The Secret Ministry of Ag. & Fish by Noreen Riols Read Free Book Online

da-da-di-da, and Beethoven’s Fifth, di-di-di-da. We even dreamt in Morse, and when we woke in the
morning the birds outside the bedroom window were singing in Morse. It was in our interest to listen intently and cram as much knowledge into our heads as possible, considering the huge losses
amongst radio operators.’
    The pianists weren’t always denounced by their so-called hosts. Sometimes, they were betrayed unwittingly. Young boys were occasionally used as intermediaries between the courier and the
radio operator, because a youth rarely attracted suspicion. But it was through a boy of fifteen that Yvonne Baseden, code-named ‘Odette’, was betrayed.
    She had been parachuted into France with ‘Etienne’(Gonzague de Saint-Geniès), organizer of the Scholar
réseau
near Lyons, in March 1944, to act as his pianist.
Three months later, on 25 June, two days after receiving the first massive daylight parachutage (codenamed ‘Cadillac’) from a fleet of US Flying Fortress aircraft, Yvonne and
Saint-Geniès went to a safe house they used, La Maison des Orphelins, a cheese factory outside Dole, to celebrate with a slap-up meal the safe receipt and storage of thirty-six consignments
of arms. Yvonne had a locally recruited courier, Denise, but for some reason that day a sub-agent, a teenage boy, was entrusted with Yvonne’s radio set. He was carrying it to the Maison des
Orphelins and had almost arrived at the factory when he was stopped by the local police, questioned and searched. When the gendarmes found the set, he was arrested and taken into custody. He was
then interrogated, under torture, by the Gestapo. Terrified for his life, he told them where he was taking it.
    Yvonne and Saint-Geniès were in the middle of dinner when a lookout announced that a number of German soldiers were approaching the house. The group of résistants at the table
scattered, most of them to the attics, and when the intruders arrived they found only the caretaker. They were about to leave when one of the soldiers noticed the table, set for eight, with the
remains of a half-finished meal. An NCO, impressing on the terrified caretaker that he meant business, fired a shot in the air, unfortunately hitting both Saint-Geniès and a member of his
réseau,
who were hiding in a false ceiling, which had been specially constructed for use in an emergency.
    The Germans made a cursory search but, discovering no one, were on the point of leaving when one of them noticed blood from Saint Geniès’s wound dripping through the ceiling’s
thin partition. He alerted the others, who then made a thorough search and found the rest of the group hiding in the attics between the large wooden blocks used to separate the cheeses which were
stored there. In order not to be taken alive and risk giving information under torture, Saint-Geniès, who had experienced the German treatment of prisoners before he had escaped from a
Stalag and arrived in England for training, swallowed his L (suicide) pill and died immediately. The other members of his
réseau
were arrested and taken to the prison in Dole.
    Yvonne was later transferred to Dijon, where she was tortured, but did not give away any information, and then to Fresnes, near Paris. Luckily, the Gestapo thought she was just a young French
girl romantically attached to the Resistance; they did not connect her with the radio set, and none of the fellow résistants arrested with her gave away her true identity. From Fresnes she
was transferred to prison in Saarbrücken. Eventually, though, the Gestapo discovered their mistake. Realizing that Yvonne was not the starry-eyed girl they had believed her to be, but an SOE
agent and the radio operator they had been searching for, she was transferred to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she remained from September 1944 until the liberation of the camp in
April 1945. In spite of her toes having been broken during torture, she was put to hard labour, probably