Sisters Secrets and Sacrifice Read online

  CHAPTER 2

  Secrets and Lies

  It had not occurred to either sister that they might have problems finding suitable work on arriving in England and as they began to receive rejection after rejection they started to become despondent. Surely there must be something suitable for two intelligent girls who were fluent in English and French?

  Jacqueline applied to the Women’s Royal Naval Services – the WRNS – whose advertising slogan at that time was ‘Join the Wrens and free a man for the fleet’ and was called for an interview. She set off with high hopes, but these were dashed when she was told that they needed drivers. Her disappointment was compounded when she was rejected for the post of driver after admitting that she had never driven in the blackout. Didi fared no better. She almost obtained a position as a barrage-balloon operator but was deemed unsuitable for the role. The sisters were beginning to think that they had wasted their time and effort in coming to England. In desperation, they contacted the Ministry of Labour, stressing their language abilities.

  Life in England wasn’t all a disappointment. Although Jacqueline and Didi stuck closely together there were times when they went their own ways and met new people. Soon after arriving in London Jacqueline met a young army cadet called Jimmie and they went out together a few times before he was posted. He extracted a promise from her to write to him and said that he would like to see her again when he came back to London on leave. He even told her that he had seen a brooch that he wanted to buy for her.1 It was flattering, as he was obviously quite keen on her, but soon all thoughts of the new friendship were forgotten when Jacqueline received a letter, sent to Mrs Plunkett’s address in Cheshunt, from a Captain Jepson at the War Office. Dated 5 June 1942, it said:

  Dear Miss Nearne,

  Your name has been passed to me as that of someone possessing qualifications which may be of value in a phase of the war effort. If you are available for interview I would be glad to see you at the above address at 3.30 p.m. on Thursday 25th June, 1942.

  I would be glad if you would let me know whether you can come or not.

  Yours truly,

  Selwyn Jepson

  Captain.

  The address that Captain Jepson gave was Room 055a, War Office, SW1. Jacqueline wrote back immediately, saying that she would be pleased to meet him on 25 June. She told Didi about it but asked her not to say anything to anyone else, as the letter was vague enough either to be something very important or to mean nothing at all; she was also beginning to feel embarrassed about her difficulties in obtaining employment. Jacqueline was eager to know what this ‘phase of the war effort’ meant, but she had nearly three weeks to wait until the appointed date and the time passed slowly. Didi was also impatient to receive her own letter inviting her for an interview, which she was convinced would soon arrive. It didn’t and, as the time got closer for Jacqueline’s interview, Didi kept reminding her to ask why she hadn’t been invited too. Jacqueline had to promise her several times that she would make a point of asking before her sister was satisfied.

  Thursday, 25 June arrived and Jacqueline, dressed in a smart but understated outfit, left Stamford Hill to travel to the War Office. There she was met by Selwyn Jepson himself and ushered into a small room. Jepson was a quietly spoken man, nothing like how Jacqueline had imagined a military officer would be, and the room, apart from two hard chairs and a small table, was empty. There were no personal touches, no books or manuals, no charts or maps, no telephone or framed photo on a desk. Jacqueline was confused by the surroundings and by now rather worried about the interview, but when Jepson began to speak to her, asking her questions about her previous employment, her family background and her reasons for coming to England, his calm manner put her at her ease. She found herself telling him about her family and what had happened to them after the fall of France, how her brother was already in England in the Royal Air Force and how she desperately wanted to do something that would make a difference in winning the war.

  Jepson considered everything she had said and then asked her how she would feel about going back to France. She immediately wondered if it would be as a spy and asked him if that was what he meant. He told her that it would not exactly be as a spy but that it would be in an undercover role and that there were risks involved. He explained that if she were selected – and at that stage this was by no means certain – she would be enrolled in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY), which would give her a cover story for her friends and family, as the work he was suggesting was so secret that she mustn’t tell anyone at all what they had discussed. He advised her to go home and think hard about what he had said, and told her that he would write to her again to let her know whether or not he thought she would be suitable.

  With the interview at an end Jacqueline suddenly remembered her promise to Didi, and told Jepson that she had a younger sister who had come to England with her and who was also keen to find useful war work. He thanked her for the information and for attending the interview, and repeated that he would be in touch very soon. Shaking her by the hand, he pointed her towards the exit and was gone.

  Jacqueline emerged from the War Office feeling dazed and confused. She was relieved that there was a possibility of employment for her but she hadn’t dreamt that it would be anything like this. Although she had been keen to use her French language skills, she thought the role might possibly have been as an interpreter or a translator. She hadn’t considered going back to France as a secret agent and, after all the problems that she and Didi had had getting out of France, felt that it was ironic that if all went well she would soon be back where she had started.

