The Rance in Dinan. Eve was in Dinan this week, in Operation Broadsword, book three in my Eve’s War series. She is trying to get rid of a million francs, which is proving surprisingly difficult.
The print copies of Operation Locksmith have arrived 🙂
Café Society, Paris 1925.
I’m eclectic. Which one are you?
My latest translation, the German version of Operation Zigzag, book one in my Eve’s War Heroines of SOE Series. Great to see that readers in Germany are also downloading the English version.
The streets of London, 1930. The car on the right is a Burney, made by Streamline Cars Ltd and designed by Dennis Burney in 1927.
A walk through the woods this week, Craig yr Aber, Glamorgan.
First Officer Maureen Dunlop was a ferry pilot for the Air Transport Auxiliary. The women of the ATA transported newly manufactured aircraft from factories to aerodromes throughout Britain. She was trained to fly 38 types of aircraft, including Spitfires, Mustangs, Typhoons and bombers.
Four ‘It Girls’ dressed for an evening out, 1927.
I’m a Surrealist. How about you?
Excited to see that Operation Broadsword, book three in my Eve’s War Heroines of SOE Series, is ranked #32 as a hot new release. The book will be published in November 🙂
Heroines of the SOE
Anne-Marie Walters
On 21 June 1944, 2,000 Nazi soldiers attacked a pocket of the French Resistance. During the battle, Anne-Marie distributed hand-grenades and buried incriminating documents in a cave under a church. She also collected SOE money and took it with her as the Resistance withdrew from the village.
It’s always exciting and a relief to finish writing a novel. Just finalised the edits for Looking for Rosanna Mee, book seventeen in my Sam Smith Mystery Series 🙂
My latest translation, Ripper in Spanish. Available soon 🙂
On 21 August 1944, more than 4,000 Spanish Civil War veterans joined the Maquis in Paris to drive the Nazis out of the city. A sweet moment for the anti-fascists. After the liberation the Spanish soldiers took their rightful place in the victory parade.
Ann’s War, a mini-series I wrote for my own amusement, is #1 for the eleventh time 🙂
The world where we live…
Keep your eyes on the watch. Watch the watch. You are becoming sleepy, sleepy…
I published Operation Locksmith this week, book two in my Eve’s War Heroines of SOE Series, which was exciting. However, even more exciting was the support from my readers who pre-ordered Operation Broadsword, book three in the series, and placed it in the top fifty hot new releases, alongside Ken Follett 🙂
Jacob Naken, a seven foot six inch German soldier, talks with Canada’s Corporal Bob Roberts, five foot three inches, after his capture at Calais on 29 September 1944. Before the war, Jacob was a doorman at a West End cinema.
Soldiers of the Great War paying tribute to the eight million horses, donkeys and mules that died during the conflict.
I’m going to try numbers 17, 19, 21 and 30 tomorrow. If they don’t work, it’s number 40, stand on a corner and cry then number 24, looking for ‘leftovers’ 😂
The proof copy of Operation Locksmith has arrived from the printer 🙂
My updated store with paperbacks from £0.99 to £2.99
Judgement at Nuremberg is more relevant today than when it was made in 1961. Three hours long, it doesn’t waste a minute. How do tyrants prosper? Through the support of men and women who know the tyrants are tyrants, but remain silent out of fear, greed or ideology. With superb performances from Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster and Maximilian Schell the film helps us to understand the atrocities of the Second World War and the dangers facing our age. Easily one of the best films ever made.
Ernst Janning, a judge during the Nazi era and now on trial for crimes against humanity, says, “I never knew that it would come to that.” (The mass murder of innocents).
Judge Haywood, the chief judge at Nuremberg replies, “Herr Janning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.”
At the Battle of La Madeleine on 25 August 1944 Cristino García led 32 Spanish anti-fascists and four French Maquis against a Nazi column of 1,200 soldiers.
Garcia’s men blew up a bridge in front of the Nazis and mined the road behind the column. Boxed in by a forest on either side of the road, the Nazis were trapped.
