Time now right to salute Ireland's uncelebrated Resistance heroes 1 2 Dublin-born Patricia O'Sullivan who worked for the British government's Special Operations Executive (SOE) with the Resistance in occupied France Notification from the Vichy government to the Irish Legation, informing Irish officials that Robert Armstrong, from Edgeworthstown, had been sentenced to death for helping a downed American airman. DAVID MURPHY Today is Remembrance, or Armistice Day, when the sacrifice of the men and women who fought in two world wars, and other conflicts, is recalled. Among them is a small and little-known group – Irish men and women who joined the French Resistance in the second World War MAY 1944. It is a few short weeks to D-Day. A young woman is stopped by German soldiers at a checkpoint near Limoges in France. In the heart-stopping minutes that follow she contrives to chat to each soldier alone as they check her papers. She flirts outrageously and, as she cycles away, both Germans believe that they have secured a date for that evening. According to her papers, this woman is a French citizen. In reality, the suitcase on her bicycle holds a wireless set. She is Patricia O’Sullivan, born in Dublin and, in 1944, working for the British government’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) with the Resistance in occupied France. This week across Ireland, there will be events commemorating Irish men and women who served in the world wars. In modern Ireland, commemorating these people has proved to be a contentious issue, often due to the fact that they served in the British forces. We are now more comfortable with these aspects of our nation’s history, but there are those who remain uncommemorated. They include the Irish men and women who were in occupied France in 1940 and, although they could have claimed neutral status, made a conscious and individual decision to serve in the Resistance during the second World War. In his historic first radio message from exile in London in 1940, Gen Charles de Gaulle stated that “whatever happens, the flame of French Resistance must not and will not be extinguished”. It was a message heard not only by French citizens but also by Irish men and women who remained in France during the years of Nazi occupation. In 1941, Éamon de Valera sent a memorandum to the Department of Foreign Affairs requesting an estimate of the number of Irish people who still remained in occupied France. The eventual report stated that between 700 and 800 Irish men and women were still in France. Many of these had been living and working there before the war while others were people who had been travelling when the Nazi Blitzkrieg overran the country. The wartime activities of these people remain largely unknown. Some did answer de Gaulle’s call for resistance. My research in archives in Paris and London has so far positively identified 30 Irish men and women who served in the Resistance, Free French Forces or the French sections of the SOE, the unit whose mission was to encourage and facilitate espionage and sabotage behind enemy lines during the war. Perhaps the best known of these was Samuel Beckett, who was living in Paris when the city fell to the Germans. He was later persuaded by friends to join a group known as Gloria SMH. Beckett joined this group in September 1941 and remained active for about a year. Gloria SMH specialised in naval intelligence and processed reports from coastal agents before sending them back to London. Beckett undertook the dangerous task of translating reports before transporting them for photographing and transmission to London. At any time, he had evidence which could have proved fatal to him on his person or in his apartment in the Rue des Favorites. When a traitor compromised this group in 1942, he was lucky to escape the Gestapo and lived a clandestine life in the Vichy zone of France until the Liberation in 1944. Irish women figure prominently, making up over 50 per cent of the Irish Resistance contingent. Many Resistance groups dedicated themselves to helping Allied servicemen evade capture. The first evasion networks sprang up in 1940 and by 1944 a series of elaborate networks had been established across France. One of the largest evasion groups was known as Musée de l’Homme. One of the group’s earliest members was Katherine Anne McCarthy, an Irish nursing sister from Cork. She had served previously as a nurse during the first World War and in 1940 she was serving as a nurse in the civilian hospital in Bethune. During the fighting that raged across France in the summer of 1940, she found herself with several wounded British and French soldiers in her care. As these men recovered, she smuggled them out of the hospital and some of her earliest evaders made it through the lines to the beachhead at Dunkirk. She later passed recovered patients on to one of the fledgling local Resistance groups and it was through this activity that she became involved with the wider work of the Musée de l’Homme movement. She was arrested at the Bethune hospital in June 1941. At her trial she was condemned to death on the testimony of an informer. This sentence was commuted to deportation. During the next four years she was sent to various camps before being sent to the women’s concentration camp at Ravensbrück in December 1944. Miraculously she survived and was evacuated by the Red Cross in April 1944. In the 1960s, she was living in retirement in Co Cork. There were also Irish resistors who became involved in more active military activity. They included William O’Connor who was active in the movement known as La Voix du Nord. O’Connor was based in Douai where he worked as a gardener in the local British military cemetery. Like Katherine Anne McCarthy, he had also served during the first World War before marrying a French woman and settling in France. He was active in the Resistance from July 1940 and carried out intelligence-gathering but also acted as a courier and occasionally ferried weapons that were then cached for later use. In September 1943, he was arrested and was imprisoned in a number of camps including Aachen and Rheinbach. O’Connor’s last place of imprisonment was the hard labour camp at Siegburg, which was run by the Todt organisation. He was released in April 1945; he later noted in a report that during interrogation he had been tortured and, alongside