  In the short time that it had taken to attend the interview her entire world had turned upside down. She was elated yet scared, and she couldn’t wait to get home so that she could tell Didi what had happened. But as she walked along the road she suddenly realized that she couldn’t tell Didi, as she had been told that she mustn’t tell anyone. Her mind turned to ways of concealing what she now knew about the job. She knew that, try as she might, it would be almost impossible to fool her sister; they were so close that she felt Didi would know immediately if she lied to her. She didn’t want to lie but neither did she want to disclose what she had been told. She also realized with an uncomfortable jolt that if Didi discovered what the job really was, she too would want to return to France; and, while she was quite prepared to be put in such a perilous position herself, she was horrified by the thought of her young, unworldly sister being subjected to the same danger. Her dilemma occupied her thoughts throughout her journey home.

  When she reached Stamford Hill an anxious Didi was waiting for her. Wanting to know everything that had happened, she began firing questions at her sister. Who had interviewed her? What sort of a job was it? Had she been successful? Her final question was the one that Jacqueline had been dreading: was there a possibility that there might be another vacancy that she could fill?

  Taking a deep breath, Jacqueline told Didi that she had been interviewed by the man who had written the letter to her, Captain Selwyn Jepson, and that the job was as a driver for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. She said that she would soon hear if her interview had been successful but she thought it had. Jacqueline assured Didi that she had told Jepson about her and he had said that he would contact her if he felt there was also a suitable position for her with the FANY.

  Didi was puzzled and slightly disappointed. She was curious to know why Jacqueline had not, it seemed, emphasized her desire to use her language skills. Surely her ability to speak, read and write fluent French could have been used to better advantage than by merely becoming a driver. Knowing her sister so well, she began to suspect that Jacqueline was hiding something from her. Perhaps she wasn’t even going to work for the FANY. Had she just told Didi that to make her believe that it was important war work she would be doing when really it was just a way of making ends meet?

  Jacqueline herself could not stop thinking about the interview, and what it w
ould mean to her if she was offered the position and accepted it. Jepson had told her to think very hard about what it involved and advised her not to rush into a decision, but she already knew what she was going to do. Although the role was not what she had imagined and she knew that it would be hazardous, she felt that she would be doing something that was really worthwhile, which was why she had come to England in the first place.

  Didi’s suspicion that her sister had been keeping something from her continued to trouble her. Then Jacqueline received the news that the interview had been successful, and within two weeks of her interview had passed a medical and completed the application form to join the FANY. In order to be accepted she needed sponsorship in the form of recommendations by two people; one had to be a woman, and both had to have known her for at least two years. Her sponsors were Lieutenant Prudence Macfie of the FANY and Captain Selwyn Jepson, neither of whom had known Jacqueline for more than two weeks.

  When Jacqueline appeared wearing the uniform of the FANY, Didi realized that her main worry hadn’t really been about Jacqueline joining the FANY. It was the driving job that had given her the nagging doubts and she was now sure that it was this that was the lie. She had wondered why the FANY would have picked her sister for a job that any English girl could have done, and she hadn’t been able to understand why even though the WRNS was unwilling to accept a driver who had no experience of the blackout, the FANY didn’t seem to have considered that at all.

  Despite Jepson’s instruction not to discuss her interview with anyone, Jacqueline knew that she would have to disclose some details to Didi. So, impressing upon her that she mustn’t tell a single soul, she admitted that she had been selected to work for a new organization called the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the French Section. Enrolling in the FANY was a cover for what she would actually be doing. Didi, of course, wanted to know what that work was, but Jacqueline said that she had already told her too much and really couldn’t tell her anything else.

  While she waited to hear when she would be starting her SOE training, Jacqueline kept in touch with her friend Jimmie, mostly by post, as he had been sent on a training course, although they spent a day together in July, after which Jimmie wrote to Jacqueline expressing the hope that ‘you managed to get back safely on Monday and that your sister etc had not telephoned all the Police in order to discover the wandering one’. He later wrote to ask Jacqueline to

  tell me more about your life and your thoughts. I am very interested in your life and want to hear all about it, if you will tell me. How do you really like your new life?

  It is a pity your location appears to be a closely guarded secret – why I don’t exactly know – yours is certainly the first training centre that has not had a proper address … I hope that you will not forget me now that you are making lots of new friends. The F.A.N.Y.s had the reputation at the beginning of the war of being rather select and snobbish. It never pays to be like that and I hope very much that you won’t get that way – always remember that old friends are the best.2

  This letter appears to have been the last one that Jacqueline received from Jimmie. It may, of course, just have been the last one that she kept but, by the time she read it, she had already started her SOE training and she was determined not to let anything interfere with that.

  Frustrated that she was still unemployed and beginning to believe that she knew what Jacqueline was going to be doing, Didi was delighted when she too received a letter asking her to attend an interview at the War Office with Captain Jepson, a month after her sister’s.