In the confusion, the Nazis thought they were under attack from a large army so they negotiated a truce then surrendered.
Such incidents were taking place throughout France in August 1944 as the Resistance sprang to life and helped to defeat the occupying Nazis.
A spotter on the alert for Nazi warplanes during the Charlton Athletic vs Arsenal match at The Valley, 1940.
26 August 1944. The Allies have liberated Paris. However, a Nazi sniper opens fire.
A forerunner to Coca Cola, Coca Wine was a mixture of cocaine and alcohol. Queen Victoria and Jules Verne loved it while three Popes awarded the wine a gold medal for excellence. Note: medical men and clergymen could receive a bottle for free!
André Hue, the SOE agent who escaped from a sinking ship in the nude, took part in a major battle against the Nazis and organised a series of sabotage operations after D-Day. A hero of the war, he continued in espionage as a spy for MI6.
During the Second World War when SOE agents parachuted into France they took pigeons with them. Questionnaires from the BBC were attached to the pigeons. The locals filled in the questionnaires and the pigeons returned to SOE HQ at 64 Baker Street.
On 5 September, I publish Looking for Rosanna Mee, Sam Smith Mystery Series book seventeen. It’s lovely to see the book sitting alongside JK Rowling (aka Robert Galbraith) in the top forty. Many thanks to my readers for their support 🙂
Through consumption and entertainment, the slaves would love their servitudes.”
So much of the 1930s speaks to us today.
When the Nazis captured SOE agent Odette Sansom they placed her in the dark for three weeks believing that would break her. However, Odette didn’t mind the total darkness because as a child a serious illness had blinded her for three and a half years.
This is a 393 year old Greenland Shark. The oldest living vertebrate known on the planet, it’s been swimming in the ocean since 1627.
Researchers used radiocarbon dating to determine the age of the shark. A possible explanation for this species’ longevity is that they spend their lives 2,000 metres down, where the water temperature is around 29 degrees Fahrenheit. Extreme cold is associated with slow metabolism and maturation – Greenland Sharks don’t reach adulthood until age 150 – as well as long life spans.
Photo by Julius Nielsen.
2020
“I Facebook, therefore I am.”
When captured by the Gestapo, SOE agent Alix d’Unienville pretended to be mentally ill. In reality, she was very strong and this enabled her to escape while in transit to a concentration camp. She fled into a wood, hid, then returned to Paris in a Jeep.
The battle for Paris began on the 10 August 1944 when railway and Metro staff went on strike, an example followed by policemen and postal workers.
The strike became general on the 18 August and by the 19 August fighting had broken out across the city. On that day 3,000 police officers invaded the Préfecture de Police, which became the first building to be officially liberated.
With the Allies advancing, the Nazis retreated. Those who remained sought to defend and destroy until forced into surrender on 25 August 1944.
August 1944, Allied soldiers greeted by young Parisian women as they enter Paris during its Liberation. (Photo by AFP)
I’m writing chapter one of Operation Broadsword, book three in my Eve’s War Heroines of SOE series. Eve is preparing to parachute into France. The SOE give her French-tailored clothes, with jackets ten inches longer than British and American fashions, plus a gun, a .32 pistol made in Czechoslovakia. Blank pages are daunting, but the sight of a completed page is still very exciting.
Operation Zigzag has entered the top ten of Amazon’s war chart 🙂
Spitfire pilots, 1940, who helped to win the Battle of Britain.
Read this from the top to the bottom, then from the bottom to the top.
I’m Greek 😱
Palace Chateaubriand in October 1944 during the siege of St Malo. Vogue carried an eight page report on the siege, filed by Lee Miller, a model and fashion photographer. The only journalist in the city during the siege, she wrote, “My heel sank into a disembodied hand, and I cursed the Germans for the horrible destruction that they had inflicted on this once-splendid city.”
Money does not make you immortal. The quest for unlimited wealth is a desperate attempt to fill a hollow soul, to attain happiness when the simple things in life are deemed ‘inadequate’. It is a Midas shadow that condemns the seeker to a life of darkness.
