Agent Pearl Witherington, Gen. George Patton, and the way to win a war.

Guest post by John Atwood.

For my wife’s first book, Women Heroes of World War II, to help her develop her chapter on Pearl Witherington, I had to read Pearl’s French memoir, Pauline.  (And I read through it many times in the limited role I had in helping with Code Name Pauline.)  So I am one of a small number of English-speaking people in the world who first learned about this admirable woman in French, before a translation was available in English. 

My French was fairly rusty at the time I first began to read, so it was slow going and hard work.  But, as anyone who has ever done that can testify, being slowed down in such a fashion can sometimes make the reading more rewarding.  At least, there is a certain elation you feel when you crack the code and grasp the simplest sentence.  And this prevented a glib, shallow gloss-over of her story.  Things slowed down to almost real time, allowing opportunity for much reflection and visualization.

And when it comes to World War II, visualization is something for which I had developed a knack.  The topic had been a fascination for me since I was a child.  I grew up in the shadow of the war.  My father served in the Pacific Theater.  My friends father’s had also served; they were all heroes to us. My brother and I re-enacted what we understood about the fighting as kids. 

Because my grandfather had also served in World War I, I was certain I would also end up in the Army.  But it never actually happened.  My generation’s war was—how can I say it—a somewhat different story.  I was no draft dodger—my four years of college outlasted the Vietnam War—but I couldn’t believe in Vietnam well enough to leave school and volunteer. 

But like many who didn’t go, I have always been tortured by the questions: “Could I have handled it?”, “How would I have reacted under fire?” etc.

During the 1980’s driven by such questions and also wanting to try to understand my father’s generation and times, I started reading everything I could get my hands on about World War II.  I had been an undergraduate History major and had taken upper level courses on the War, but this post education curiosity gave me to opportunity to dig in real deep, and I went at it with a passion.  I wanted to get a sense of what it would have been like at D-Day, Pelilieu, Iwo Jima, etc., part of that almost suicidal scenario of going up against fixed machine gun emplacements and pre-calculated mortar fire.

Thus predisposed, as I carefully worked my way through Pauline, I noticed from the headings that I was coming to a major event in Pearl’s career, the Battle of Les Souches.  Pearl had come to France with training in weapons and demolition, and was noted by her trainers as “the best shot we have had so far”.  The early part of her career had been the less glamorous (but no less dangerous) role as a courier, but I couldn’t wait for the chapter on Les Souches so I could read about Pearl in action.

But this is what I found when I got to the point where the German’s attacked:

I threw on my clothes, picked up my bag and the cocoa tin where the money was kept.  As I climbed down the ladder from the attic, German bullets were whizzing past my ears.  At the bottom, I jumped on my bike and cycled to the château’s outhouses where the weapons we had just received were stocked.  They hadn’t even been cleaned yet and were still covered in grease.  Never mind, I hastily loaded the guns and put detonators in the hand grenades. 

One of the chaps rushed up to me and told me to leave as quickly as possible, the Germans were approaching.  They had gotten out of their trucks and were advancing in extended order across the plain towards the château.  I dropped everything and ran to La Barraque, a farm which was about a mile from the château . . . I didn’t want to be caught in a house.  I fled into a wheat-field . . .  I had a revolver.  I decided that if arrested it would be better if I weren’t carrying any weapons, so I buried it. . .  All day long I remained hidden in the field.  

What?  I thought.  Did I translate that right?  Pearl Witherington, trained fighter, great shot, weapons expert, didn’t stand and fight to the death, didn’t even hold on to her pistol, but fled into a wheat field with a cocoa tin full of money?  Nope, there it was: « j’ai pris…le boite de cacao ou il y avait l’argent.  Je me suis enfuie dans le champ de blé. »   That certainly wasn’t what I had expected to read.  

And I didn’t get it at first.  It took me a while to get my head around it.  But eventually, I came to understand, and in understanding, gained my own personal admiration for her innate intelligence and sense of focus.

One at least had to grant that on this day they were hopelessly out- numbered.  American’s have been schooled in “remember the Alamo” notions of heroic last stands by an outnumbered few.  But even that accomplished a strategic purpose —a ragtag bunch was holding up Santa Ana’s army until Sam Houston could get the real Texas army trained for battle.  At the Battle of Les Souches, there was nothing like that in play.  The Wehrmacht troops that attacked were a local force, not the ones heading for Normandy.  There was no one here to “hold up”.  Nor was there any strategic point, fort or field that needed defending to the last.  The Resistance did not fight like that, their approach was more fluid. 

