Bernard OConnor - Agent Rose: The True Spy Story of Eileen Nearne, Britains Forgotten Wartime Heroine

All illustrations courtesy of Odile Nearne.

First published 2012

Amberley Publishing
The Hill, Stroud
Gloucestershire, GL5 4EP

www.amberley-books.com

Copyright Bernard OConnor, 2012

The right of Bernard OConnor to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN 978-1-4456-0838-9 (PRINT)
ISBN 978-1-4456-1581-3 (ELECTRONIC)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

In the early hours of the morning of 3 March 1944, a small, single-engine Lysander aeroplane flew low over northern France. The underside was painted black to avoid its being seen from the ground and the top painted grey and green to make it difficult for enemy night fliers to spot it. Flight Lieutenant Anderson used the reflection of the moons light to identify rivers, canals and railway lines to help orientate himself, occasionally checking the folded map he had on his lap and consciously navigating away from the anti-aircraft sites he had marked. Behind him were two passengers, British secret agents destined to help the French Resistance prepare for D-Day. They were understandably nervous. Their flight had been cancelled twice during the last moon period so there was an urgency about completing this mission successfully.

It was a bitterly cold and cloudy night, and below them the passengers could not identify the settlements they flew over. They knew only that they were heading for an isolated field near the village of Les Lagnys, about eight kilometres from Vatan in the Indre department. Only a few hours earlier, in the warmth of Gibraltar Farm, the control room of the RAFs top secret airfield, they had pored over the photographs and sketches of the landing site and maps of the surrounding area.

Once past Vatan, the pilot dropped down and followed the line of the A20 south-west towards Chteauroux. Shortly, he circled the plane over a patchwork of hundreds of rectangular fields, searching for the red flashing light of the reception committees torch. Then Jean Savy tugged on the other passengers coat and pointed. Hed spotted it. So had the pilot, but he knew it wasnt from the field hed been expected to land in. It was from one nearby. Nevertheless, as the torch flashed the correct identification letter, he decided to land.

Two more lights appeared, creating a letter L. Knowing the two furthest apart indicated the wind direction, he lined up the plane and landed bumpily in the field. At the last torch he turned, knowing the third light indicated the width of the field, and taxied back to the first. Seeing a dark figure with the torch, he turned again, facing into the wind ready for take-off, stopped, pushed his cockpit canopy back and started lighting his pipe.

Several dark figures rushed across to welcome the pilot and help the passengers out. A young woman, twenty-three-year-old Eileen Nearne, known to her friends as Didi, but to her organisation as Agent Rose, pushed the passengers Perspex cockpit cover back and climbed out. Using the ladder welded onto the side of the fuselage, she carefully descended a few steps so that her colleague could hand her their suitcases. One of them said, in a pure Parisian accent, OK? We have to act quickly to avoid being caught. When he heard Didi talking, he said, Oh, a young girl. Go back. Go back. Its extremely dangerous. You must go back.

It was indeed extremely dangerous, but Didi had not been told the full extent. Anyway, she was in no mood to go back. She had a job to do, to help liberate France from German occupation.

Working for a newspaper, you have to be prepared to respond to anything that you see happening that could provide a story. A reporter from the Herald Express, a South Devon publication, had been picking their son up from school in Torquay one Friday afternoon when they noticed two police cars following a hearse from flats in Lisburne Crescent, a row of whitewashed flats a few minutes walk from the seafront. Thinking it slightly unusual, they alerted colleagues back at the office, who made a few enquiries.

They were told that an elderly, unnamed woman had died of natural causes, leaving no known relatives and that the council was arranging her funeral. The following day, two paragraphs appeared in the Herald Express, which started a chain of events reaching several continents.

They reported how, on 2 September 2010, the body of an 89-year-old woman was discovered in a small, rented flat. When she died was not certain, but a post-mortem examination revealed that the cause of death was a heart attack. When no immediate next of kin could be found, the town authorities were called upon to arrange a civic funeral.

One of the womans neighbours rang the paper to say that the ladys name was Eileen Nearne and that council workers sent in to clean her rooms had found some old French currency, correspondence written in French and some medals relating to World War Two.

Glenn Price, one of the Herald Express reporters with a special knowledge and historical interest in World War Two, did some research and, according to the paper, the real Charlotte Gray was revealed.

Charlotte Gray was the titular heroine of a very popular Sebastian Faulks novel, which was made into a film in 2001. After training as a secret agent, she was parachuted into France on a secret mission to help the Resistance. Disobeying orders, she used some of her time trying to find her boyfriend, an RAF pilot whose plane had been shot down and who had been reported missing in action.

As we shall see, Eileen Nearne was a secret agent, but she didnt parachute into France and didnt spend time looking for a missing boyfriend. Her experiences were a lot more stressful.

On 9 September the msnbc website ran a story titled U.K. recluse found to be war heroine after death. On 13 September, TheGuardian ran an article, Lonely death of a wartime heroine and the The Sun had one titled Real life Rigby is WWII heroine. The following day, TheIndependent had one named Eileen Nearne: Lonely death of a spy who evaded Gestapo, and the BBC News reported War heroine found dead in Devon to have council funeral. Word had spread across the Atlantic and the Chicago Sun-Times and the Gulf News reported Recluse found to be wartime heroine after her death.

As no friends or family could be found, Torbay council planned to give her a council burial, which in the past was called a paupers grave. There was the suggestion in the Paignton People on 14 September that she was just like the Eleanor Rigby in the Beatles song, one of the lonely people who died in the church and was buried along with her name nobody came. They hoped the publicity would encourage those who knew her to attend.

On 14 September, Adrian Sanders, Liberal Democrat MP for Torbay, put forward a motion in the House of Commons with eighteen signatories recommending that the government should acknowledge Eileen in some way.