On 8 August 1944, British, Canadian and Polish forces launched Operation Totalize, the first phase of the Falaise Pocket, which pushed the Nazis out of Normandy. Picture: a Cromwell tank and Willys jeep passing an abandoned German 88 mm anti-tank gun.
Army trucks, cars and motorcycles for sale in Britain, 1946.
An early example of a ‘zebra crossing’ 😉
The Battle of Saint-Lô took place between 7 – 19 July 1944. Located at a strategic crossroads, the Americans bombarded the city destroying ninety-five percent of it before driving the Nazis out. In his report, Samuel Beckett dubbed the martyr city “The Capital of Ruins”.
Pictured, two French boys watch from a hilltop as Allied vehicles pass through the city in July 1944.
The great thing about writing and publishing is there are always new stories to write and new pastures to explore. Delighted to announce that my Ann’s War series will be translated into Afrikaans 🙂
A muggy morning on Margam Mountain.
Apologies for the formatting errors. These are supplied by WordPress.
Odette Sansom, also known as Odette Churchill and Odette Hallowes, was born on 28 April 1912 in Amiens, France. Her father, Florentin Désiré Eugène ‘Gaston’ Brailly, was killed at Verdun shortly before the Armistice in 1918.
Odette Sansom
As a child, Odette contracted serious illnesses which blinded her for three and a half years. She also contracted polio, which left her bedridden for a number of months.
As an adult, Odette met an Englishman, Roy Patrick Sansom (1911–1957), in Boulogne and married him on 27 October 1931. The couple moved to Britain where they produced three daughters. Roy Sansom joined the army at the beginning of the Second World War. Two and a half years later, in the spring of 1942, Odette responded to an Admiritaty appeal for photographs of the French coast. Those photographs brought her to the SOE’s attention and the secretive organisation promptly recruited her into their service.
With her three daughters in a convent school, Odette trained as an SOE agent. At first, Odette’s instructors regarded her as too temperamental and stubborn for the SOE. One report stated, “She is impulsive and hasty in her judgments and has not quite the clarity of mind which is desirable in subversive activity. She seems to have little experience of the outside world. She is excitable and temperamental, although she has a certain determination. However, she is patriotic and keen to do something for France.”
George Starr, a successful agent who clashed with many of the female agents, particularly the attractive ones, described Odette as “a dreadful lady.” In particular, he deplored her “seductive behaviour.”
Odette landed on a beach near Cassis on the night of 2 November 1942. There, she made contact with Captain Peter Churchill. Her initial objective was to contact the French Resistance on the French Riviera and establish safe houses for other agents in Burgundy.
In January 1943, to evade arrest, Churchill and Odette moved their operations to Annecy in the French Alps. The couple resided at the Hotel de la Poste in the village of Saint-Jorioz. The hotel became a meeting place for agents, which aroused suspicion.
Spy-catcher Hugo Bleicher proceeded to Saint-Jorioz where he introduced himself to Odette as “Colonel Henri.” He suggested that they should travel to London to “discuss a means of ending the war.” Odette reported this meeting to her superiors and they warned her to sever all contact with Bleicher.
At the time of Bleicher’s meeting with Odette, Peter Churchill was in London consulting with the SOE. They warned him to avoid contact with Odette and “Colonel Henri” on his return to France. However, when he parachuted into Annecy during the night of 14 April 1943, he met Odette and they proceeded to the hotel in Saint-Jorioz. At 2 am on the 16 April, Bleicher, no longer in the guise of “Colonel Henri,” appeared in the hotel and arrested Odette and Churchill.
At Fresnes Prison, near Paris, Odette was interrogated by the Gestapo
fourteen times. Despite brutal torture, she stuck to her cover story and insisted that Peter Churchill was the nephew of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and that he knew nothing of her activities. The idea was, as a relative of Winston Churchill, the Gestapo would keep Peter Churchill, and Odette, alive as bargaining chips.
Nevertheless, in June 1943, the Gestapo condemned Odette to death on two counts to which she responded, “Then you will have to make up your mind on what count I am to be executed, because I can only die once.” Infuriated, Bleicher sent her to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp.
