Noor Inayat Khan
Madeleine
Jeanne-Marie Renier
Henri Garry
Cinema
Prosper
Francis Suttill
Prosper
François Alfred
Desprez
Andrée Borrel
Denise
Gilbert Norman
Archambaud
Gilbert Aubin
Jack Agazarian
Marcel
Lise de Baissac
Odile
Armel Guerne
Gaspard
Alfred Balachowsky
Serge
Pierre Culioli
Adolfe
Yvonne Rudellat
Jacqueline
Francine Agazarian
Marguerite
Jean Amps
Tomas
Bricklayer
France Antelme
Renaud
Antoine Ratier
Lise de Baissac
Odile
William Savy
Alcide
Farrier
Henri Déricourt
Gilbert
Rémy Clément
Marc
Julienne Aisner
Claire
Satirist
Octave Simon
Badois
Dutilleul
Champagne
Arthur de Montalambert
Bistouri
William Savy
Alcide
Chestnut
Charles Grover Williams
Sebastien
Robert Benoist
Lionel
J.P. Wimille
Robert Dowlen
Achille
Juggler
Jean Worms
Robin
Gaston Cohen
Justin
Jacques Weil
Jacques Atin
Butler
François Bouguennec
Max Garel
Marcel Rousset
Leopold
Marcel Fox
Ernest
Musician
Gustave Biéler
Guy
Yolande Beekman
Mariette
Yvonne de Chauvigny
Farmer
Staggs
Guy
Sylvestre
Archdeacon
John Macalister
Bertrand
Frank Pickersgill
Valentin
Scientist
Claude de Baissac
David
Lise de Baissac
Odile
Acrobat
Diana Rowden
Paulette
John Starr
Bob
Carte
Peter Churchill
Raoul
Henri Frager
Paul/Louba
Germaine Tambour
Annette
Madeleine Tambour
Frager
André Dubois
Hercule
Peter Churchill
Raoul
Donkeyman
Henri Frager
Paul/Louba
APPENDIX II
Agents and Resistance members who worked with Noor and the Prosper Circuit
Though the tangled web of the SOE circuits often overlapped, it is beyond the scope of this book to cover the stories of the other agents. However, here is a brief look at the fate of the agents and Resistance workers who were linked to Noor and the Prosper circuit and who we have described in the previous chapters. Most were killed in concentration camps. Only a few lucky survivors lived to tell their stories.
Francis Suttill – killed at Sachsenhausen
Gilbert Norman – executed in Mauthausen, 6 September 1944
Andrée Borrel – executed at Natzweiler
Jack Agazarian – killed by firing squad at Flossenburg
France Antelme – executed at Gross Rosen
Henri Garry – executed at Buchenwald, September 1944
Marguerite Garry – sent to Ravensbruck, returned 1945
Charles Vaudevire – executed at Buchenwald
Viennot – sent to Mauthausen, returned in 1945
Paul Arrighi – sent to Mauthausen, returned in 1945
Robert Gieules – deported to Germany, survived the war
Arthur de Montalambert – executed at Mauthausen
Octave Simon – executed at Gross Rosen
William Savy – reached England safely, survived the war
Germaine Aigrain – returned from prison, survived the war
Raymond Andres – died in Avenue Foch in a mine accident after the Gestapo had left in August 1944
Armel Guerne – escaped while being transported to Germany, survived the war
Alfred Balachowsky – deported to Buchenwald, returned in 1945
Eugène Vanderwynckt (Head of Grignon Agricultural College) – executed in Germany
Marius Maillard (gardener at Grignon) – killed at Dora
Robert Benoist – executed at Buchenwald
Charles Grover Williams – died at Sachsenhausen
John Macalister – executed at Buchenwald
Frank Pickersgill – executed at Buchenwald
Henri Frager – hung by a meat hook at Buchenwald
Madeleine Damerment – executed at Dachau
Yolande Beekman – executed at Dachau
Diana Rowden – executed at Natzweiler
Eliane Plewman – executed at Dachau
Sonia Olschanezky – executed at Natzweiler
Vera Leigh – executed at Natzweiler
Cecily Lefort – died at Ravensbruck
John Starr – escaped from Mauthausen
Leon Faye – executed at Sonnenburg
Brian Stonehouse – returned from Dachau
Gustave Biéler – executed at Flossenburg
Yvonne Rudellat – died in Belsen
Jean Worms – executed at Flossenburg
Julienne Aisner (Déricourt’s courier) – returned to London 5/6 April 1944
Henri Déricourt – returned to London 8/9 February 1944
APPENDIX III
Chronology
Date
Events in Noor’s life
Events in Europe
Events in India
1 January 1914
Birth of Noor
Unrest in Russia
May 1914
Inayat Khan leaves Moscow
Tension in Europe
28 July 1914
First World War begins
August 1914
Inayat Khan moves to London
January 1915
Europe at war
Gandhi returns to India from South Africa
13 April 1919
Jallianwala Bagh massacre
28 June 1919
Treaty of Versailles signed
Spring 1920
Inayat Khan moves back to France
Gandhi begins Satyagraha resistance campaign
5 February 1927
Inayat Khan dies
April 1930
Gandhi goes on Salt March
April 1931
Noor joins École Normale de Musique
Autumn 1931
Gandhi attends Second Round Table Conference in London
30 January 1933
Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany
11-12 March 1938
The Reich annexes Austria in the Anschluss
9/10 November 1938
Noor publishing stories in Le Figaro
Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass, when German Jews were attacked by the Nazis)
15 March 1939
Germany invades Czechoslovakia
Summer 1939
Noor’s Twenty Jataka Tales published
