In the immediate aftermath of WWII Maurice Buckmaster wrote a series of articles for the now defunct Chamber's Magazine I have transcribed the articles and will soon be posting a PDF version with added pictures and a few footnotes and a short bibliography
Attached is the PDF of the Maurice Buckmaster articles that appeared in Chamber's Magazine in 1946-1947 - there are many factual errors in his recollections and I would advice cross checking with MRD Foot's SOE in France or with the operational files. Steven
Thanks for the input Steven I have had a brief look at the subjects.One struck my mind and that was George Starr (Hilaire) who operated in the South West as Wheelwright's organiser.It brought back memories of being in the Gers.I visited his cover location of Castelnau sur l'Auvignon where Starr was the mayor.Castelnau is not even a village but a hamlet, just outside and north east of Condom.It was visited by the Germans on one of their typical rassages and the hamlet was almost raised to the ground but they did not find Starr.There is a memorial plaque to this happening on the medieval stone archway in the village. Incidentally there are a number of locations by the name of Castelnau in the south west which must have been confusing for the Germans E.H Cookridge in his publication records that there was an engagement here where the Germans lost 248 dead and had 350 wounded against 40 Maquis casualties.I am not aware of a commemoration to this engagement but there may be one. Just surprised that Buckmaster did not include an account of the activities of George's brother John which would have been interesting.Thinking about it and the era when the notes were penned,it may be that it would have been difficult to record much that might have had some influence on John Starr's post war assessment by SOE's successors, from the background of John Starr being a prisoner of the Germans in Paris.
In 1945-6 both Starr brothers were very much under a cloud - George despite his succcess in the field was investigated as a war criminal his courier having amde complaints and George Starr described torturing German prisoners in such a way as to cause some very senior SOE officers to state they'd rather lose the war than resort to such measures - a court of inquiry was convened - (only part of which is in the public domain) - the advice being that if a prosecution was brought it would cause great difficulties for the Allies - similarly his brother John who 'co-operated' with his German captors was lucky to escape prosecution.