Ravensbruck Concentration Camp
In Ravensbrück, the Nazis kept Odette in a punishment cell on a starvation diet. However, her earlier blindness and paralysis, and the example set by her grandfather, who “did not accept weakness very easily”, aided her survival. Furthermore, she accepted in advance that the Gestapo might capture her and that she might die.
Odette adopted an attitude of defiance and found that this attitude earned a degree of respect from her captors and strengthened her mind.
Later, Odette insisted that she was not brave or courageous, but that she just made up her mind about “certain things.” She recalled in a post-war interview that while everyone has a breaking point, her feeling was that if she could “survive the next minute without breaking up, that was another minute of life.”
Because of her past illnesses, Odette knew that she could accept her situation and survive it. By accepting death, she felt that, “They would not win anything. They’ll have a dead body, useless to them. They won’t have me. I won’t let them have me.”
In general, the Gestapo found people of the prisoners’ own nationality to carry out their torture, so that the prisoners could not say they were tortured by the Nazis. Odette’s torture was carried out by a “very good-looking young Frenchman” who she believed was mentally ill.
In August 1944, with the Allies advancing on Ravensbrück, the camp commandant, Fritz Suhren, took Odette and drove her to an American base to surrender. He hoped that her supposed connections to Winston Churchill would allow him to negotiate his way out of execution.
In 1946, at the Hamburg ‘Ravensbrück Trials’, Odette testified against the prison guards charged with war crimes and this resulted in Suhren’s execution in 1950.
Odette receiving her George Cross
Odette’s wartime experiences led to a complex personal life. She divorced Roy Sansom in 1946 and married Peter Churchill in 1947, only to divorce him in 1956. That year, she married Geoffrey Hallowes, a former SOE officer.
Odette’s SOE experiences were chronicled in a movie, Odette, which was released in 1950. Anna Neagle played Odette while Trevor Howard played Peter Churchill. Odette insisted that the film should not be made in Hollywood for fear that her story would be fictionalised. The movie, a great success, ensured that Odette became a celebrated member of the SOE.
“Have the courage to use your own reason. That is the motto of enlightenment.” – Immanuel Kant
From QI
The Aryan poster child used in Nazi propaganda was, in fact, Jewish. A photographer submitted her image to a contest to find “the most beautiful Aryan baby”.
The cover for the print version of Operation Zigzag, currently with the printer.
“All good books have one thing in common – they are truer than if they had really happened.” – Ernest Hemingway
From 1914. If you wanted a copy of this map, you had to collect ten coupons from Black Cat cigarette packets. As if the war wasn’t bad enough, smoking also increased substantially.
The writing is on the wall…
I wrote the Ann’s War series for my own amusement so I’m amazed and delighted to see Betrayal, book one in the series, at #1 for the eleventh time on the mystery and literature charts.
“Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear.” – Hannah Arendt
East and West Berlin before the fall of the wall. The different street lights indicate the border.
This is what happens when society tolerates or embraces fascism. Staff at Auschwitz enjoying their ‘work’.
Please pause and give this some deep thought.
Wanted: replacement electrician. Must supply own rubber boots.
From Future Generation Wales
If you think this is extraordinary you should have seen the bull 👀
If all the ice melted…
History often overlooks the great women…
One of the inspirations for Guy Samson in my Eve’s War Heroines of SOE series, André Hunter Alfred Hue was born in Swansea, Wales on 7 December 1923.
Andre Hue, the photograph attached to his fake identity card
André’s father, also André, was French while his mother, Caroline, was Welsh. A First World War veteran, André senior received a bullet wound to the head. The bullet remained in place and contributed to his early death in 1938.
Caroline did not speak French. Indeed, before their marriage neither she nor her husband spoke each other’s native language. However, Caroline insisted that her children should learn French.
From Swansea, André’s family moved to Le Havre. There, in 1939, he became a sailor in the French merchant navy with the rank of purser.
