Tales from the Special Forces Club. Sean Rayment
“Somebody will be sitting on a bench in the pier gardens about 11pm or 3pm and he’s got a message for you,” and you’d have to hope that somebody else, not a person taking part in the exercise, hadn’t got on the bench too, because that could be a bit confusing.
‘You’d be told that the contact would be reading a newspaper, so you would go and sit down and take out a cigarette – I’ve never been smoker but I didn’t mind puffing away – and he would fold up the paper and put it down and I would pick it up, and that was quite normal because there were very few papers published and it was first come, first served, and everyone wanted to read a paper, so if you saw a paper lying around you always picked it up.
‘We would also pass messages in cinemas and tea rooms, which was quite difficult because you had to make sure you found the right person, especially if you were a woman. If you started passing messages to a strange man you could be had up for soliciting, so you had to make sure you were giving the messages to the right person.’
Noreen also had to become proficient at the so-called ‘honey trap’, a tactic in which female agents use their feminine allure to ‘convince’ enemy agents to confess or at least admit their activities. It was a demanding task, not least because if Noreen was successful it might mean the end of an agent’s career even before it had begun. Curiously, some male agents did give some indication that they were involved in covert activities, often within just an hour or so of meeting Noreen.
‘During this stage of the training we would work very closely with the students’ conducting officer. He wasn’t part of the Beaulieu staff, instead his job was to act as a sort of mother hen to the students, giving them a bit of inspiration when needed but also listening to their troubles and soothing their fears, reassuring them, when needed, that they were up to the task and also explaining the risks of the job. I think that certainly some of the students, as time went on and news came in of field agents who had been captured and killed, would think about their own mortality – that was only natural. There was nothing wrong with agents worrying about being killed; at the very least it demonstrated that they had grasped the reality of what they were about to do.
‘Of most concern, however, were agents who might talk or give away what they were up to, either by boasting or through fear or torture, and who might display characteristics which would ultimately compromise their role. The conducting officer would sit in on various exercises and watch the students, and he would pick out anybody he thought might be likely to talk. This wasn’t a test which all of them had to pass. He would approach one who he thought might be a bit suspect and say, “Let’s go out for a drink, or dinner or something – you’ve been working hard and deserve a bit of a break.” He would often do this to students, so there was nothing that unusual in it.
‘Together, the conducting officer and I would act out a couple of different scenarios which we had worked out beforehand, planning down to quite a lot of detail. One was known as the Royal Bath Dinner, named after the hotel where we often worked. I also worked at the Lincoln Hotel, but I preferred the Royal Bath because it had a terrace off the dining room and if there was a full moon shining on to the sea it was very romantic and much easier for me to work.
‘The two men would go off and have dinner and I would wander into the dining room out of the blue and the conducting officer would say, “Oh, Noreen, what are you doing in Bournemouth? How lovely to see you.” He would explain that I was some old friend of the family or something believable and would then ask me to stay for dinner. And the three of us would chat for a while and then someone would come along and say to the conducting officer, “Sir, there is a phone call for you” or something like that, and he would return and say, “I’m frightfully sorry, I’ve been called away, but you two stay here and have some fun and if I can I’ll come along and join you later.” And that’s how it began.
‘We had another scenario where he would say to one of the agents, “I met a girl today, I used to be at school with her brother, and I’ve invited her to join us for a drink.” And the students never minded. Well, the Brits minded a bit, because they were looking forward to a good old boozy evening and along came this blasted woman who was going to spoil everything. But agents with other nationalities were very accommodating, they quite liked it because they didn’t get the chance to meet many English women, so they were quite pleased.
‘I found that the Brits didn’t talk much. My job was to try and get them to talk. The Brits were very stuffy and came out with a series of stories without actually saying anything. One told me that he was a representative for a toothpaste company, which was a bit daft because we didn’t have any toothpaste, we used to clean our teeth with soot or salt. They pretended they were all sorts of things, but the most obvious excuse they gave was that they were on a very boring course with the War Office. The clever ones would always try and steer the subject of conversation back to me, so that I had to talk about myself or what I did, so I had to be careful too.
‘But the foreign agents were different, especially the younger ones. I think they were lonely, they were often far from their families and their culture – it was isolating for them. It must have been very flattering for them to have a young English girl chatting away to them, hanging on their every word. I remember one, a Dane, a beautiful blond Adonis. I managed to get him out on to the terrace – he didn’t need a lot of persuading actually, I think he was rather taken with me. I weighed about 18 kilos less then, and didn’t have white hair, and I didn’t need glasses in those days.
‘As we chatted on the terrace, he asked me if we could spend Sunday together. I took a little persuading, just so that he didn’t get suspicious, but I knew of course that we couldn’t. I became a very accomplished liar, I lied to everyone – my family, my friends – I just lived a lie. But once he said that, I felt a real surge of adrenaline because that was my lead, it was wonderful feeling that I might be on to something. I said, “Yes, I’d love to meet up on Sunday. But what is going to happen afterwards? Am I just the sort of thing you pick up on one day and then off you disappear, or are you going to be around?”
‘He looked slightly crestfallen and told me he was going away, so I responded, “Oh, you’re going away. Well, where are you going? Could we write? Could we meet again? I don’t particularly want to get involved unless we could meet again.” This went on for a while as we chatted over coffee and perhaps a whisky or two. After a while he told me that he would be going back to Denmark, which at the time was still occupied by the Nazis – and the only people who did that sort of work were agents. It was almost like a bit of a confession or perhaps he just wanted to unload some of his concerns. He said, “I won’t be able to write, I won’t be here, I’m being repatriated back into my country.”’
The Danish agent had committed a cardinal sin. Although the trainee spy hadn’t actually admitted that he was a member of the SOE, he had provided a clue, and in the world of espionage that is often all that is needed. Had his admission been made in the field he could have jeopardised himself, his team and an entire network, leading to the deaths of hundreds of men and women.
‘I felt terrible when he said that, because I knew I was going to have to betray him. That was my job – it was the sort of job you hoped you would never succeed at. It was exciting up until the end, when you felt awful. But the reality was that I was helping to save the agent’s life and possibly the lives of many others. It was a horrible job but it had to be done.’
Noreen kept up the pretence all evening, which ended with a gentle kiss on the Dane’s cheek. The student spy returned to his quarters while Noreen headed straight to her house to write up her report. Once written, it was submitted that same evening to the debriefing officer, Colonel Woolrych, known to everyone as ‘Woolly Bags’, an intelligence specialist who had served in the First World War and later went on to become the commandant at Beaulieu.
‘Like many people in that world, Woolrych didn’t suffer fools gladly, but I found that he had a very compassionate side. All the reports from all the different spy schools were sent to Woolly Bags. He then made an assessment and sent the final report to the head of section. For French students it would have been Buck, and he would have the final say as to whether the student should be sent into the field. But if someone had spoken about their role, that was