Help identifying to identify the name of an SOE agent nicknamed La Souris, the Mouse.

Discussion in 'The Women of WW2' started by Oldleg, Jan 18, 2016.

  1. Oldleg

    Oldleg Well-Known Member

    Wondering if anyone can help. I read a while back the book 'Burn After Reading' by Ladisla Farago. In it he talks about a woman she was living around the village of Lyons La Forêt, Normandy who went to the UK to join the SOE, she was eventually caught by the Gestapo and I believe died whilst in captivity. As I live in the area I have been asking around if anyone knows the real name of this woman but no one seems to know. Can anyone help me find the name of this person and any other information on her? The only other thing I know is that she lived on a farm. She used the alias 'La Souris' (The mouse) but also called Marie by the resistance. She apparantly gathered information concernign the V1s. IIf anyone can find info on her please let me know. No one in the village knows who this lady was. Any help would be much appreciated.
     
  2. Fred Wilson

    Fred Wilson Member

    They called Nancy Wake "la Souris Blanche" (the White Mouse.) Is this the one? (She is famous and is a highly decorated heroine.)
    You can find many results about her if you Google search for WW2 SOE Nancy Wake
     
  3. Jedburgh22

    Jedburgh22 Very Senior Member

    Not Nancy Wake she operated in another area, I will look into the Northern France Circuits that were involved in the CROSSBOW - Anti V Weapon Ops
     
  4. TriciaF

    TriciaF Junior Member

    No, definitely not Nancy Wake, because she survived the war and lived to a good old age.
    Can't remember when she died , but not that long ago - I had the book about her but have given it away.
    ps she died in London in 2011 aged 99!
     
  5. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    Perhaps La Souris was recruited into the SOE RF (Republic Francaise) section while in England,the clandestine section reporting to CDG's Free French.
     
  6. Oldleg

    Oldleg Well-Known Member

    Here is some text from an online copy of the book. There is the name of Diana Hope Rowden which is menttioned shortly afterwards but from the way the book is writen in that section I do not think this is the same woman. I have looked her up and yes she was an SOE agent but lived in the South of France. The book does not really mention what happened to 'La Souris' after being caught.





    "Among the shadowy figures of S.O.E. was a little, raven-
    haired French woman remembered only by her wartime nick-
    name, La SouriSj The Mouse. There was nothing really mousy
    about her except the recognition signal she used on her missions.
    It was a delicate scratching on a window pane, like the sound
    of a mouse. She furnished Britain with the first information
    about the absolute weapon with which the Germans hoped to
    win the war, the famous guided missile called V-1.

    In order to describe the manner in which these agents
    worked, I will tell a composite story woven around La Souris.

    The Mouse was a school teacher in Paris and a native of
    Normandy. When the Germans reached the capital in June,
    1940, she returned to her relatives in Lyons-la-Foret, to sit out
    the occupation. She could not endure the idleness, however, and
    she inquired for someone who would take her to England. One
    night a delivery truck drove up to the farmhouse where she was
    staying and a man came in, asking for her. She asked no ques-
    tions, but took her old-fashioned, school-marmish hat and her
    coat, and followed the man to the truck. He instructed her to
    climb in and lie down behind some sacks of potatoes. He drove
    her to a hut near an open field where three men squatted, talking
    in low tones. She sat down and kept quiet.

    Half an hour later she heard a buzzing sound in the air.
    The three men ran out to the field, lighted torches and attached
    them to sticks which formed the shape of an L. A small aircraft
    landed and taxied to the shorter branch of the L. It was a
    black-painted plane without any insignia on it, one of the little
    Lysanders of the S.O.E.'s air ferry service.

    She climbed in. One of the men followed her into the
    plane. It taxied and took off, circled the field once, and, when
    she looked down, she saw only darkness beneath. The torches
    were gone.

