more aggravating moods he would come down to the wireless station and give the new girls a pep talk, usually managing to reduce a dozen or so of them to tears with his very dramatic style, leaving me to pick up the bits!
It was all very exciting, but my heart was still at Thame in Oxfordshire. I longed to be on the instructing staff there. Well I got my wish, I happened to be on sick leave when I heard that the Codes instructress was very keen to go to Egypt, so I madly pulled a few strings and got her job.
So back to Thame Park I went and to mark the occasion they gave me a pip, after all I had to instruct officers so the powers that be decided I must be one too. I was very proud of that first pip. It was made very clear to me that I hadn’t earned it at all but that I had to have it for the sake of prestige! I must admit that now it was all fixed I suffered from an awful attack of nerves. I was positively terrified, what had I let myself in for? I nearly told my driver to take me back to to my old wireless station, but by that time it was too late, here I was, dear old Thame Park. I felt as if I had come home, if only my heart would stop thumping and that my legs would not give way beneath me. I took as deep breath and somehow all seemed to be well.
There were very few FANYs actually living in the Park though we had a house down in the village where the FANY trainee wireless operator hung out. We were just drivers, orderlies, an admin officer and me. There were about 60 to 80 students of all nationalities and ranks. We had the ordinary British Army to do the dogsbody jobs plus a very competent Royal Corps of Signals training staff. I always felt extremely sorry for the C.O. who got quite wild at the Bohemian/Army type life he was forced to tolerate. The adjutant, known as Uncle John, was far more philosophical about it and was friend and father confessor to us all. The students had the same endearing little ways as students the world over and the phlegmatic other ranks took it remarkably well. Even the cooks who would turn up to cook breakfast and literally find the cupboard bare after a raid for a midnight picnic the night before. I can remember one rag that cause quite a sensation. We had a disused chapel in the park and in the crypt was a coffin containing the embalmed remains of an old lady who was said to have gambled the park away; on top of the coffin was a tiara. It was too much to expect the students to ignore such an obvious invitation. The Dutch and Norwegians broke into the crypt, six of them shouldered the coffin, one donned the tiara and the others formed a procession of mourners and off down the drive they went weeping and wailing. They were rather put out when the security guard wouldn’t let them out of the gate. Maybe the coffin has now been buried; I hope the old lady is anyway sleeping peacefully after he undignified ride!
The students came to Thame for a three months’ course in which they learned the Morse code, both to send and receive it; how to use a portable wireless transmitter and receiver, and how to dismantle and repair it in the minimum time with few or no tools. The Royal Corps of Signals instructors were a grand lot and would do anything for the students, they were very strict and conscientious over their work. No student was passed by them until they were really certain they could cope with most emergencies, their standards were extremely high. When they reached that standard they were then passed on to me for an intensive fortnight’s training in code and cypher work.
The classes were very mixed and sometimes I would have French, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians, Danes, Poles and the odd Italian, all together. I somehow managed to cope with my bit of French and a few odd dictionaries. Needless to say I had to be very strict with them at first but when they got going they worked extremely well, you see they had a common end in view, the liberation of their homelands and an intense hatred of the Germans. Don’t think they were always walking round with their hands clasped to their hearts talking of their Fatherlands with emotional voices, they didn’t - except for the Poles, and they were a bit inclined that way, but that was just a part of their makeup. All the students had a great sense of humour and were marvellous to work with.
They would encode stupid messages to me, making dates for meeting under the Eiffel Tower in ten years’ time, or in Oslo or Copenhagen, and the number of proposals both immoral or otherwise were remarkably cheering.
Before they left Thame they had to arrange their operational codes with me and I had to send out copies of them to the Wireless Station and London Headquarters and keep one myself. I also had to keep copies of their work so that if they sent in indecipherable messages I could supply suggestions as to what faults they were likely to make.
When I had finished with them but before they left Thame Park they went off on schemes. These were worked on the principal that they should be near the real thing as possible, they were sent off to, let us say, Scotland, with their portable sets in an attaché case and told to contact Thame; we ran a mock wireless station there too. If they ran into trouble with the police they ran for it or talked their way out, it was only in extreme cases that they were allowed to mention a certain phone number which secured their immediate release. After they had satisfactorily completed three schemes they left Thame for another security school where they were given their cover stories and had to rehearse them until they really lived them.
