The Women They Sent

The knock came without warning. It always came without warning. That was the point. The Gestapo did not telephone ahead. They did not send a letter. They arrived at the door, usually in the early morning when the target was still in bed, still half-asleep, still vulnerable in the way that only a person dragged from sleep can be. There were usually four or five of them, in plain clothes or in the black uniforms of the SS, and they carried pistols, and they did not ask permission to enter. For the women of SOE who were captured in France, the moment of arrest was the dividing line of their lives. Everything that came before, the training, the recruitment, the months of clandestine work, the careful construction of a false identity, belonged to one world. Everything that came after, the interrogation, the imprisonment, the deportation, belonged to another. The transition between the two was instantaneous and absolute, and no amount of preparation could soften the shock of it. The training at Beaulieu had included instruction on what to do if captured. The guidance was clear: resist interrogation for as long as possible, ideally for at least forty-eight hours, to give the other members of the circuit time to disperse, evacuate safe houses, and destroy incriminating material. Maintain the cover story for as long as it remained credible. If the cover story collapsed, admit nothing beyond name, rank, and the most basic personal details. Give the enemy nothing that could be used to identify, locate, or compromise other agents. Buy time. Endure. The guidance was sound. It was also, as every captured agent discovered, almost impossibly difficult to follow when the interrogators at Avenue Foch or the Rue des Saussaies began their work. The Gestapo headquarters at 84 Avenue Foch in Paris was the place where most captured SOE agents in northern France were taken for initial interrogation. It was a handsome building on one of the grandest avenues in the city, requisitioned from its owners and converted, with the bureaucratic efficiency that characterised the German occupation, into a centre for the interrogation and processing of suspected spies, resistance fighters, and enemies of the Reich. The building's elegance was deliberate. The interrogation rooms on the upper floors were furnished with comfortable chairs, carpets, and curtains. Tea or coffee might be offered. The interrogators, many of whom spoke excellent French and some of whom spoke English, could be polite, even charming, in the opening stages of an interview. The contrast between the civilised surroundings and the violence that the interrogators were prepared to use was itself a technique: a way of destabilising the prisoner, of creating a sense of unreality that made resistance more difficult. A woman who had steeled herself for brutality might find the courtesy more unsettling than the blow. The courtesy did not last. If the initial approach failed to produce useful information, the interrogation shifted to more direct methods. The methods varied, but the principles were consistent: the application of physical pain, psychological pressure, and the sustained destruction of the prisoner's sense of control, autonomy, and hope. The interrogators were professionals. They had been trained in the techniques of coercive questioning, and they applied them with a systematic thoroughness that left little room for heroic resistance.