    Next morning she was in London, sitting before the desk of
    Colonel Kenwick who headed the Western Europe Directorate
    of the S.O.E. in Norgeby House on Baker Street. The colonel
    had her file; she had been screened while she was still in France.



    THE MISERY AND GRANDEUR OF THE SECRET WAR 233



    A short while later, she was interviewed further by a captain
    named Piquet- Wicks and then driven to 10 Duke Street to meet
    Colonel Passy, the head of General de Gaulle's secret service.

    After her training, she returned to Duke Street and was told
    what she was supposed to do, and she was asked to memorize
    the symbols by which members of her small team were known.
    Then she was given her papers; a carte d^id entity, a per mis de
    conduire and current ration cards, all forged by the S.O.E. That
    same evening she was taken to a camouflaged airfield somewhere
    in the Midlands, and given a cup of hot tea, a little box of
    benzedrine to keep her awake if necessary and a cyanide tablet
    to put her to sleep quickly and lethally should the necessity
    arise. There was a special garment waiting for her, a suit, rubber
    helmet and spine pad, all somewhat oversized, but useful in
    cushioning her landing by parachute. She was given a revolver,
    a knife and a compass, and then escorted to the field and put
    aboard a Lancaster bomber.

    At 3 a.m., she dropped into France. When she hit the
    ground, a man came over to help her up. "Is that you, Marie?"
    he asked. She said, "Yes," although nobody had bothered to tell
    her that she would be called Marie. The man drove her to
    Lyons-la-Foret and next morning she took the morning train
    to Paris and went to an address where others were waiting for
    her. The Mouse had arrived.

    The man she had come to see was an engineer who worked
    in an aircraft factory in Paris, but who lived in a suburb called
    Vaucresson. He had just returned from Germany, where he
    worked in a place called Peenemuende and where he had seen
    some strange experiments with flying bombs that were guided to
    their targets from the ground. He needed someone to whom he
    could relay the information. The Mouse went to Vaucresson that
    same night, found the man's apartment and stepped up to a
    window on the ground floor behind which a light was burning.
    She scratched out her signal on the pane and then walked into
    a dark kitchen through the unlocked back door. She groped her
    way to a table and picked up an envelope. A man's voice whis-



    234



    V

    BURN AFTER READING



    pered an invitation to come into another room. She followed the
    sound of the voice into the dark room and heard the man say,
    "I'm not ready for you yet. That is only part of your information.
    We will have to meet again next Wednesday."
    "Where?'' the Mouse asked.

    "In a bistro called the Floridore. It's on Quai Voltaire.
    At six o'clock?'*

    "The plans," the man continued, talking about the con-
    tents of the envelope she held in her hand, "they are dangerous.
    If they catch you with them, we will all be in trouble."

    "They won't," she said, but she wasn't certain. "Are they
    making spot checks on the train to Paris?"

    "Not as a rule," the man said, "but you can never tell. The
    Boche is inscrutable."

    Adieu, then," she said. "Till next Wednesday."

    "The Mouse, are you the Mouse?" the man asked, but she
    left through the dark kitchen without answering the question.
    She heard steps on the cobblestoned street and waited until two
    soldiers strolled by, a CJerman patrol. They passed and she
    walked out, turned a comer, walked down the hill to the rail-
    road station and caught the last train back to Paris.

    The Mouse was worried. Her assignment was to pick up
    the papers, return them to Lyons-la-Foret, and take them back
    to England on a Lysander. Now she would have to stay on for
    five more perilous days, with some of the plans in her hands.
    What to do with the plans in the meantime? Where to go? She
    was supposed to spend but a single day at the first address.

    She decided to return to Lyons-la-Foret. She went to Pont
    de I'Arche, then on to Fleury-sur-Andelle and asked a courier
    of the underground to take her home. That night a Lysander
    came and she gave her envelope to the pilot.

    Next morning she went back to Paris. She had a second
    address and even the key to a flat, but when she called at the
    house, the concierge rudely refused to let her enter. Later she
    learned that the concierge^s rudeness was calculated to warn her
    that the flat was "hot," and was under Gestapo surveillance.