But the much larger reason for Pearl’s action was her whole take on what she was about.  Unlike my preoccupation—and I dare say what might be the preoccupation of many people—the last thing on her mind was any consideration of how she would perform in battle.  She had no point to prove, no “investors” to answer to, no critics to watch out for.  She was free to follow a very pure game plan.

As Code Name Pauline relates, Pearl had succeeded in escaping Nazi-occupied France at the end of 1940.  She was comfortably ensconced in war- related work in London.  But her mind rankled with the images of the Nazi’s imposing their whole shtick on Paris.  Through the auspices of the SOE, she was sent to do a job, as she put it, and that job was conceived by the entire maquis as one thing: “to chuck the Germans out.  Full top.”  It was this motivation that brought her to that critical day at Les Souches. 

But in order to function, to continue the fight, one crucial kind of resource was required—money.  It is easy to think of the Resistance as being a kind of volunteer organization, held together by ideology and sacrifice.  And while that was certainly true, there were some pragmatic considerations as well.  Most of the young men involved were fugitives from the STO—the obligatory work service.  Able-bodied men were ‘drafted’ to work for the Nazi’s, sometimes even shipped to Germany or other areas.  Young men who refused had one alternative—to go into hiding, to go off the grid, to go into “the sticks”, the French word for which was “le maquis”. 

Of course, being off the grid meant severe limitations on the ability to earn an income or purchase necessary sustenance.  Some might have been rugged individualists with the skills to fend for themselves and live off the land.  But most needed some means of support. 

Pearl knew there were many young men in hiding in the rural area of France where she was working, most of them quite ready to join with her in the fight to rid France of the detestable Nazi infestation, especially since the Allies had now landed.  But she also knew necessity would force them to join themselves with someone who could pay them, especially if these men had families depending on them. 

From the point of view of living to fight another day, she knew the chateau was expendable, as were the weapons she had.  She could find another base of operations, as her story reveals.  She could eventually reestablished contact with London, and obtain more weapons, explosives, etc.  But in the short run, were she to keep her network together, she would need to be able to pay the men.

As I thought on Pearl’s choices at Les Souches, I was reminded of that speech that General George Patton had given, the one delivered by George C Scott as Patton at the opening of the 1970 movie.  “No _(soldier)_ ever won a war by dying for his country…”  That phrase kept going through my mind as I considered what Pearl had done on that day.  I wondered if the similarity were only in that one phrase, or if it might extend throughout the speech or if even there might be a lot of similarity between their two characters.

The speech continues: “he won it by making the other poor dumb _____ die for his country.”  When I saw the speech in the movie, back in 1970, I was not favorably impressed.  It was delivered in what seemed a dour tone, with an appeal that I characterized as American macho exceptionalism: Americans love a winner, every American loves to be a winner, kill all the cowards, etc.  Patton seemed a bullet-headed bigot, which assessment seemed to be supported by his slapping of a soldier suffering from battle fatigue.  But, as we all know, movie portrayals can be quite unreliable: virtues can be magnified, as can be faults, in either way to the point of caricature.  Patton admitted he used bluster and profanity to get his men’s attention and to make his points stick. 

The speech in question was given several times to the Third Army before the Allied invasion of Normandy, to gatherings of soldiers most of whom were going into battle for the first time.   No doubt many of them were in contemplation of “the question”: Am I ready to die for my country?  I began to wonder if, rather than attempting “macho motivation”, he was not using bluster as a tactic to shake his green troops out of the trap of such thinking.  And in that, perhaps he was doing them a kindness.  The full text of the speech supports this notion—and is notably more jocular than that rendered by George C. Scott—though I suppose only soldiers who actually heard it can confirm.

“No man ever won a war by dying…he won the war by making…”.  Translation into the head of a soldier: “your country didn’t send you here to die, it sent you here to push a malicious conqueror back over the border into their own country and to bring to an end their terrorizing of the world. You are here to do a job, soldier.  Some may die, or be wounded, and some won’t.  Since there is not much anyone can do to influence that, there is really not much point in thinking about it.  What you can do, however, is do your utmost to fulfill the errand you are on.”

