The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [51]
‘La Dame Blanche’ and others
Weaknesses in Cameron’s organisation brought Landau a particular piece of good fortune in the summer of 1917 when (as he recounted in his memoirs) ‘an emissary from Belgium under the assumed name of St. Lambert’ came to offer the service of ‘a large group of patriots . . . desirous of organizing an espionage service in the occupied territory’. In fact the ‘espionage service’ already existed. Based in Liège and led by two electrical engineers, Walthère Dewé and Herman Chauvin, the network (which became known as ‘La Dame Blanche’, a mythical female figure whose appearance was supposed to herald the downfall of the imperial German Hohenzollern dynasty) had been supplying information for Cameron’s organisation. But they had become unsettled by the ‘contradictory’ instructions issued by one of Cameron’s agents, and had completely lost confidence in him after a security breach had betrayed some of their members to the Germans. While offering their services to Landau, they did so only on condition that they would be ‘recognised as soldiers of the Allied armies’. This was a fundamental requirement for the civilian men and women involved. They did not want to be ‘vulgar spies’. Indeed, the leaders of the organisation forbade the use of the terms ‘espionage’ or ‘spy’, preferring ‘agent’ or ‘soldier’ to indicate their military role as intelligence-gatherers. As Chauvin asserted: ‘for the new recruit the status of a soldier was certain proof of the value of the work asked of him’ and represented the prospect after the war of official recognition of the services he had rendered. Crucially, it also let him be ‘seen as a brother in arms by the valiant soldiers at the Front to whom all thoughts were turned’.13
Over the last fifteen months of the war the organisation grew to more than 800-strong, a large number of whom were women. All members took a military oath of allegiance and after the war they were eventually recognised formally as the Corps d’Observation Anglais, a ‘Volunteer Service attached to the British Army in France’. By September 1918 there were some eighty train-watching posts, ‘and in addition a great number of “Promeneur Posts”’ which reported on any German military units in their immediate area. The network covered much of occupied Belgium and reached as far as Hirson and Mézières (both important railway centres) across the French frontier. La Dame Blanche was organised along military lines into three ‘battalions’. An analysis by Tammy Proctor of Battalion III, which was centred on Brussels, gives an idea of the kinds of people involved. About a third of the 190 battalion members were women, and the unit was led by an unmarried female schoolteacher in her forties, Laure Tandel. The ages of members ranged from sixteen to eighty-one years, though the majority fell between twenty and forty-two. Observing that 60 per cent of the women were single (and 7 per cent widowed), Proctor concluded that ‘independent, older women were more likely than younger women to work as formal soldiers’ in the organisation.
Guidance for train-watchers in German-occupied Belgium.
Tandel’s unit contained a diverse range of occupations: the men included labourers, civil servants, engineers and railway workers; the women, schoolteachers, shop assistants and a significant number ‘without profession’. The organisation had a strong religious element, in terms both of personnel and of motivation. One list of British awards contains the names of forty-four priests, as well as one nun and a reverend mother. Volunteers clustered by both occupation and family, the latter an especially important factor. Anna Kesseler, a Brussels widow in her mid-fifties, who had lost her only son in battle in 1914, joined up with her four daughters, acting as couriers, transcribers and letter boxes, holding reports for onward transmission. Three unmarried sisters called Weimerskirch ran a Catholic bookshop in