  Jepson was a 43-year-old Army captain. A well-known playwright in peacetime, he was also the author of several books. When he joined the SOE as a recruiting officer in early 1942, he was found to be very good at picking the right sort of person for undercover roles within the organization. Calm and efficient, he managed to put prospective recruits at ease while asking questions that would reveal whether or not the person concerned would be good at the job. A report from the SOE to Military Intelligence placed on his file in March 1942 described him as being ‘far ahead of anyone as [a] talent spotter’3 and he himself said of his role: ‘I was responsible for recruiting women for the work, in the face of a good deal of opposition, I may say, from the powers that be. In my view, women were very much better than men for the work. Women, as you must know, have a far greater capacity for cool and lonely courage than men.’4

  When Didi attended her interview it didn’t take her long to realize that her suspicions about her sister’s new job were correct and she told Jepson that she wanted to do the same as Jacqueline. He felt that she was, perhaps, a little young to be sent to France as an agent but asked her to tell him about herself. She told him that she had been born in England but had lived in France since she was a baby. She talked about her parents and brothers and sister, and described how she and Jacqueline had escaped from occupied France to come to England and obtain war work. She said that she knew several areas of France quite well, and was fluent in spoken and written French. She also stressed that although she liked people and generally got along well with them, she also liked her own company and was sure that she would be able to work completely alone should the need arise. She simply wanted to do something worthwhile for the war effort.

  Jepson could see that Didi, although lively and enthusiastic, had a serious side as well. She was obviously intelligent and sincere, but he was still concerned that she might be too young. Being the baby of the family and having had a convent education, she had obviously led a sheltered life and he worried that she might not stand up to life in occupied France, alone and with no family support. He did, however, feel that there was about her a hint of the cool and lonely courage he was seeking. He told her that the SOE needed to recruit wireless operators who would send and receive messages to and from agents in France. There was also a requirement for decoders to interpret the messages, all of which had been encoded before transmission. He believed that Didi would be effective in either role and asked her which she would prefer.

  Although disappointed that she would be staying in England, Didi decided that of the two positions offered, she would rather be a wireless operator and Jepson recruited her as such. She also decided that she would continue to press for a job as an agent whenever an opportunity arose. It had occurred to her when making her decision that the training she would need to be a wireless operator would be more beneficial to her than becoming a decoder, should she manage to persuade Jepson at a later date to send her to France.

  Satisfied that she wouldn’t be remaining in England for long, Didi was also enrolled in the FANY, joining what was known as Bingham’s Unit. This unit had been established by a member of the FANY, Phyllis Bingham, at the behest of her friend Major-General Colin Gubbins, Vice-Chief of the SOE Council, because of the necessity for absolute secrecy in the SOE; those who joined Bingham’s Unit were the SOE women selected to serve as wireless operators and decoders in the United Kingdom. One of the sponsors who recommended Didi to the FANY was Mrs Bingham herself. This was done, of course, as with Jacqueline’s sponsors, to keep the paperwork straight and believable, and the undercover roles secret; Mrs Bingham did not know Didi personally and at the time she recommended her to the FANY they had not even met.

  Didi then went off to learn how to receive and send Morse code. She proved to be quite a good student and passed the course satisfactorily.5 She then settled down to life in the listening station.6 Although she had a flair for the work, she found it tedious and longed for the day when she would be able to do something more exciting. With the impatience of youth, Didi began to send in requests to be transferred to the French Section of the SOE so that she could train to become an agent like her sister.

  When she had told Jacqueline that she had guessed what her real role with the SOE was to be and that she intended to join her as soon as possible, Jacqueline had responded with a lie, saying that Didi wouldn’t be allowed to go to France until she was 25 years old. Did
i was still only 21, and Jacqueline hoped that the war would be over by the time Didi reached this fictional minimum age. But knowing Didi so well, she also knew that the small detail of an age limit would not stop her from asking to be sent overseas. She worried that Didi might discover her lie and, worse still, manage to persuade someone to allow her to go to France, so she asked to see Colonel Maurice Buckmaster, head of the French Section of the SOE.

  A meeting was arranged that was also attended by Buckmaster’s assistant, Vera Atkins. Jacqueline explained to them that she was worried that her sister Didi wanted to go to France as an agent and that she had told her she was too young. She asked if there was some way that her lie could be kept up so that when Didi applied she would be told that she was too young. As well as explaining that Didi had led quite a sheltered life, she wanted them to know that Didi was unworldly but very strong-minded, impetuous and stubborn, so they could expect several more requests from her if her first request was denied. It was obvious to Buckmaster and Atkins that Jacqueline was very worried about Didi, and since she was in the middle of the training herself they agreed to go along with the story so that she could concentrate on her work and not worry about her sister.