A pigeon from Cambridge fell in Huines near the Channel coast on 14 June 1941 and was liberated from Pontorson on the 17th. It had an unusual journey back. It was found in Penzance on 20 June. A military officer opened the message and ‘with great zeal’ translated it himself. It took a further three days for it to be transmitted by a wireless officer to the War Office, leading to an angry letter explaining that in future any pigeon container found with a coloured disc was to be sent immediately by dispatch rider.
The annoyance arose because that message from Pontorson – Columba message 19 – was one of the first to show what the operation might be capable of achieving, especially when it came to the challenge of warning of possible invasion. It contained rich detail of troop movements out of Brittany and the use of nine motor barges near Mont St Michel for embarkation practice. It pointed to an airfield at Caen where the planes were housed in specially camouflaged hangars. Details of anti-aircraft positions were given, and the writer offered specific suggestions of where to bomb. They also warned of fifth columns in England, having heard a drunken officer say that they were dropping parachutists in English uniform who spoke the language. There was even a special instruction centre in Brest to train them. He also wrote that a letter the previous day from a German officer to a female collaborator had indicated that an invasion was to come about next week. This was precisely the kind of information Sanderson was looking for.
The author was highly motivated. ‘The population here is 95% with you and hopes for deliverance. They vomit Darlan [the French admiral who collaborated in the Vichy regime] and his clique of traitors; we are ashamed to be represented in the eyes of the world by such a band of bastards. There are some “swine” here too, as everywhere but I’ve got them listed.’ The author went on to name the specific hotel keepers at Mont St Michel who ‘fight each other as to who shall make the most fuss of the Boches’. This scandal should be broadcast, he suggested, on the BBC, which he said he could hear very well. On Sunday, 15 June, he reported, there had been violent riots in Rennes when the people tried to commemorate those who died in the fall of France. The Germans and the police drove back the crowd to the Place du Palais where the Marseillaise was sung ‘with great fervour’ and accompanied by cries of ‘death to Ripert’ – the prefect nominated by the Vichy government to the area. Reprisals had come thick and fast afterwards, but the plan was to repeat the demonstrations on the night of the 17th – the very night the individual was writing the message. He ended with ‘Vive La France, Vive L’Angleterre and Vive de Gaulle’. The writer, who signed himself Arvor 114, asked for more pigeons and gave a specific location in a marsh near a railway line.
The Columba team analysed the message carefully. It was unusually detailed. How, when travel restrictions were in place, could someone living in Pontorson be in a position to report on events as distant as Caen in one direction and Beaumont-Hague in the other? Could it be a plant? They went through the details paragraph by paragraph. The troop movements, they judged, matched those of message number 18 and the train movements also seemed about right. The claim of poor morale in the area was supported by an MI6 source. Other information was considered fairly likely to be true or ‘sensible’. They carefully examined the request to name certain collaborators on air. Could this be an attempt to implicate genuine members of the resistance? ‘On the whole, we think not,’ was the verdict.
One or two points were considered unlikely to be true, but the writer’s wide-ranging knowledge could be explained by travel entailed in his job or by information being passed on from others. That would be similar to the way MI6 sources often reported, and ‘the information he has supplied us is certainly well up to their standard,’ the Columba team noted. The decision was made to consider the message valid and drop more pigeons in the marsh where they had been requested.
On 2 July 1941, the results from Columba’s initial foray were written up. Over three months, 221 birds had been released over Flanders, Normandy and Brittany. Forty-six returned, 19 with messages, 17 of which contained information. And this information had already shown its value. The six messages from Normandy and Brittany helped identify two German infantry regiments and also the movement of troops away from Cherbourg and Brittany. This was especially interesting since there had been few such indications from MI6 sources. What was particularly special about Columba was that intelligence would be in the hands of those hungry for information within hours of a message being written. This was unique among sources of intelligence, and the freshness of the information was something London would frequently marvel at. ‘I think this form of intelligence is most valuable and has great possibility and should be encouraged,’ the Deputy Director of Military Intelligence wrote. It was noted that it was an economical operation. The RAF planes were going across the Channel anyway and the main contribution was that of the pigeon owners themselves, who gave of their time and their birds freely. Columba was up and running. And within days of that first summary of its efforts, its most important message would arrive.
CHAPTER THREE
The Debaillie family gathered in the large building in Lichtervelde that doubled up as a grocery store and a family house. A local farmer had found the pigeon in the field that July morning in 1941 and his wife had brought it to them hidden in a sack of potatoes. It was just over a year since the Nazi war machine had swept through Belgium and the farmer had taken it to the Debaillies because he knew they were patriots. But now the family had to decide what being a patriot really meant.
Their task was initially to decide the pigeon’s fate – and perhaps with it, their own. The decision was far from easy. The three brothers, Gabriel, Arseen and Michel, and two sisters, Marie and Margaret, deliberated over what to do with the bird. Two of the brothers differed. Gabriel thought it best not to get involved. It was true the family were ‘patriots’ who hated the Germans, rather than ‘blacks’, but they had never engaged in any overt act of resistance. The risk was too great. They had too much to lose. But Arseen felt the need to act. He was the most ambitious of the brothers and the keenest to take risks. The pigeon had come to them with a call for help and they should not turn it away – it was their duty. Even though he was the youngest brother, he got his way. Margaret, the younger of the sisters, backed him, whilst her elder sister Marie was more cautious.
Once the decision had been made, there was no reluctance or dissent on the part of the other members of the family. They were and remained united. Their father, the founder of the business, had died a few years earlier and the siblings were a close-knit family who ran the concern together and knew they could trust each other. Spying would be a family affair. But what were they actually going to do? They knew that to make the most of the opportunity that the pigeon had brought their way, they needed help. And so they turned to two friends. One was Hector Joye from Bruges, who spoke English and loved military maps. The other was a Catholic priest, Father Joseph Raskin. The Debaillies knew Raskin through another brother of theirs who was a missionary in China. He had been taught by Raskin and had invited the older priest to stay with the family before the war. The priest had become a frequent overnight house-guest, with his own regular room. The two sisters, Marie, aged 48, and Margaret, nearly 40, were particularly devoted to Raskin. In turn, Raskin was a friend of Hector Joye, having presided over his wedding. So the circle of trust between the friends was complete. This was the way many early resistance groups were born – not as soldiers or spies but as groups of friends who felt such deep anger at the occupation of their homeland that they were willing to accept the risk of trying to do something about it. The bonds of friendship offered trust and some degree of protection but this often had to compensate for a lack of experience in the world of espionage against a formidable enemy.
Within a day of the pigeon’s arrival, the budding spy ring had gathered in Lichtervelde. Joseph Raskin would be the central figure. For all his outward trappings of a priest, it was as if everything in his life up to this point had prepared him for his career as a spy.
Raskin