Feature


In love and war : the femmes fatales of SOE


Rick Stroud on the beautiful and ruthless special operations executives whose seductions helped secure victory in the Second World War


‘


A little powder and a little drink on the way, I’d pass their guard posts and wink and say “do you want to search me?” God what a flirtatious little bastard I was’. Tis was how Nancy Wake described some of the techniques she used while working as an undercover agent in France for


the British Special Operations Executive during the Second World War. She added, ‘I’d see German officers on a train somewhere, sometimes dressed in civvies but you could pick ’em. So instead of raising their suspicions I’d flirt with them, ask for a light and say my lighter was out of fuel’. Te hapless German officers who offered to light her cigarettes did not realize that the pretty, flirtatious woman was discretely pumping them for information that could be valuable to the Resistance and memorising everything they said. Te enemy soon found that contact with Nancy Wake


could be lethal. She blew up bridges, attacked a Gestapo headquarters with hand grenades and killed a guard with her bare hands. Later in the war she condemned a woman to death for spying on behalf of the Tird Reich. When no one would carry out the sentence Nancy shamed the men into action by offering to do it herself. She was described by one of the fighters under her command as having ‘led us like a man’. Even so, every evening, whatever the conditions they were fighting in, she slept in a red silk nightdress and not always alone. By the autumn of 1944, the Germans were in retreat


from France and Nancy decided that as there were no more enemy soldiers to fight, it was time to party. She liberated the cellar of the château that had become her base and spent her last days on active service drinking and eating with her fellow fighters. An American agent who arrived too late to take part in the hostilities found that the ‘food was plentiful and the cooking excellent... the accent was on easy living and relaxation’. He moved on in disgust having no idea what Nancy’s group had achieved. Nancy was one of the most decorated female agents to work in France. Te Germans called her the ‘White Mouse’


10 The Amorist May 2017


and thought she was so dangerous that they put a ransom of five million francs on her head. Aſter the war she said ‘I killed a lot of Germans and I’m only sorry I didn’t kill more. Freedom is the only thing worth living for’. It was not only allied agents who used sex and feminine


charm to get their way. One of the most dangerous women in Paris was Mathilde Carré, known as Te Cat. Carré started the war helping build a huge resistance circuit code named Interalliée and quickly became the mistress of its leader. Te circuit was blown by an energetic German security man, Hugo Bleicher, a self-styled colonel. Carré saved her own life by switching sides and becoming Bleicher’s mistress. Once safe she proceeded to betray scores of her fellow agents. She spent her evenings in the officers’ mess, dressed in black silk pyjamas and flirting while her lover played the piano. Eventually her treachery was discovered and the


Resistance tricked her into going to London. On arrival she was set up in a comfortable flat near Hyde Park and duped into revealing everything that she knew about the German counter-espionage organisation in Paris. Te flat was rigged with secret microphones which recorded every word she said. Aſter six weeks of high living she was arrested and imprisoned for the rest of the war and then condemned to death. She said that her last wishes were to ‘have a good dinner, spend the night in bed with a friend and then die listening to Mozart’s Requiem’.


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