Germany and Italy announce formal alliance; Germany and USSR sign non-aggression pact
1 September 1939
G
ermany invades Poland
3 September 1939
Britain, New Zealand, Australia and France declare war on Germany
10 May 1940
Winston Churchill forms coalition government in Britain. Germany begins aggression against Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg
28 May 1940
Belgium surrenders to Germany
5 June 1940
Noor and family leave Paris
9 June 1940
Norway surrenders
17 June 1940
Pétain declares Armistice; De Gaulle leaves for Britain
18 June 1940
Noor wants to help
De Gaulle broadcasts war effort from London rallying Free French
28 June 1940
British government recognises De Gaulle as leader of Free French
10 July 1940
Battle of Britain begins
16 July 1940
SOE is born
19 November 1940
Noor enlists in WAAF
2 March 1941
Germany attacks Bulgaria
6 April 1941
Germany attacks Yugoslavia and Greece
5/6 May 1941
First SOE agent George Bégué drops into France
Summer 1941
Subhas Bose begins recruiting Indian prisoners of war in Germany to join his Indian National Army in the fight for independence from the British. Meets Ribbentrop
7 December 1941
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor
8 December 1941
USA, Britain declare war on Japan
14 June 1942
Noor’s ‘The Fairy and the Hare’ broadcast on BBC Children’s Hour
8 August 1942
Congress leaders launch Quit India movement
28 August 1942
Noor attends RAF interview for Commission
All top Indian leaders in jail
November 1942
Noor attends interview for SOE
Prosper circuit building up in Paris
February 1943
Noor signs Official Secrets Act
Bose’s movements watched closely by SIS and IPI (Indian Political Intelligence) at Bletchley. His submarine journey monitored by British intelligence
Gandhi begins three-week fast against British violence against demonstrators. On 8 February Bose sails in a submarine organised by the Germans to reach Japan
February 1943
Bengal famine caused bydiversion of food to feed troops leads to three millions dead over three years (1942-4)
16/17 June 1943
Noor flown in by Lysander
21 June 1943
Cullioli, Rudellat, Macalister and Pickersgill arrested
23 June 1943
Norman, Borrel arrested
24 June 1943
Suttill arrested
1 July 1943
Worms and Guerne arrested, Grignon staff arrested
2 July 1943
Prof. Balachowsky arrested
19 July 1943
Antelme leaves
22/23 July 1943
Bodington and Agazarian return to Paris
30 July 1943
Agazarian arrested
31 July 1943
Robert Dowlen arrested
2 August 1943
Maurice Benoist, Grover Williams arrested
16/17 August 1943
Bodington returns to London
19/20 August 1943
Robert Benoist returns to London
7 September 1943
Rousset arrested
29 September 1943
Gieules arrested
13 October 1943
Noor arrested
26 November 1943
Noor sent to Pforzheim
29 February 1944
Antelme, Madeleine Damerment and Lionel Lee arrested
6 June 1944
Normandy Invasions
6 July 1944
Diana Rowden, Sonia Olschanezky, Andrée Borrel, Vera Leigh executed at Natzweiler camp
17 August 1944
Gestapo move out of Avenue Foch. Last trainload of Jews leaves France for Auschwitz
26 August 1944
De Gaulle heads parade from Arc de Triomphe to Notre Dame
13 September 1944
Noor, Eliane Plewman, Madeleine Damerment, Yolande Beekman executed at Dachau
26 January 1945
Soviet troops enter Auschwitz
29 April 1945
Dachau liberated
8 May 1945
VE Day. Germans surrender
Subhas Bose’s Indian National Army surrenders in Rangoon
15 August 1945
VJ Day. Japan surrenders after bombs on Hiroshima (6 Aug) and Nagasaki (8 Aug)
18 August 1945
Subhas Bose dies in air crash
November 1945
Trial of INA officers begins in Delhi leading to an outcry
16 January 1946
Noor posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre
18 February 1946
Royal Navy Mutiny in India
April 1946
Stewart Menzies, head of SIS, and heads of Indian intelligence agree to continue cooperation
2 June 1946
Governor General Lord Wavell takes direct control over Indian intelligence - IB and IPI
15 July 1947
Britain in financial crisis. Hugh Dalton, former head of SOE, now Chancellor of the Exchequer, tries to control it
8-9 August 1947
Plans for partition of India revealed leading to riots
13 August 1947
Hugh Dalton retires ill to Wiltshire as currency crisis continues
15 August 1947
India wins independence
5 April 1949
Noor posthumously awarded the George Cross
APPENDIX IV
Indians awarded the Victoria Cross and the George Cross 1939–1945
Two and a half million Indian soldiers volunteered for the Second World War. It was the largest volunteer army in recorded history and suffered the greatest casualties. They served in fields far away from the sub-continent in Italy, Africa and the Far East and 28 VCs were awarded to members of the Indian army during the course of the war. There follows a list, plus a brief outline of the reason for the award.