Noreen Riols - The Spy Who Loved Me

 

 

During World War II, I was a pupil at the French Lycée in London. But on reaching the ripe old age of 18, I was obliged to abandon my studies and either join the armed forces or work in a munitions factory. Well, that option did not thrill me. So, I decided to become a member of the Women's Royal Naval Service. Because I liked the hat. [audience laughter] I thought it was most seductive. But when I went to sign on, I was taken aside and closeted in a kind of windowless broom cupboard with a high-ranking army officer who began asking me an awful lot of questions which had nothing to do with the navy.

 

He was leaping like a demented kangaroo in and out of four languages. He seemed very surprised that I could keep up. He sent me to a large building in central London. Oh, I knew it well, but like the hordes of people who pass by every day, never had I imagined or even suspected that this was the headquarters of Churchill's secret army. And behind those walls, members of every occupied country were organizing acts of sabotage and the infiltration, into enemy territory at night, of secret agents by parachute, fishing boat, felucca, and submarine. Without realizing what had happened, I had been recruited into the hidden world of secret agents on special missions. But I never got my seductive hat. [audience laughter]

 

I was affected to F for France section. It was an exhausting but exciting, thrilling, exhilarating life, full of action and emotion. We lived some very intense moments. I got to know an awful lot of agents and I shared many confidences with those who were about to leave. They told me of their concerns for their families. Many of them were married with young children, of their own apprehension of torture and of death. They knew they only had a 50% chance of coming back and they were afraid. Brave men are always afraid. Courage isn't the absence of fear. It's the willingness, the guts, if you like, to face the fear. They faced their fears and they left.

 

I remember one. He was a Jew, a radio operator, and he was going in on a second mission. Well, for a Jew to go in at all was extremely dangerous but many of them did. We had quite a few Jewish agents, but a radio operator, a second mission. Radio operator was the most stressful, hazardous, dangerous mission of all. He lived on his nerves. He could never relax. He was always on the run, always with the Gestapo just a couple of steps behind him. He needed nerves of steel because once infiltrated, his life expectancy was six weeks. I was with this agent on the night before he left. There was no romantic association. I was just keeping him company. After all, he was an old man. He was almost 35. [audience chuckles] During the evening, he drew out of his pocket a box, small velvet box. And inside there was a gold chain with a star of David and a dove of peace hanging on it. And he said, "I'd like you to have this." " [scoffs] Thank you so much." I said, "I'm terribly touched. I couldn't possibly accept it." And he looked so sad, so disappointed.

 

He said, "Please do. Oh, please do. All my family in France has perished in a German concentration camp. I have nobody left in the world. And I'd like to think that somebody remembers me. Somebody perhaps even thinks of me when I'm over there." So, I took his little box, promising to give it back to him when he returned. But he didn't return. Those who did return were taken immediately for a debriefing. And I often accompanied the two debriefing officers. And for me, it was a revelation to see their different reactions. Some returned with their nerves absolutely shattered in shreds. Their hands were shaking uncontrollably as they lit cigarette after cigarette. And others were so as cool as cucumbers.

 

And I realized then that we all have a breaking point. And we can never know until we are faced with a situation what that breaking point actually is. I grew up attending those debriefing sessions. Many of those agents were not very much older than I. Hearing their incredible stories, witnessing their courage, their total dedication, I changed almost overnight from a teenager, and I became a woman. One Saturday evening, it was a snowy evening, it was in early February, I was told that I was to leave the next morning and go down to Beaulieu. Now, Beaulieu was the last of the many secrets training schools. Now, these secret training schools were dotted all over England. And the agents-- the future agents, attended each one in turn, during their long, tough six months training. It took eight to nine months to train a radio operator.

 

It was in Hampshire, deep in the New Forest. Only six women worked at Beaulieu during the war, and I am the last survivor. We were used as decoys, and you won't believe this, but the local people hadn't the remotest idea what was going on under their very noses. We worked in the neighboring seaside towns of Bournemouth and Southampton. My pitch was usually Bournemouth. And it was there that we taught future agents how to follow someone, find out where they were going, who they were seeing without being detected, how to detect if someone were following them and throw them off, how to pass messages without any sign of recognition or even moving our lips. Now, this took place on the beach, in the park, on benches in the town, in telephone booths, and in the tea rooms above the Gaumont cinema.