On 17 June 1940, André’s ship, the SS Champlain, struck a mine off La Rochelle and sank. André was in the shower at the time, but he managed to swim ashore, naked.
While working as a railroad clerk in Guer, Brittany, André fulfilled a burning ambition and joined the French Resistance. The railroad station at Guer was strategically important because it served as a key artery for supplying German troops to north-western France.
Working in the railroad office, André provided information about secret timetables so that the RAF could attack trains carrying German troops and supplies.
As trust in André’s abilities increased, the Resistance encouraged him to smuggle Allied airmen, shot down over France, to safety, often by guiding them to the coast and the waiting boats and submarines.
With André’s courage and his trustworthiness established, the Special Operations Executive invited him to train as an agent. In February 1944 he crossed the Channel to Britain to commence training. His reports stated that he was “a very active, energetic, enthusiastic man with a reasonably stable personality, although inclined to excitement at times.”
André succeeded with his training and the SOE awarded him the rank of Acting Captain in time for Operation Overlord.
During the night of 5/6 June 1944, André parachuted into France. Men from the French Special Air Service accompanied him. Upon landing, an immediate task was to avoid Cossacks who were patrolling the countryside. The Cossacks were Soviet POWs who’d joined the German Army.
Maquis in an armoured Jeep
In Brittany, André’s task was to organise the local Maquis so that they could launch guerrilla attacks on communication lines, railroads and roads. Their ultimate aim was to prevent the four Nazi divisions stationed in Brittanyfrom joining the rest of the German army in Normandy.
André was based at La Nouette farmhouse near Saint Marcel. He noted in his autobiography, The Next Moon, that he feared the Milice more than the Germans because the Milice being French could identify regional accents. However, as a natural French speaker he escaped initial suspicion.
On one occasion, André was present when the Nazis shot five SAS men and seventeen French civilians. On another occasion, he was trapped in a barn, which the Nazis had torched. Despite the smoke and flames, he managed to escape.
On 18 June 1944, the Nazis attacked André’s farmhouse. Four thousand Maquisards rushed to defend the farmhouse and the Battle of Saint Marcel ensued.
La Nouette after the battle
In The Next Moon, André recalled the battle. “Now every weapon that the enemy possessed was brought to bear on our front line in a cacophony of shots and explosions which could not drown an even more sinister noise: the occasional crack of a single bullet. A man within feet of me slumped to the ground with blood spurting two feet into the air from the side of his neck. We had anticipated an infantry assault – possibly backed up with light armour – but snipers, a threat we had not met before, were difficult to counter. Within minutes of the first casualty, another seven of our men lay dying within the farm complex: all had been shot from long range.”
As the Nazi snipers continued to assassinate André’s men, he could hear the sound of panzers in the distance, so he ordered a retreat into the woods under the cover of darkness. There, André used his radio to contact the SOE and RAF. They organised an air strike, which resulted in mass confusion. During that confusion, André and his men escaped.
La Nouette restored after the Second World War
Throughout August 1944, André participated extensively in the liberation of France. He executed an operation where the Resistance secured the villages in Brittany to aid the advancing Allies. After his work in Brittany, he parachuted into the town of Nevers in Burgundy, where he coordinated operations between the SOE and the Resistance.
On 30 August 1944, André landed in the Nievre just west of Dijon where he took command of the SOE Gondolier circuit. There, he trained the local Maquis and blew up three bridges in Burgundy, which denied the retreating Nazis an exit point from the South of France. Also, in Luzy, André removed mines, placed by the Nazis to kill and maim local civilians.
For his extraordinary efforts, André was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for his work in France. At the age of twenty, he was one of the youngest men to receive a DSO.
By the end of the Second World War, André held the rank of Major in the British Army. He served overseas, in Burma, Palestine, Cyprus and Cambodia. During his stint in Cambodia, he met his future wife, Maureen Taylor, who worked in the British Embassy in Phnom Penh. The couple married in 1957 and had one daughter.
Before establishing a successful business career, André worked for MI6, his activities centred on the Far East.
In later years, André suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, which claimed his life in 2005.
Hannah Howe 