This was probably one of the most concentrated and important part of their training, as it was here they were put in their operational teams and really started working together as a unit, an organizer, a wireless operator and a specialist in sabotage perhaps. They would be given specific details of the jobs they were being sent ‘into the field’ to do and on top of it all they still had to keep up to standard with their specialized work and physical fitness. Here the instructors were mostly men that had worked as agents themselves and I have heard the students express their admiration for these instructors and the organization they worked for; to them the British Secret Service was the best in the world and to be trained by them an honour.
Then began the waiting for the right moon period and weather for their delivery to their ultimate destination.
We had a great deal of fun and relaxation at Thame. The park was very lovely and in the middle was a large lake, we punted on it in very leaky old punts, or had parties on its shore, always with a gramophone and records of Chopin, Tchaikovsky, an occasional Beethoven or the Warsaw Concerto. I suppose we did play others too, but those I remember best and always take me back to Thame. We had hectic impromptu parties in the FANY mess where someone would be drying their hair in one corner, bridge being played in another and the rest of us dancing in the unoccupied centre. We visited the pubs in the village and joined in many village ‘dos’, causing the poor security officers many sleepless nights. In the village we were officially known as the ‘Training Station For The Allies’, so it was rather shattering to hear ourselves referred to as the ‘Spy School’! The security personnel worked extremely hard but apparently not quite hard enough.
There are several special students That I would like to mention. We had a group of French Canadians who were destined for France, they were full of the joys of spring and security a word that just did not exist for them. We all had visions of them hailing each other in occupied Paris with Hi-Ya Pal! We really feared the worst. In actual fact they were dropped just before the invasion to work with the various Maquis groups, as were quite a number of the Poles and they all did wonderful work. Personally I became very fond of the Canadians, they always brought me apples when they came for their class, with “an apple for the teacher!”.
There was one extremely interesting Norwegian, who went backwards and forwards to Norway quite a number of times. When he was in England he always came to us for any new gen to take back with him. He gathered up every medal it was possible to get. He looked almost like an American! On one occasion when he was landed in Norway by submarine there was a German reception committee awaiting him. We received a very dismal message from his friend and we felt just as desolate as he did, for Knut was going back on a very important mission. But we need not have worried; Knut leapt from the lorry and managed to escape once again. The Germans obviously did not realize the type of person they were dealing with, though I believe at that time there was a price on his head.
Knut had one great weakness and that was mushrooms. When he was in England many is the time we were dragged from our beds at a most undignified hour to wander over the dewy wet meadows to gather them for breakfast. Knut was one of the lucky ones and lived to tell the tale; incidentally he took part in the Kon-Tiki expedition - of a few years ago.
There was a little fair Dutchman who always went to London to “take tea with the Queen” whenever he was on leave. His plane was shot down and he and his party of agents were all killed. (Probably referring to Kees Dekkers..)
Rabinovitch, the wireless operator to Yeo Thomas, the “White Rabbit”, was another of our earliest students. He would come home for a few weeks and then back again to France. I can always remember him in a very moth-eaten fur coat which he never seemed to take off, playing bridge in the FANY flat. His luck ran out and eventually he was taken by the Gestapo and shot, after a devilish time in a concentration camp.
One of the instructors, the “Mad major” must be mentioned. He was a regular army type and could never make up his mind whether to be a student or an instructor. He invented machines for coding and transmitting that made enough noise to waken the dead. He had wild ideas of being dropped in one of the remote Balkan countries and winning the war single-handed! Actually I don’t think he ever left England.
I’ve not forgotten the girls, I think they deserve our honour and admiration for they did a job that few women could think of doing. They were considered to be admirably suited to wireless operating and I think their bravery is outstanding. They came to us a FANYs, having completed the same course as the men. Many of them were sent to France to work with the Maquis. One French girl left a small child here, she never came back. Another had a husband in the same job, another died of T.B. with a group somewhere in the mountains.
There was one Dutch girl, Frankie, who thought wireless operating too tame, her interest was silent killing, and as I shared a room with her I knew it only too well! I would wake up in the middle of the night scared out of my wits, to find Frankie standing over me with a shoe in her hand, saying, “Ah! You are dead now. Go to sleep and I will do it again”. I was rather pleased when my room was changed and I left Frankie for the comparative calm of the FANY flat. Poor Frankie and her silent killing, she was parachuted into Holland and broke her leg on landing and spent the rest of her war in a Dutch hospital working out some wonderful cover stories to explain her presence.
Most of them were not so lucky, they died in German concentration camps, Belsen, Dachau, Ravensbrück, Natzweiler all taking their toll, having undergone unspeakable tortures first.
