I Heard My Country Calling

Elaine Madden, SOE Agent

Sue Elliott

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780750994286, 9780750961257
• eBook ISBN: 9780750966498
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

After a tragic childhood among the Great War cemeteries of Flanders Fields, a troubled young woman searches for love and meaning in war ravaged Europe.

Elaine Madden's quest takes her from occupied Belgium through the chaos of Dunkirk, where she flees, disguised as a British soldier, into the London Blitz, where she finally begins to discover herself. Recruited to T Section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) as a 'fast courier', she is parachuted back to the country of her birth to undertake a top secret political mission and help speed its liberation from Nazi oppression.

Elaine Madden never claimed to be a heroine, but her story proves otherwise. Its centrepiece – war service as one of only two female SOE agents parachuted into occupied Belgium – is just one episode in an extraordinary real-life drama of highs and lows, love, loss and betrayal.

Relayed to the author in the final years of her life, Elaine's true story of courage and humour in testing times is more intriguing and compelling than fiction.

TEN

BELGIUM

AUGUST–SEPTEMBER 1944

Laid out like a living map in the August moonlight beneath her was a calm and brilliantly lit vista that looked nothing like the Belgian Ardennes. Where there should have been dense forests a broad uncluttered plateau of crop fields stretched apparently for miles, punctuated only by the occasional copse and isolated farmhouse. Instead of spectacular gorges and deep river valleys the gently rolling countryside was scored only by cart tracks. Nature and man together had contrived to make the perfect drop zone.

Floating above the fields in the beautiful summer night, she was so absorbed in the exhilarating moment the passing shadows of her fellow agents barely registered. She was fully awake – her unorthodox exit from the Liberator had seen to that – yet transfixed as if in a wonderful dream. This joyous moment seemed to go on blissfully, endlessly, until she saw the two men, figures in miniature on the ground below, already folding up their parachutes.

With a shock she realised she wasn’t descending at all. The warm night air and her full-size parachute were conspiring to keep her suspended in mid-air. No one at Ringway had told her what to do in these unlikely circumstances so she wriggled and jumped up and down in the air, trying to get the parachute to move. When it resisted any attempt to coax it into compliance she pulled down hard on the cords on one side to try to expel the warm air keeping her aloft. After more wriggling, tugging and manoeuvring she was finally caught on a downdraught and within feet of a field of corn.

She let go of the cords to adopt the brace position for landing and a gust of air breathed new life into the parachute and she started floating gently upwards once more. In desperation now, she punched the large disc below her chest to unhitch her harness, shrugged it off and dropped unencumbered the final few feet to the ground whilst her parachute floated momentarily up and away, to die among the sheaves of corn with a sigh of artificial silk.

The euphoria of descent and her last-minute struggles to land meant she was still high on adrenalin. She’d done it! She was on Belgian soil and the adventure had begun. The possibility that the enemy might have heard the plane, spotted her as she floated oblivious on her sky-borne idyll, or that this adventure might finally call her number, didn’t cross her mind. She was back in Belgium and with a job to do.

She ran over to André shouting ‘I’m down! I’m down!’ but the men seemed not even to have noticed that she’d been in difficulty.

‘Ssh! Where’s your parachute?’

She pointed to the heap of silk. ‘Over there.’

‘Well go and fold it up. Quickly, we need to bury them!’

Feeling like an errant schoolgirl, she scrabbled to pack her parachute into as small a parcel as possible for the hole where two similar shapes were already stowed, awaiting exhumation and safekeeping by their host for the night.

They made their way to a farm at the crossroads of two dirt tracks at the edge of a wooded ridge. The farmer was a trusted Resistance hand who’d received and sheltered as many as ten agents since 1942. André greeted him warmly, but the formality of exchanging passwords still had to be gone through, absurd as they might sound to a passing eavesdropper.

‘I’ve come to collect the kilo of coffee wrapped in the towel and I’ve brought the materials to make a new bridle for the stallion.’

To which the ridiculous response came back:

‘Tybalt left the coffee there and the farmer still has it.’

They embraced as a silent cadre of men dispersed to the fields to gather up the containers, load them on to a cart and bring them into the barn ready for the morning. After simple refreshments the agents retired to separate quarters to sleep the few precious remaining hours of a busy night.

They were up with the sunrise to unpack the containers and prepare for their journey to Brussels and their first rendezvous with Huguette. Outside the barn Elaine breathed in the untainted air, so clean and bracing after sooty London. The open countryside and waving wheat reminded her of something, a phrase she’d heard somewhere … Yes, that was it. It stuck in her mind because it was just after the fall of France, soon after their flight from Dunkirk. She was safe but Britain was alone and in grave danger. A speech by Mr Churchill in Parliament was reported on the radio. He’d said that if Britons could defeat Hitler, Europe would be free and all the world could move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. Such a striking image. There was nothing like it in low, flat Flanders with its heavy skies. He must have been thinking of the rolling, open countryside of the Home Counties, the Surrey-Sussex border perhaps and that view towards the sea she’d seen from her window at Winterfold. Now here they were in the Belgian Ardennes, these broad sunlit uplands, waiting to be freed. This is what they were fighting for.

