CHURCHILL’S FAVORITE SPY

Christine Granville, ripped from her country by the Nazis, an avenging angel–weighed down by medals and honors after WWII, but unable to adapt to a postwar world. 3 videos:https://vimeo.com/78836231 and a summary of her career below–

The most incredible spy of the war was a woman called Krystyna Skarbek. She was the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s female spy, Vesper Lynd. However, Skarbek’s exploits were even more incredible than any Bond story.

An aristocratic Pole with a Jewish mother, she later took on the name Christine Granville. As well as being a beauty queen, Skarbek was a champion skier. She used her prowess in skiing to cross the snow covered Tatra mountains with information for the Allies from the Polish underground about the Nazis. She was credited with passing on the first piece of intelligence about the impending German invasion of the Soviet Union.

Skarbek was cool and calm under pressure. On one occasion when her false papers were discovered by the Germans at a checkpoint, she broke the thread connecting her glass necklace together. As the glass pieces fell to the floor, she cried out ‘my diamonds, my diamonds!’ While the guards dived for the fake jewellery she and her partner quickly ran for the trees and escaped.

On another occasion she was arrested and imprisoned by the Germans. She bit her tongue so hard that it bled and then started to cough up the blood. The guards, terrified of catching TB, transferred her to the infirmary where again she escaped. She eventually made her way to Britain via the Middle East. As a fluent French speaker she was quickly recruited by Special operations Executive (SOE), the secret organisation tasked by Churchill with ‘setting occupied Europe ablaze’ .

She became the first woman to win her parachute wings and was dropped into France to join the Jockey network to work with another British SOE agent, Francis Cammaerts.

I met Francis Cammaerts. He was the Principal of the College I attended and was a brilliant man. He began the war as a pacifist but had a change of heart when his RAF pilot brother was shot down and killed. While in France, Cammaerts and Skarbek became lovers. They both took part in the ill-fated attempt by the Maquis, a French resistance group, to liberate the whole of the Vercor Plateau. The uprising was crushed when German paratroopers landed on the Massif and the Maquis were decimated. Fortunately both Skarbek and Cammaerts managed to break out of the encirclement and got away.

However by August 1944 Cammaerts’ luck ran out. He was arrested by the Gestapo at a checkpoint when they discovered the money he was carrying all had consecutive serial numbers.

Skarbek was distraught. She first tried to persuade the British to launch an air attack on Gestapo headquarters. She then tried to talk the French Maquis into launching a ground assault on the building. Neither would come to her aid. However Skarbek was a force to be reckoned with. Taking matters into her own hands she just walked into Gestapo headquarters armed only with a suitcase stuffed full of cash and claimed to be General Montgomery’s niece. Using her infinite charm she offered even more money and the written guarantee of a pardon for any war crimes committed if Cammaerts was freed.

Amazingly her bravado and nerve paid off and Cammaerts was released.

There is much more to this story, so I won’t spoil it all by telling you how it ends. Much of what I have written here comes from Clare Mulley’s brilliant biography of Skarbek called “The Spy who Loved”. The story of the Gestapo headquarters I heard directly from Francis Cammaerts.