other brutalities, his fingers and teeth had been broken with a hammer. Another Irishman who became involved was William Cunningham from Dublin. A prewar journalist based in Paris, he had also served in the Foreign Legion and was evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940, when he was aged 29. He was later parachuted back into France where he served with the Resistance. His nom de guerre was Paul De Bono. He was working for a Parisian paper until 1933 when he joined the Foreign Legion. In 1943, he was dropped by SOE into the Lot area of southwest France to take part in a sabotage operation code-named Dressmaker. He survived and after the war returned to Britain. His life thereafter is not known. To aid the movements across Europe, the British government set up the Special Operations Executive in 1940. F-Section operated in France and Irish men and women served in this unit. Perhaps one of the most colourful characters in SOE was Dublin-born Maureen Patricia O’Sullivan, known within SOE as Paddy. She had lived in France and Belgium before the war and was able to speak both French and Flemish. As was the case with so many of SOE’s operatives, her language skills came to the attention of recruiters and she was inducted into the SOE in July 1943. Training courses followed in parachuting, the use of small arms and in the use of mortars. Her disciplinary record during training was mixed as, bored with the routine, she frequently engaged in back talk with her instructors. Perhaps rather ungallantly, one of her instructors later described her as “a tough type of woman, at the moment growing quite a successful moustache”. On the night of March 24th/25th, 1944, she parachuted into France where she was assigned to a circuit designated as “Fireman” that operated in the area of Limoges. Her training had not been completed but Fireman desperately needed a wireless operator and O’Sullivan desperately wanted to get into action. In the months that followed, she served as the circuit’s wireless operator while also training three new operators. To ensure that her location was not discovered, she was continually on the move, sometimes even travelling in daylight with her wireless set – which had been drummed into her in training not to do. During one of these occasions, she carried out the “evasion through flirtation” technique described above. She remained in France until the Liberation in 1944. Other Irish resistors led a somewhat charmed life and completed their wartime career without ever coming to the attention of the authorities. Sam Murphy, who was from Belfast, became involved with a Maquis group known as Veny in October 1942. An electrician by trade, he was walking past unguarded German vehicles in Toulouse and quickly realised that he could disable them. Vehicle sabotage and theft became Murphy’s speciality and he continued to operate with the Veny group until the area was liberated in 1944. Thereafter he served with a battalion of the Free French Forces. Other Irish men and women served outside of mainland France. Mary Dewan from Newbridge served as a Resistance courier in Algeria, carrying messages while pregnant with her fourth child. In French Indochina (modern-day Vietnam), a Resistance group named Plasson fought against the Japanese in 1944 and 1945. This group’s leader was named Daniel O’Connell. The work of the Resistance and the SOE in occupied France was fraught with dangers. Resistance groups that were established in 1940-41 saw particularly high rates of attrition in the years that followed. Some groups were infiltrated by German agents and their members betrayed. Other resistors were betrayed by collaborators while others came to grief at checkpoints due to the fact that they were carrying incriminating material, wearing the wrong clothes or make-up – any one of a number of things could catch the eye of the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police. There was a whole range of forces ready to catch out the unwary. It is usual just to refer to them as “the Gestapo” but they included the German intelligence service or Abwehr, the SD or Gestapo and also German military police and customs officials. Also, while some members of the French police and gendarmerie might be willing to turn a blind eye when confronted with something suspicious, the paramilitary force of Vichy, the Milice, would not. While the Irish contingent within the Resistance was extremely small, it can be shown that a number of them came to the attention of the authorities. It is known that 10 were arrested, tried and later sent to prison, a labour camp or a concentration camp. Four Irish women were caught and ended up in Ravensbrück. They were Mary Cummins (Belgian Resistance), Catherine Crean, Sr Katherine Anne McCarthy and Sr Agnes Flanagan. Crean died shortly after the camp was liberated in 1945. Six men were arrested and sent to various camps. Of these, two simply disappeared from the record while another two (Robert Armstrong and Robert Vernon) are known to have been executed by the Germans in 1944 and 1945 respectively. In the postwar years, the services of these Irish men and women were recognised but this was predominantly by France. The majority of Irish resistors were awarded French decorations, including the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance. Samuel Beckett, for example, was awarded both of these medals. Some, such as William O’Connor, were also awarded certificates of valour. Those who served in the SOE were awarded both British and French medals. Patricia O’Sullivan received both the Croix de Guerre and the MBE. There is a whole series of memorials to the Resistance across France. These commemorate local groups and sometimes specific individuals. In the upper corridors of Les Invalides in Paris, where the military history of France is commemorated, there are memorials to different communities of non-French men and women who served in the Resistance. To date, the Irish resistors remain uncommemorated either in Ireland or France. This is perhaps a good week to pause and remember them and the long and lonely war that they waged. Patricia O’Sullivan of SOE later summarised succinctly her wartime career: “I was terribly frightened at times, but there was a wonderful spirit of sharing danger with men of the highest order of courage, which made it a privilege to work for them.”