MRD Foot, the noted British expert on the SOE, stated in a Foreward that he wrote for the English translation of Pauline, “I have never met anyone braver than Pearl.”  I came across this after I had finished my reading of Pauline, and wondered how he meant that.  One thinks of bravery as some kind of shining, substantial thing in the soul, a ‘virtue’ in the sense Plato would describe it, that makes a person transcendent, able to face down danger and death.  While Pearl was certainly admirable, I wasn’t sure I was seeing that kind of transcendence in her story.

But when I thought of this episode in the wheat field, and reflected on the rest of her story, I wondered if that kind of bravery isn’t a myth.  Patton himself said:

One of the bravest men I saw in the African campaign was on a telegraph pole in the midst of furious fire. . . I … asked him what…he was doing….'Fixing the wire, sir.' 'Isn't it a little unhealthy up there right now?' I asked. 'Yes sir, but this … wire has got to be fixed.' I asked, 'Don't those planes strafing the road bother you?' And he answered, 'No sir, but you sure as hell do.' Now, there was a real soldier. … A man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how great the odds, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty appeared at the time

I don’t think Pearl would have agreed that she was brave, in the transcendent sense.  She herself said, “I don’t consider I did anything extraordinary… I did it because it had to be done.”  Pearl’s bravery may simply have existed because her sense of her errand was so strong that it overwhelmed anything else—survival, suffering, reputation, whatever.  Her particular ‘virtue’ may have been an uncanny ability to silence all other voices in her soul but that of her mission.  

I found this an outlook I greatly admired and envied.  I was glad it had not been me faced with the decision of what to do as the Germans were upon them at Les Souches—I  would have made a complete mess of things.  But since having this realization, well, something you admire is something you carry with you.   And while I’ve not yet come to point of excusing Patton’s slapping of a soldier, I now suspect that “old blood and guts” may have been trying to do nothing more than to help his troops overcome their understandable fear on the brink of battle.

One final parallel between them comes to mind.  At the beginning of the 1970 movie, Patton is shown arriving at Allied Headquarters in North Africa, rather displeased with the condition of American discipline.  At one point he stumbles over and awakens a man curled up on the floor of the hallway, asleep.  When questioned as to what he thought he was doing there, the soldier replies, “Trying to get some sleep, sir.”  On hearing this Patton replies, “Well, get back down there, son.  You’re the only ______ in this headquarters who knows what he is trying to do!” 

Pearl Witherington definitely knew what she was trying to do.  Her network recovered rapidly from the attack at Les Souches.   Pearl kept them well supplied with arms and explosives, as well as a nearby Communist (FTP) network.  Unlike many other networks, they were not undermined by security breaches, not discovered by the Germans due to taking foolish risks nor did they suffer unnecessary casualties due to rash attacks.  She kept them on track, surviving, functioning, doing their job.  As an SOE operative, she had one of the highest records for successful supply drops in all of Europe.  She helped make sure that it was the other guys who did more dying for their country, and thus helped win a war.  

"My writing makes better reading." Pearl Witherington weighs in on fictionalized biographies

From the original French-language memoir, Pauline, a transcript of multiple interviews conducted by French journalist, Hervé Larroque, in 1994-95. This little gem is not included in Code Name Pauline so I thought I'd post it here:


"I would never have taken the initiative of talking about what I did.  I’m telling you about it now because you asked me to.  There aren’t many people with whom we’ve discussed it.  Every time someone has asked me to talk about the war or to write about our life -- goodness knows there have been a lot of them -- I’ve always refused.  Because I don’t want it to be embellished.  The accounts of all these events, as they happened, are just part of our life at the time and don’t need to be romanticized.

There are two books in English which mention me and I’m really disappointed by them.

You don’t recognize yourself in them?

Not at all and I told the author.  She had explained to me what she was intending to write, because she wanted me to do the job.  I replied, “Write what you want about me and I’ll correct it.”  I corrected it, then she said, “I haven’t included your corrections because my writing makes better reading.”  Well I’m afraid I can’t see myself in her book at all.  For a start the things she wrote didn’t correspond to what I did.  My job was to organize things..."

"We weren't soldiers." The surrender of the Elster Column.