    THE MISERY AND GRANDEUR OF THE SECRET WAR 235



    She had to make one of her emergency contacts, a woman
    named Maud, who had a glove shop on rue de la Boetie, She
    walked into the shop and asked for a pair of green suede gloves,
    size 6]145 and was conducted to the back of the shop, to a desk
    behind which sat a plump woman of about sixty. "The lady is
    looking for green suede gloves, size 6J4/^ the salesgirl said, and
    the plump woman stretched out her hand: "I'm glad to see
    you," she said.

    The Mouse stayed in her flat until Wednesday afternoon,
    then walked to the Floridore on Quai Voltaire and entered the
    bistro at six o'clock sharp. She was looking for a man who would
    be reading a copy of the Journal Officiel, but the bistro was
    empty.

    Her instructions were never to wait for an appointment, so
    she left at once, but returned fifteen minutes later, sat down on
    the terrace and ordered a St. Raphael with soda water. When
    the waiter put the siphon on her table, she absent-mindedly
    scratched the bottle and the waiter gave her an evening paper
    in a thin bamboo holder. On the third page, where the last-
    minute news was printed, the word Tronchet was underscored
    in an ad. Also underlined were the numbers 8 and 5, and in
    another column 2 and 7. She paid and took a cab to rue
    Tronchet, got out at the corner and walked to No. eighty-five.
    She went to the second floor and rang the bell of Apartment
    seven. A man opened the door and the Mouse stood there
    absent-mindedly scratching the glass pane of the tall door. The
    man opened the door wide and allowed her to enter.

    "The engineer had to go back to Germany," he said. "We
    will put you up until he returns." That same evening he drove
    the Mouse to a house in Neuilly where she was given the job
    of tutoring a litde girl of nine. "We don't know how long it
    might take the man to return from Germany," he explained.
    "You will be safer here."

    She waited two months, then a man came to drive her to
    Vaucresson. He deposited her in front of the post office, then
    drove away, and she walked to the engineer's house on the hill.



    236



    BURN AFTER READING



    She scratched the lighted window, walked to the back door, went
    into the kitchen and picked up an envelope. At that moment a
    car drove up in front of the house. A man stepped out of it,
    while another stayed at the wheel. The man walked up to the
    main entrance and rang the bell. The Mouse made her way
    quietly to the end of the garden in the back of the house, scaled
    the low fence into another garden, then into a third, then a
    fourth. She walked out into the street and saw the car driving
    away from the engineer's house. She never found out what its
    mission was. She never saw the engineer again.

    The Mouse was ready to return to England. From Vau-
    cresson she took a train south and then came north again to
    Fleury-sur-Andelle. Two nights later she was in the famihar field
    near Lyons-la-Foret, waiting for the Lysander to pick her up.
    There was the buzzing sound in the air and two men came to
    light the torches. An hour later the Mouse was in Tangmere
    and the British had the blueprints of the V-1.

    On her next mission she scratched the window pane of a
    window in a house in Chartres. It was a Gestapo man who
    opened the door. Her contact had been picked up an hour before
    and he talked when they were drowning him in his own bathtub
    filled with ice cold water. That was the last time the Mouse
    could scratch her signal on any pane anywhere."
     
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  7. Jedburgh22

    Jedburgh22 Very Senior Member

    The Duke Street reference indicates she was a member of the RF Section
     
  8. Oldleg

    Oldleg Well-Known Member

    I thought so. Wasn't Yeo Thomas part of that?
     
  9. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    Col Passy alais (Col Andre Dewavrin. Head of the BCRA ) and Duke Street was the clue to the clandestine organisation that "La Souris" served in.Dewavrin later after the invasion of Europe became General Koenig's Chief of Staff.