Among the unpacked radio equipment, arms and other materiel in the barn Elaine retrieved her suitcase of personal effects, chosen by London. Astonished, from a sheaf of tissue paper she pulled out the most beautiful grey and white tweed costume: a skirt with deep box pleats back and front and matching tailored jacket, nipped in at the waist and with neat reveres. She’d seen something similar in Harrods; it must have cost a fortune – and an entire ration book of clothing coupons. Perhaps Lieutenant-Colonel Amies with his penchant for immaculately tailored uniforms had changed his mind about her and decided to mark her SOE debut with a special present …

To go with it was a pair of stylish shoes with big crepe soles and an expensive black leather handbag. She opened the gold clasp to explore its plush interior.

‘Oh no! I don’t believe it! Just look at this label. “Made in England” in great gold letters! I thought they checked all this kind of thing.’

André was absorbed with checking a consignment of explosives.

‘Damn. They haven’t given us nearly enough time pencils. What? You’ll just have to cut it out.’

‘I can’t. It’s sewn into the leather. I’ll have to try and scratch it out somehow. Sorry. I know you’ve got a thousand things to do. You shouldn’t have to worry about stupid things like handbags. It really is too bad of London.’

He put the box of time pencils down and laughed.

‘Handbags are the least of my problems over the coming weeks, I can assure you. Let’s have a look. But we don’t have much time. After we’ve checked this lot we still have to have to try and get to Brussels today to meet Huguette.’

As they worked together to expunge the incriminating evidence, Elaine felt at ease, useful. I like this man, she thought. He’s practical, prepared to help and he knows how to talk to women. There was something more about him that she couldn’t quite identify, but she knew she felt secure in his company. They managed to obliterate the offending letters without it looking too obvious, then returned to the serious business of unpacking and sorting the equipment they’d need from the supplies designed for clandestine onward delivery to local Resistance groups, disguised under cartloads of straw or turnips.

She was only starting to get to know André but she’d spoken barely a few words to the W/T operator. Foxtrot was a contained young man. ‘Pianists’, as they were dubbed, were a breed apart. With their own distinctive ‘hand’ they played their Morse machines with as much skill as accomplished piano soloists. Often solitary creatures, they were comfortable with their own company. They had to be, set apart from their team for much of the time and alternating between long periods of inactivity waiting for the next scheduled transmission – perhaps with security scares and several changes of safe house to contend with – and intense bursts with headphones and Morse handset. And then all through the ‘sked’ there was the ever-present danger of discovery by Direction Finder (DF) vans that could detect a transmitter in operation within a 200-metre radius in less than fifteen minutes.

Jacques van de Spiegel knew the form and got on with it. Whilst in the Ardennes, his safe house would be in Jemelle, a nearby railway town. It was for here that he presently set off by bicycle, in the filthy dark overalls of a rail worker, taking his leave of André and Elaine with a wave. For the moment he was without much of his radio equipment. They’d been issued with two transmitter-receivers, each contained in an innocent-looking suitcase, one more powerful and up to date than the other, which would be used as a standby. Jacques wasn’t due a scheduled transmission to London for another few days and it had been agreed that it would be safer day-to-day for Elaine to carry the small suitcase containing the main set.

Women were far less likely to be stopped in routine controls and snap searches whereas young men were invariably targets, especially in big towns. Here in the countryside it was easier to pass as an essential worker on the land or, as Jacques’ cover story would claim, as a railway worker. But they would all need to move between the Ardennes and Brussels as circumstances demanded, so for security Elaine was in charge of the radio. This was no mean task: it weighed over six kilos – but this was still considerably lighter than the earlier Marconi model used by SOE for much of the war. And there was always the risk of discovery. No matter; it was their lifeline to London and she was being entrusted with it.

So, carrying the radio suitcase and dressed in her dashing new outfit, Elaine followed André after a discreet interval to the station at Beauraing. They knew from their training never to travel or be seen together in public if this could be avoided. Beauraing wasn’t the nearest station, but they’d been warned off the local halt at Martouzin-Neuville by London: the station master there was a known Rexist and almost certainly a Nazi collaborator. She remembered her childhood encounter with Degrelle and his Rexists in Poperinghe; nascent Nazis, they were violent then and even more dangerous now.

When she got to the station after a dusty walk of several miles, she found André in the deserted booking hall.

