Francis Cammaerts

Francis Charles Albert Cammaerts, DSO (16 June 1916 – 3 July 2006), code named Roger, was an agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe and Asia against the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany. In France, SOE agents allied themselves with French Resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. Cammaerts was the creator and the organiser (leader) of the Jockey network (or circuit) in southeastern France in 1943 and 1944.

At the beginning of World War II in 1939, Cammaerts declared himself a conscientious objector, but in 1942 he joined the SOE. He recruited and supplied with arms and training a large number of resistance networks and cells over an extensive area east of the Rhone River extending to the border with Italy and north from the Mediterranean Sea to the city of Grenoble. Despite being very careful in his work, Cammaerts was captured by the Germans in August 1944, but saved from execution by his courier, Christine Granville.

Of the more than 450 SOE agents who worked in France during World War II, M.R.D. Foot, the official historian of the SOE, named Cammaerts as one of the half-dozen best male agents. He was one of only three SOE agents to be promoted to the rank of Lt. Colonel, along with George Starr and Richard Heslop.

Early life

Cammaerts was born in London and raised in Radlett in Hertfordshire, the son of Professor Emile Cammaerts, a Belgian poet, and Tita Brand, a successful actress. After the death of his brother Pieter while serving in the Royal Air Force, Cammaerts believed he could no longer stand aside from participation in the war, and, as a French speaker, he succumbed to the urging of Harry Rée to join SOE.

In the words of the official historian of the SOE M.R.D. Foot, impeccable security, the hallmark of the best SOE agents, characterized Cammaert's survival as an SOE agent for two tours totaling fifteen months, far longer than the average agent served or survived in France. Cammaerts never stayed in the same house for more than three or four nights, he avoided hotels as their registers were checked by German and French police, and he also avoided large train stations which frequently had check points. He never told anybody his plans, nor made appointments nor visited unknown addresses without careful reconnoitering. He did not communicate in writing or by telephone, nor did he know the real names of the people he worked with, only their field names. He had a squad of seven or eight men who followed and investigated potential recruits before they were contacted and he divided his recruits and associates into cells of no more than 15 persons each and discouraged contact between cells. Cammerts told his agents to always have a credible reason for being where they were if stopped by a German patrol.

Jockey network

Disillusioned with what he had seen of the Carte Organization and the Spindle network, Cammaerts organised his own circuit (Jockey). He worked initially in the area of Montélimar. His first associate was wireless operator Auguste Fioras, a man as cautious as Cammaerts himself. The first message the pair sent to London was on 27 May 1943. Fioras would transmit 416 wireless messages to London during 1943 and 1944, a record for SOE wireless operators.

In the latter part of 1943, Cammaerts established several small semi-autonomous groups of resisters to the German occupation.

Arrest and release

Despite his meticulous care for security, on 13 August 1944, two days before the Allied Operation Dragoon landings in southern France, Cammaerts, Xan Fielding, an SOE agent who had previously operated in Crete, and a French officer, Christian Sorensen, were arrested at a roadblock by the Gestapo at Digne-les-Bains. Cammaerts had received a large amount of money for operations which he divided among the three of them, an action that would prove a mistake. Entering Digne by automobile, they came upon a German checkpoint. Under questioning, Fielding denied knowing the other two, but a young German civilian examining their forged identity papers noticed that the serial numbers of the money each of them carried was in the same series, thus indicating a connection among them. The three were taken to Digne prison and roughly interrogated. They claimed they were involved in black marketing to account for the money. The Germans apparently did not know they had captured Cammaerts, the most important SOE agent in southeastern France, but decided to execute the three suspecting they were associated with the French resistance.

On August 17, Krystyna Skarbek, a.k.a. Christine Granville, a Polish-born SOE operative and Cammaerts' lover, managed to get Cammaerts and the others released. She confronted two collaborators, Albert Schenck, a French liaison officer to the Gestapo, and Max Waem, a Belgian interpreter for the Gestapo, telling them that American troops would arrive within hours and that if they did not co-operate she would ensure the pair were handed over to an avenging mob of French citizenry. The collaborators agreed to the release of Cammaerts, Fielding and their French colleague, on condition of the payment of a two million franc ransom, which Skarbek obtained by an airdrop from London. The three SOE agents were to be executed on the evening of the day that Skarbek negotiated their release. The rescue of Cammaerts is fictionalized in the last episode of the British television show Wish Me Luck.

Helping the allies

Digne was liberated by the American army two days after Cammaerts was released from prison. The maquis had cleared the way for the Americans and there was little opposition. On August 20, Cammaerts and Granville met the American commander, Brigadier General Frederic B. Butler, at Sisteron who dismissed them as "bandits". Leaving the American army behind, the two proceeded to Gap where the maquis had captured the German garrison. Several hundred Polish soldiers, soldiers in the German army, were among the captured Germans. Granville addressed the Poles with a megaphone and secured their agreement to join the Allied forces, provided that they shed their German uniforms. The Poles stripped off their uniforms. General Butler arrived and disapproved of the proceedings, threatening Cammaerts and Granville with arrest and court martial if they didn't leave. Author Arthur Funk said, "The historian can only wonder at Butler's short-sightedness in ignoring a British officer who knew a great deal about the terrain and the people in it." Later, Cammaerts and Granville received a better reception from Butler's superior officer, General Alexander Patch, who appointed them as the liaison for the Americans with the maquis. The couple continued northward to Lyon and Paris.

Cammaerts' time in occupied France ended in September 1944. He was promoted to lieutenant-colonel, awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the Legion d'honneur, Croix de Guerre and the American Medal of Freedom for his work in south-eastern France.

SAARF and immediately post-war

In March 1945, when the Allies had crossed the Rhine, Cammaerts was asked to join the Special Allied Airborne Reconnaissance Force (SAARF). Many of the personnel were SOE or OSS agents. Their main objective was to help in the reconstruction work in Germany after the fall of Hitler. For Cammaerts, it primarily meant dealing with the appalling aftermath of the newly liberated concentration camps. Cammaerts visited Dachau, Belsen and Ravensbruck. He was appalled and felt impotent in the face of what he found. He later said "the SAARF period was blank and grey and one of those certain areas in my life when I didn't know what I was doing." The SAARF was disbanded in July 1945.

He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1958 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the BBC Television Theatre. In 1959, he appeared for the defence in the notorious trial of Penguin Books over the publication of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. The trial, at the Old Bailey was front-page news and Cammaerts' statement under cross-examination that he had let members of his 6th Form read the book and they did not appear to have been corrupted or become depraved, was widely reported. The publisher won the case.

He was Principal of the Leicester Teacher Training college in Scraptoft, between 1961 and 1966, overseeing a liberalising of the training methods used.

References

Sources

Jenkins, Ray, A Pacifist at War: The Life of Francis Cammaerts, Hutchinson, 2009, .

External links

Cammaerts' obituary in The Guardian
Interview, Leicester Mercury
Clare Mulley interviews Michael Morpurgo about his uncle Francis Cammaerts Historical Writers Association (20 June 2018)