I found this photo on Pinterest captioned: "German POW in France, 1945", and it reminded me of the following passage from Code Name Pauline:

"On September 10, 1944, a column of 18,000 Germans who had been trying to return to Germany surrendered to one man, an American from the US Army, in the town of Issoudun. At the time the American press thrived on the story, but they didn't tell the full story. They forgot to mention the column had been harassed by all the Maquis in the sector. The 18,000 German soldiers didn't surrender as easily as that, for no reason, to one American! In addition, the Americans authorized the Germans to cross the region all the way to Orleans with their weapons. The resisters were furious. Always the same old story: armies prefer to deal with armies, and the Resistance wasn't an army...

"Major Clutton did everything he could to try and stop this business, but it was impossible. Moreover, when the Germans got to the other side of the Loire, the Americans welcomed them with oranges, chocolate, the whole works. But that's an old story, you know, soldiers welcoming other soldiers. We weren't soldiers.

The BBC Video

"Our bedroom was nicely decorated." Pearl Witherington and treasures from the Louvre

"When we arrived in Gatines, we first slept in a farm called Coloumbier that was in the forest...Later, in September, when we were sure there weren't too many Germans in the vicinity, we moved into the chateau in Valencay. We stayed there for a while.

"Some of the Louvre's treasures were stored away in the chateau, including the sculptures Victoire de Samothrace, the Venus de Milo, and engravings by Rembrandt and Durer. In once sense, our bedroom was nicely decorated. But it wasn't a bedroom; it seemed to us more of a ballroom...

"The works of art were locked away in cases. Employees from the national museums were there and opened one of them for us. Andre Leroi-Gourhan took that initiative. He said, 'I'll show you things the public never sees.' He showed us a very old tiara belonging to the pope and engravings by Rembrandt where you could see corrections to the drawing on the copper."


Excerpt from "Into the Forest" from Code Name Pauline: Memoirs of a World War II Special Agent.

Podcast Interview re. Pearl Witherington Cornioley and Code Name Pauline

http://worldwariipodcast.net/wordpress/2014/03/episode-101-interview-with-kathryn-j-atwood/

Waking up on a 20-ton pile of "war supplies." September 23rd, 1943

The greeting party, when I landed, consisted of two men: Maurice Southgate and Auguste Chantraine, mayor of Tendu and counselor for the district.  They whistled to find me.  It was a dark night and they hadn’t really seen where I had landed.  I whistled back--a previously agreed-on code of two descending notes--and that’s how they found me. 

Although I already knew Maurice, we didn't talk about anything at all.  Maurice just asked me, "Did you see where your bags fell?"  I said, "Listen, it was enough working out how I was going to land myself, I've no idea, I didn't see them."  My bags had fallen in the water.  I only managed to retrieve them three weeks later.   

We went to Chantraine's farm.  Maurice accompanied me to a barn and pointing to a pile of hay said, "Right, you can rest up there."  I climbed the ladder and settled down on top, completely dressed.  I didn't sleep much.  When I came down, Maurice said, laughing, "You know, you were asleep on a pile of supplies in there."  They were war supplies of course.  There were at least 20 tons stacked under me...

The BBC video

http://youtu.be/KxLFSUv71wg

This short video was edited in such a way as to make it seem that Pearl joined the SOE as soon as she landed in London but it's otherwise very well done with narration by me and stunning visuals by British Pathé and Code Name Pauline.

Excerpt from "Parachuting into Occupied France"

Halifax bomber

            My third attempt at a parachute landing was successful. Just in time. It was the night of 22nd to 23rd of September 1943 and the last night of the moon. If I had not been able to jump then, I would have had to wait another month. Our pilots needed the moonlight to see the rivers which acted as landmarks. When they headed south of the Loire, they flew near Blois where there are three rivers, the Loir, Loire and Cher.

           The pilots flew that way frequently, so they knew the route very well, but they were just as frequently attacked by flak -- antiaircraft guns -- which tossed the plane. We were not hit that night because we were too high, but the plane was shaken by the explosions. At first I wondered what was happening but the dispatcher reassured me, "Don't worry," he said, "it's the flak; we're used to it."

           I was in a massive Halifax bomber, equipped to go as far as Poland. Usually, there were long seats running down the middle of the fuselage, opposite each other, where one could lie down. But this time the space was taken up by fuel tanks. It’s a long way to Poland and back!

           The crew had kindly found me a sleeping bag and I lay down in it, on the floor, waiting for the moment to jump. Although the noise was terrible because of the four engines, I managed to sleep. I hadn’t slept the night before, due to the previous unsuccessful landing.