    Looking at air operations.It looks as if there may have been activity at Lyons La Foret,Perriers sur Andelle ( a short distance west of Lyons) and Fleury sur Andelle (a short distance west of Lyons)Initially I cannot see a reference to the activies of the SD squadrons here but it is included in the map indicating the sphere of activity.Someone having local knowlege of the area might remember if fields were used for clandestine aircraft.

    If I remember correctly,in Lyons La Foret there is a large wall with numerous memorial plaques on it.I wonder if there is any information on a plaque which is relevant to this query
     
  10. Peter Clare

    Peter Clare Very Senior Member

    Harry, I have a copy of the book 'We Landed by Moonlight' by Hugh Verity - re Lyons La Foret the index gives see Morgny which in turn gives airfield code 'Pamplemousse' location east of Rouen 2km North West of Morgny. As can be seen from the map, not very far apart.

    Regards
    Peter.
     

    Attached Files:

  11. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    Peter,

    Yes, it looks as if Morgny could be a place that was used..... very close the Lyons La Foret about 10 kms ESE.

    What air operations are shown from Pamplemousse and personalities handled?....that might reveal a name or two.

    On some of these clandestine airfields,I have found memorials to the events that have taken place during the war.
     
  12. Tricky Dicky

    Tricky Dicky Don'tre member

    From : Tentative of History of In/Exfiltrations into/from France during WWII from 1940 to 1945 (Parachutes, Plane & Sea Landings)

    28 November 1942
    2 km NW Morgny, 8 km E Lyons-la-Foret, LZ
    Pamplemousse, 49° 24’ 00’’ N – 01° 35’ 00’’ E,
    Eure, Fr
    AIR 40/2659 -App A1
    Rapport Max Petit
    H Verity - Ed 2000 - App B
    RAF 161 Sqn log
    Perry
    SIS n°20
    RAF 161 Sqn 2 Lysanders planned only one arrived
    (F/L James McCairns) – Max Petit’s family with 2
    children embarked.
    Jacques Henri Simon aka Sermoy & luggages did
    not embark


    15 April 1943
    2 km NW Morgny, 8 km E Lyons-la-Foret, LZ
    Pamplemousse, 49° 24’ 00’’ N – 01° 35’ 00’’ E,
    Eure, Fr
    HS7/248 SOE RF - App 1-6 & Index
    HS7/251 - SOE RF – App7-14 & Index
    CL Bibliography
    SHD Dictionnaire Historique
    C Faure du BCRA à DGSE
    http://www.pierrebrossolette.com/biographie-2/pierre-brossoletteen-
    quelques-dates/
    H Verity - Ed 2000 - App B
    RAF 161 Sqn log
    SOE RF/BCRA Jean Cavailles (CL) aka Hervé aka Marty (RK1), X
    aka Bernard & Robert Tainturier aka Gulliver aka Parsifal
    (Marathon)
    Liberty / Juliette
    SIS n°31
    RAF 161 Sqn - 2 Lysanders (P/O Mc Cairns & F/L
    Vaughan-Fowler). SOE F (FFE.Yeo-Thomas aka
    Shelley), BCRA (A.Dewavrin, Louis Jourdren aka
    Jacques Jordan aka Jargon & Pierre Brossolette aka
    Pedro) & USAAF (Cpt Ryan) back to GB
    Robert Tainturier aka Parsifal arrested 05/10/1943 &
    died in Dora 19/03/1944

    There seems to be only those 2 in the document I have. It should also be noted that there was another DZ called Pamplemousse which was situated in the Ariege, but was so called later in the war.

    TD
     
  13. Oldleg

    Oldleg Well-Known Member

     
  14. Oldleg

    Oldleg Well-Known Member

    Sorry, I forgot to mention that there are no resistants names or allied names on this wall.
     
  15. Oldleg

    Oldleg Well-Known Member

    Hrry, I have been asking people around here and the problem is is that most of those who were around are dropping fast due to old age or they were too young to know anything about what was going on.
     

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