 

The last exercise was reserved for those future agents whom the instructors were thought might talk. Now, the instructors were with them all the time. They watched their every movement; they analyzed it all. And if they thought that they might talk, they would have a carefully prearranged set up meeting between a decoy and a future agent in one of the rather-- the two grand hotels in Bournemouth. The meeting would take place in the bar or the lounge, followed by an intimate dinner, tête-à-tête, it was our job to get them to talk, to betray themselves in fact. The Brits didn't talk much. Foreigners sometimes did, especially the young ones. Oh, I understood. They were lonely. They were far from their homes and their families. They didn't even know if they would have a home or even a country to go back to once the war was over. And it was flattering to have a young girl hanging on their every word.

 

Well, of course, if I had taken part in the earlier exercises, I couldn't take part in that one because they would know me and one of the others took over. Now, before they were returned to London, at the end of their month in Beaulieu, and it was in London, in their country section, that their fate would be decided. Each one had an interview with our commandant, Colonel Woolrich, we called him Woollybags behind his back. He had all the reports from all the different training schools and he made his report and that went back to London. But his report carried weight.

 

Now, if they had talked during the interview, a door would open and I, for example, another decoy would walk in and Woollybags would say, "Do you know this woman?" And they realized they'd been tricked. Most of them took it well. But I'll never forget one, he was a Dane. Oh, a glorious blond Adonis. [audience chuckles] When I entered the room, he looked at me with surprise and then almost pain. And finally, blind fury overtook him. He half rose in his chair and he said, "You bitch." Well, no woman likes being called a bitch. [audience laughter] But as Woollybags said to me, "If he can't resist talking to a pretty face over here, he's not going to resist when he's over there. And it won't only be his life which is in danger, it will be many others."

 

I think it was then that I realized that my whole life was a lie. I lied to everybody. I had to. To those agents, to my friends, to my family. My mother thought I worked for the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. [audience chuckles] She died at 80 without any ever knowing the truth because all of us in the secret army were under the official secrets act for 60 years. Until those files were opened in the year 2000 and then most of us were dead anyway. On the eve of my 19th birthday, I fell madly, hopelessly in love with an agent. He was one of our best agents, a crack. He'd just returned from a very successful second mission. And he was adulated. He was a legend in the section. I'd heard all about him, but I never thought I'd meet him. And then, suddenly, one evening, he was there. And it was as if our eyes locked across a crowded room. And we were irresistibly drawn one towards the other. I couldn't believe that he could love me. He was handsome. He was 12 years older than I. He was a hero. He must have met many beautiful, sophisticated, elegant, gorgeous women. “We had”, he told me. [audience chuckles] But he said he'd been looking for me.

 

Our idyll lasted three months until he left on his next mission. I was terrified. It was a very dangerous mission. And they said only he could carry it off. But I was so afraid, but he reassured me. He said he was a survivor and he promised me that this would be his last mission. And when he came back, he'd never leave me again. We'd grow old together. The day he left, we had lunch, just the two of us, in a little intimate restaurant. We both knew that it would be many months perhaps before we'd be together again and we kept emotion out of our conversations. I think we were both afraid of breaking down. I know if we hadn't, I would have broken down and I'd have begged him not to go. I imagine you've all been in love. Can you picture what it's like to be terribly in love and know that all you have is a few hours. This moment in time.

 

He took me back to the office and we said goodbye at the bus stop. I don't think we even said goodbye. As I walked through the door, I turned. He was standing on the pavement watching me. He smiled and raised his hand to his red parachutist beret in a final salute. He was infiltrated that night, but I never saw him again. The mission was successful, but he didn't return. And I was left with a little cameo of a perfect love. Perfect perhaps because it had been so brief. When the news that I dreaded came through, they tried to comfort me. They told me I should be proud. He was incredibly courageous, a wonderful man who had realized that there was a force of evil in the world that had to be annihilated. But that freedom has a price tag, he paid that price with his life. But I didn't want a dead hero. I didn't want a medal in a velvet box. I wanted Bill. All those agents in the secret army were volunteers. They didn't have to go, but they went. Almost half of them never returned. Like Bill, they gave their youth their joie de vivre, their hopes and dreams for the future. They gave their all for us. They gave their today so that we might have our tomorrow.