             Around midnight, I began sitting for quite a long time on the edge of the opening I would have to jump through. It wasn’t very warm. The plane circled for a long time while I was waiting there, and I didn’t know why. But in a plane the size of a Halifax bomber, it isn’t easy to pinpoint four little electric torches [flashlights] on the ground. I thought that the torches were always held by hand, but this time, the reception committee had done something different. They had three small torches on the ground, with the fourth one a bit further along, staggered a little to indicate the direction of the wind. At the same time, the fourth torch gave the letter of the landing strip in Morse code. That was essential—if they had not given the right letter, I would have had to go back.

            I just waited for the red light to come on. It wasn’t like our training sessions, when the dispatcher would shout “Action station!” with me on the edge of the hole, in the middle of the fuselage, ready to jump, and then “Go!” He would shout very loudly so there was no hesitation, we just did it. This was different. There were two lights: the green one meant “get ready” and the red one “go.”

When the red light came on, well, off I went...

Excerpt from Code Name Pauline: Memoirs of a WWII Special Agent.

 

French wine and a British bicycler

Pearl Witherington was born and raised in Paris by British parents but she remained a British citizen her entire life and in most ways, retained a very British personality. Below is an excerpt regarding a type of innocent but unwanted hospitality Pearl experienced from French farmers while visiting groups of French Resistance fighters where she assessed their munitions needs following D-Day. I couldn't find a home for it within the pages of Code Name Pauline but as it's very humorous I thought I'd post it here:

"When I arrived at a farm during my various cycling visits and asked for a glass of water, the farmers would always refuse and insist on pouring me a glass of wine.  The first time it happened I let myself be badgered into it but when I left the farm I could hardly peddle.  After that, every time I went to a farm and asked for a drink of water there was an argument.  They would always absolutely insist on giving me wine."

For more on Pearl's (and her French husband Henri's) insightful and humorous take on the cultural differences between the English and the French, see the appendix section of Code Name Pauline.

"The Gestapo was there." Excerpt from Code Name Pauline: Memoirs of a WWII Special Agent

Henri could feel trouble brewing. He had arrived from Paris the evening before -- the night of April 30-May 1, 1944 -- to the Lhospitalier's house in rue de Rimard. We all sensed D-Day was about to happen.

That night Maurice went to meet John Farmer and Nancy Wake, a team parachuted to join the Auvergne Maquis. On his return from this meeting, where he had received information and money...he forgot to look behind him when he arrived at the Lhospitaliers, because he was very tired...

There was a front-wheel-drive Citroën, the car used mainly by the Gestapo, hidden further down the street...

The Gestapo was there.

When they saw the radio, the money, the list of landing spots for parachute drops, they must have thought there were other people in the network. They encircled the town the next day.

 

Excerpt from Code Name Pauline: Memoirs of a WWII Special Agent.

"Courage was their common badge." Maurice Buckmaster on the abilities of female SOE agents.

Maurice Buckmaster, head of the Special Operations Executive's French Section, came under heated post-war criticism for allowing female agents to fight behind enemy lines in German-occupied France. He wrote two books about the SOE's F-Section, often getting his facts wrong but brilliantly painting SOE heroines in deservedly glowing terms. Below is an excerpt:

"It has been suggested that women agents should never have been sent, that they were forced to undertake missions to which both by temperament and by nature they were unsuited and in physique and spirit inadequate.  The dead cannot be revived by such accusations, they can only be dishonoured.  Those of us who know of the work done by women like Violette Szabo, Norah Inayat-Khan, Denise Bloch, among those who died, and by Lise de Baissac, the sisters, Jacqueline and Eileen Nearne, and Nancy Wake among those who survived, can only feel anger and contempt for those who try to denigrate Baker Street by questioning the ability of women to fight alongside men and who impugn the efficiency of Headquarters by doubting the readiness of brave women to face perils and, if necessary, to die for their countries.  These women did an invaluable job and one for which, whatever people may say, they were admirably suited.  Coolness and judgment were vital qualities; none lacked them.  Courage was their common badge."

Excerpt from They Fought Alone: The Story of British Agents in France by Maurice Buckmaster.