Violette Szabo’s name is probably known to many of you. She was one of the first girls I ever trained in code and cypher work, I am proud to have known her. She came from an ordinary London family, though her mother was French and she had spent a good deal of her childhood in France. She married an officer in the French Foreign Legion, had a baby daughter and then Étienne, her husband was killed in North Africa, so in the usual round-a-bout way she was contacted for the special forces.
She made two trips to France, the first time she was landed by one of our little planes, a Lysander, or Lizzie as we used to call them, where she did a job of outstanding merit in the Normandy area of France. She completed the job, went on a shopping spree to Paris, was picked up by a Lysander and so back to England. She went out a second time to help co-ordinate various Maquis groups just after ‘D’ Day, this time she went in by parachute. Violette and a French army officer set off on a round of the Maquis in a certain area, but ran into a German ambush. She had a tommy gun and kept up a continuous round of firing at the Germans to give the French officer a chance to get away, he happened to be very important to the French resistance and a man badly wanted by the Germans. Violette was caught, terribly tortured and eventually ended up in the infamous Ravensbrück concentration camp, with two other English girl agents, - Danielle Williams and Lillian Rolfe. They were all three shot just before Ravensbrück was liberated. She never gave up hope and was always trying to escape, right up to the end. Violette was posthumously awarded the George cross for her bravery and her little daughter Tania received it from the King, “For Mummy”, she said.
Odette Churchill, Nancy Wake and Yvonne Baseden were three other girls who did most outstanding jobs, but by some miracle they returned. But there were so many who did not. There is a memorial to their courage and bravery in St Pauls Church in Wilton Place, next to the FANY H.Q. - we remember them with Pride.
I always feel that there was one calamity that made a large blot on our organization. It was connected with Holland. In March 1942 the Germans with their mobile direction finding cars managed to track down one of our secret wireless operators. In itself that was not an unusual occurrence, it was a hazard that all underground workers had at the back of their mind. Lauwers, this young Dutchman, was warned by his friend that there were large numbers of German cars surrounding the block. He hastily packed up his set, stuffed his encoded messages in his pocket and tried to bluff his way out. He was halted by a German officer, searched, the messages found, which was enough to condemn him out of hand. Using their usual persuasive tactics they managed to get Lauwers to reveal his code. He had been told during his training in England that if in dire trouble he could tell them that, all except one important detail, that was a secret security check. If he sent a message without this check London would know that he was in trouble and so Lauwers kept quite quiet about that. The chief of the German Military counter espionage in Holland, a very clever man named named Giskes, made Lauwers contact London with his wireless set in the usual way, at his usual times and send and receive his messages in the normal way.
Lauwers, laughing to himself did as he was told, omitting his most important security check, and thinking that London would now be able to play a double-crossing game with the Germans. After several transmissions Lauwers realized that London was ignoring his warning and treating messages as authentic and there was nothing else he could possibly do about it. One can imagine his state of mind as when London told him they were sending arms and ammunition and special instruments for the resistance and the Germans were able to go to the dropping ground and literally have them dropped into their hands. And even worse when new agents arriving from England were immediately rounded up. The Germans even played a double game themselves by pretending to be Dutch patriots to the new arrivals and so were entrusted with all sorts of information that they might not have otherwise received.
Thinking of it now , one wonders how such a thing could possibly happen and when of course London eventually discovered the deception they were shattered (how they found out I never heard). It was one of those things that can and do happen when the human element is concerned. Maybe an officer forgot what Lauwers security check was or perhaps it was a new officer at H.Q. who imagined the messages had been passed by someone else, I don’t suppose we shall ever know. London was not slow in acting after that, though of course all the new agents had to be dropped blind, without the welcoming thought of a few friends to help them over their first difficult days in an enemy occupied country, These men were known as the ‘suicide squad’ and little hope was held of their return, some of them did and some did not. I know one agent who settled himself quite comfortably in a little room at the top of the Peace palace in the Hague and there tapped away his messages quite happily and safely until the end of the war.
Now a teacher is not supposed to have favourites, but in this I failed lamentably as I shook the whole of the organization, and not least my own C.O. by marrying one of my pupils. At that time I was the only FANY officer at Thame so our progress was watched with interest and then I was politely sacked! Officially because I lost my British nationality by marrying a Dutchman, Unofficially in case I threw a fit when news of Bill (Arie van Duyn), my husband, came through, and so caused chaos in the rack.