‘We’re not going to get to Brussels today, I’m afraid. With connections and some of the line out with sabotage …’ he smiled as if he knew exactly who was responsible, ‘… it can’t be done. We’ll go into Ciney instead. I know the local Resistance leader there. It’s a picturesque trip beside the Meuse – it’s going to take more than hour but there’s a train due in fifteen minutes. When you get there, go to the Central Café in the north-west corner of the square and ask for Delphine. Say you’re meeting me. Use field names, obviously. You go first. I’ll be right behind you. You don’t know me till we’re in secure company.’

‘Understood.’

Ciney was obviously once a prosperous country town, now brought low by four years of occupation and austerity, the fruits of its land and people diverted to feed the insatiable German war machine. On her way from the station on the outskirts to the wide town square Elaine instinctively looked among the Wanted posters for André’s photograph. There were several on the rue de Commerce, the main road into town, alone. She was struck by the signs everywhere in German, the swastikas fluttering from the grand Hotel de Ville and the fine Post Office, and the conspicuous lack of young men. The streets didn’t need to be full of grey-green uniforms to subjugate this town. Like all of occupied Belgium, it had an air of weary compliance. And yet beneath the surface, in back rooms, barns and cellars plans were being made, guerrilla groups prepared. Resistance was alive and kicking, ramping up for its most important role of the war.

In the centre of the square a charming Art Nouveau bandstand stood empty and peeling. The church to one side had half its spire missing as if someone – the Devil perhaps – had come along with a giant pair of scissors and snipped it off in spite. It was market day and the square and the bars ranged around it were crowded. The goods on offer on the stalls were poor things in these straitened times and few were buying, but market day was the traditional excuse for old men to gather in bars and womenfolk to gossip in the square, so why should the occupation make any difference? There were few German uniforms in evidence. She hadn’t been stopped, though she had attracted plenty of looks, and not just from the men. Catching sight of herself in a shop window she realised with a shock that she must stick out like a sore thumb in her smart city outfit – slightly travel tarnished but unmistakably a mannequin among the rustic aprons, scarves and shawls.

The Central Café was easy enough to find. Glad of sanctuary from the stares and relieved to sit down after a tiring journey with her heavy load, she went to an empty table and put the suitcase carefully under it.

‘Yes Madame?’

‘Coffee please.’

The young waitress looked at her for several seconds, apparently appraising her outfit and judging whether to ask the next question.

‘Real or ersatz?’

She had no hesitation.

‘Real.’

Ersatz coffee was disgusting, she’d had enough of that in London. She’d been looking forward to proper continental coffee and she had plenty of francs in her purse to pay for it. She felt she deserved it.

When the tiny phial arrived containing barely a mouthful of the thick black liquid, accompanied by an outrageous bill, she realised she’d made her first mistake. How stupid of her, and how ignorant of wartime shopping those men at Beaulieu were. Of course coffee was a precious commodity. It was available on the open market but only in minute quantities and at exorbitant cost. She tried to look nonchalant, as if she ordered it all the time.

‘Thank you. I’m looking for Delphine. Is she here?’

The waitress nodded and disappeared behind the bar. In time an older woman emerged from the kitchen wiping her hands on her apron and approached her. Elaine spoke first.

‘Hello. I’m Alice and I’m due to meet Odette here.’

The woman looked her up and down just as the waitress had done, then led her to a back room and told her to wait. Within five minutes she could hear André’s voice the other side of the door, talking to the woman about getting a message to someone called Willy Gerard. And then from Delphine a clearly articulated plea.

‘And by the way, comrade, your friend! She looks as if she’s just stepped off the boat! For her sake and ours, you can’t let her walk about like that. She smells English! We haven’t seen shoes like that in the past four years. And that suit …! If she goes around looking like that, she’ll be picked up in no time.’

She heard André sigh. He appeared at the door, smiling and apologetic.

‘Sorry Alice, after all that trouble we went to, the handbag’s got to go.’

After the attentions of Delphine Elaine left the Central Café alone later that afternoon looking less like a Harrods model and much more like her Belgian doppelganger Hélène Marie Maes, the gorgeous grey and white tweed suit, crepe-soled shoes and beautiful English handbag consigned to a dark corner where they could no longer incriminate her. She’d been in Belgium bare...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Quote
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Introduction
• One Pont St Esprit 2010
• Two Flanders 1920
• Three Ypres and Poperinghe 1933–39
• Four London and Poperinghe September–December 1939
• Five Flanders May 1940
• Six London June 1940–December 1943
• Seven London January–February 1944
• Eight Southern England March–June 1944
• Nine London and Belgium June–August 1944
• Ten Belgium August–September 1944
• Eleven Belgium and Germany October 1944–April 1945
• Twelve Germany, North-West England and Brussels June 1945–April 1946
• Thirteen Letters 1967
• Postscript
• Sources
• Plates
• Copyright