After D-Day, the Germans attack the Resistance during the Battle of Les Souches

A few days after D-day a man arrived at Les Souches by bicycle. The men at the guard post at the end of the lane, on the main road, stopped him and brought him to me. When I asked him where he had come from he said from Paris. I asked him if he had seen barricades en route, and when he said no, I was flabbergasted. It meant that none of the networks between Paris and Les Souches had obeyed London’s orders to block the roads. We were the only ones to have done so, by felling trees across the main road. I immediately thought, Heavens, we’re the bridge-head.

Sure enough, two or three days later we were attacked. The snooper plane had spotted the trees we had felled. For a time, the Germans used the snooper, a small plane they flew to examine the land if they didn’t know it very well. They must have concluded there were quite a number of us hiding in the Taille de Ruine woods. I have never understood why ours was the only team to have obeyed orders...

My lieutenant, Raymond Billard, or “Gaspard,” a discharged sailor and member of the Wrestler circuit, told me that the day after the snooper had flown over, he and four others were driving in a Citroën front-wheel drive from the château to Monsieur Sabassier’s house when they came face-to-face with the Germans. Both parties were very surprised to see each other! The Germans got out and machine-gunned them, but none of them were hurt.

When more German soldiers appeared, the lads on the main road blew the bugle—but obviously not loudly enough. It was our danger signal but I was the only person to hear it. I told Henri, “We’re under attack.” He replied, “No, it’s Sunday, we can’t be attacked on a Sunday.” Father Valuche was celebrating mass nearby in the château. Monsieur Sabassier and the rest of us tried to see who was coming, but it was a long way; we couldn’t see very well. Then Henri had an idea: “We’ll fire into the air and we’ll know straightaway if they’re Germans or other Maquis members.” Sure enough, we found out immediately.

I threw on my clothes, picked up my bag and the cocoa tin where the money was kept. As I climbed down the ladder from the attic, German bullets were whizzing past my ears. At the bottom, I jumped on my bike and cycled to the château’s outhouses where the weapons we had just received were stocked. They hadn’t even been cleaned yet and were still covered in protective grease. I hastily loaded the guns anyway and put detonators in the hand grenades. Then one of the chaps rushed up to me and told me to leave as quickly as possible: the Germans were approaching...

Excerpt from "The Battle of Les Souches" from Code Name Pauline: Memoirs of a WWII Special Agent.

Excerpt from "Escape from Paris."
From Code Name Pauline: Memoirs of a WWII Special Agent.

I went to Commes, near Port-en-Bessin [on the Normandy coast] with my mother and sisters. The Germans arrived soon afterward. We were completely panicked. I had an argument with my mother, because I didn’t want to leave before my instructions arrived. But the Germans got there first. The ambassador had instructed all his staff to leave Paris. The ambassador and his attachés managed to sail from Saint-Jean-de-Luz. I was a local employee, so I had nowhere to go in England. We were blocked, there was no petrol, no trains running, and we had no money. That was such an intense period in our lives that I still have difficulty talking about it. Even after all these years, it gets stuck in my throat.

http://secretfire.wordpress.com/pearl-cornioley/
This blog post, the result of an interview that took place nine months before Pearl's death, is a very good one but its chief appeal in my opinion is the actual clip of Pearl's voice.

A Dangerous Encounter . . . with the Resistance

One day Maurice said to me, “Some parachutists have just arrived; they have money for the network, go and collect it. Go to La Châtre, there’s no password, we don’t know anybody there and nobody knows you. Just in case there’s a problem, you can say that Robert sent you. Sort it out.”

I arrived at the address he had given me in La Châtre, it was a grocer’s shop and bistro. There was a lady behind the counter. I said,

“Good morning, is Monsieur Langlois in?”

“No, my husband’s away today.”

“I really need to see him. Money has arrived, on behalf of Robert I’ve come to collect it for our network.”

“Well he’s not here. I don’t know anything about it.”

“Can I come back later?”

“You can come back tomorrow.”

“No, I can’t come back tomorrow because I have to come by train from Montluçon.”  There were only three trains a week, so I couldn’t return until the day after.

Two days later, I returned to La Châtre from Montluçon. When I entered the bistro, I saw Madame Langlois’s expression and thought, “Oh dear, I’m in for trouble.” I sensed it immediately.  A man whom I had never seen before entered through a side door.

“Good morning, Madame.”

“Good morning, Monsieur.”

“I’m Robert, I don’t know you.”

“Indeed, well I don’t know you either.”

