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WW II heroine's secret file released

Treasure trove
Last Updated 03 May 2018, 04:25 IST

Nearne was the spy who never came in from the cold. When she died alone, with precious little support or human contact, none of her neighbours knew she had been decorated for her bravery behind enemy lines in occupied France.

Her wartime role was not publicly acknowledged until local officials went into her apartment after her death and found a treasure trove of medals, records and memorabilia, including French currency used during the war.

Nearne’s file, released after a freedom of information request, sheds new light on her wartime exploits, which were so extraordinary that advancing American forces refused to believe her when she rushed out of a church in Germany and claimed to be an undercover British agent who had escaped from a German concentration camp.

The Americans did not believe her story and kept her in captivity for a month, holding her with Nazi prisoners until an English officer came to fetch her, telling the Americans that Nearne’s story was true, the file says. It shows that Nearne was consistently underestimated and belittled by her male superiors as she was trained for a perilous clandestine assignment as a wireless transmitter operator.

Her trainer reported that she did not seem suited for intelligence work. The harsh assessment of her potential for espionage contrasts sharply with an item in the formerly secret file that recommends Nearne be made an Officer of the British Empire for her wartime contributions.

Honoured

“For five and a half months she maintained constant communications with London from this most dangerous area and by her cool efficiency, perseverance and willingness to undergo any risk in order to carry out her work made possible the successful organisation of her group and the delivery of large quantities of arms and equipment,” the note says.

The request was granted. Nearne was also honoured by French officials.
She left the relative safety of England on March 2, 1944, several months before the D-Day invasion started the liberation of the European continent. She was able to transmit without detection, helping to coordinate resistance forces and munitions, until she was arrested by Gestapo agents in late July.

“They asked me questions about my code,” Nearne says in a statement contained in the file. “I told them lies.” The agents humiliated Nearne and placed her in an ice cold bath, but she did not bend, providing them only with false addresses of bogus contacts.
Finally they gave up and on August 15 sent her to the Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany. She eventually escaped with two French women when she was being transported to a new location in the middle of the night.

She and the two other women stayed in abandoned houses in the midst of bombing raids before finding refuge in a church. Finally they hooked up with liberating American troops, but Nearne failed to convince the Americans she was friend, not foe.

A declassified memo by an unnamed American official indicates that Nearne’s mental demeanor undercut her credibility. “Subject creates a very unbalanced impression,” the memo says. “She often is unable to answer the simplest questions, as though she were impersonating someone else.

“Her account of what happened to her after her landing near Orleans is held to be invented. It is recommended that Subject be put at the disposal of the British authorities for further investigation and disposition.”

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(Published 29 October 2010, 16:51 IST)

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