“Follow me.”

He led me up a spiral staircase into a room where I noticed a door ajar. He asked me to sit down and started interrogating me. We didn’t work for the same network, so he didn’t know any of the people I knew and vice versa. After a number of other questions I could not answer, I started to panic . . .

Excerpt from the English translation of Pearl Witherington's memoir, Code Name Pauline: Memoirs of a World War II Special Agent. Pearl's wartime exploits -- including the incident described above -- are also included in the British section of Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance, and Rescue.

"Expecting a man, not a woman."

"There wasn’t much I could do during those three weeks while waiting for my luggage but during that time Maurice introduced me to the young courier for the Auvergne network. Something quite funny happened when we met. I’m sure Maurice did it on purpose. He must have told him, “Tomorrow morning we have a meeting with an agent who has just arrived.” We met in Clermont-Ferrand park. You should have seen his expression when he saw me! On the spur of the moment I didn’t understand why. Later, when I was wondering why he looked so surprised to see me there, the penny dropped -- he must have been expecting a man, not a woman!"

Excerpt from Code Name Pauline: The Memoirs of a WWII Special Agent. Pearl is also featured in the British section of Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance, and Rescue.

Proposed editor's preface for "Code Name Pauline"

The following is the proposed editor's preface for Code Name Pauline: Memoirs of a WWII Special Agent.

 

What you hold in your hand is not a history book. It is a piece of history. History books are often written by people who were not there. This is the testimony of someone who was not only there but who actively participated in what happened. It is what historians call "original source material."

 

Pearl Witherington was an agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a British wartime organization that secretly trained and sent agents into Nazi-occupied countries during WWII. Immediately following the war, the British public was shocked to learn that female agents had worked behind enemy lines for the SOE, risking their lives and in some instances, losing them, in the fight against the Nazis. Books were written and films produced about these women for a fascinated public who couldn’t seem to get enough. Pearl became very distrustful of such endeavors after a British TV program created a story that fictionalized her wartime work to make it seem more dramatic than it had been. When the stories of other agents were deliberately altered in a similar way in book and film, Pearl refused to give any interviews for many years.

Toward the end of her life, however, she began to feel that her story might be inspiring to others, especially young people in difficult circumstances, since her own childhood had been enormously challenging. A French journalist named Hervé Larroque approached her in 1994 with the idea of writing her memoir, and as their acquaintance progressed she felt she could trust him to handle her story properly. He conducted multiple interviews, some with Pearl alone and others including Pearl’s husband Henri, from December, 1994 through June of 1995. The transcript of those interviews was published in French in 1997 with the title Pauline, one of Pearl’s wartime code names.

Since Pauline was the only full-length Pearl Witherington biography available when I was writing Women Heroes of World War II and since I was determined to include her story in the book, my husband John, who is French-literate, obtained a copy of the memoir from M. Larroque, wrote a lengthy synopsis of it in English which I in turn used as source material for my chapter.

During John’s continued correspondence with M. Larroque, we learned that Pauline had already been translated into English but that it was waiting for a publisher. M. Larroque appreciated what I had done with Pearl’s story in Women Heroes and agreed to have me edit the English translation of Pauline – originally in a Q&A format -- into a straight narrative for publication by the Chicago Review Press.

Introductory material has been added for two reasons. One, Pearl had obviously told her story with a European audience in mind, an audience that would be somewhat familiar with the French Resistance and Britain’s Special Operations Executive, more so than American readers who might appreciate some background material with which to place Pearl’s narrative within its historical framework. Secondly, the Chicago Review Press felt strongly that this book, like Women Heroes should be geared towards a young adult audience who might be more interested in pursuing the study of an SOE agent if some background material was provided.

Because Pearl was adamant that her story not be altered, I have taken great care during the editing process to change as little as possible. In most instances, M. Larroque’s brief questions are simply incorporated into the text. What remains is Pearl’s story in her own choice of words and her style of speaking.

Because Pearl’s husband Henri was present during some of the interviews, there is specific material – enlightening comments by Henri, humorous interchanges between him and Pearl -- which would be lost if converted into a narrative. There are other sections where keeping the text in its original dialogue format provides more clarity. A selection of these can be found in the appendices section.

I am very honored to present Pearl Witherington’s memoir to the English-reading public at last. May the memory of her courage and determination in the face of great difficulty continue to inspire future generations.