Free All the King's Men by Robert Marshall

Preface
    During the summer of 1943, Britain’s wartime secret service, the Special Operations Executive – SOE – suffered a major collapse of its networks in northern France. It was a disaster of monumental proportions, a disaster from which the SOE never properly recovered. The story of that collapse lies at the very heart of the history of Britain’s secret war alongside the French Resistance. It is a story that is engraved upon the memories of those who were there and survived. For apart from the terrible loss of life and materiel , the collapse precipitated a serious crisis of confidence. After the war, stories proliferated – on both sides of the Channel – of betrayal, deception and English perfidy. An official history went to considerable length to silence these rumours, and for a while it succeeded. But the passing years nurtured old suspicions. If one picks up a well-read copy of The SOE in France , it will invariably fall open at the events surrounding the collapse of the northern networks and the role played by an individual by the name of Henri Déricourt. What makes these few pages so fascinating is that they raise more questions than they answer.
    In fact all accounts of the events in France during 1943 are less than satisfying simply because authors have been hampered by the singular inaccessibility of the relevant material. All SOE’s records are held in perpetual custody by the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Time, a little good fortune and a great deal of effort have shaken some of this material free. This development, coupled with therecollections of veterans and survivors and of many others not previously connected with the story, now makes it possible to produce a realistic, though hardly agreeable, explanation for SOE’s very worst disaster.
    The research for this book began when Roy Davies, editor of the BBC’s history series TIMEWATCH, suggested I look into the subject as a possible item for that programme. In the course of its making an enormous amount of new material was uncovered – too much to be squeezed into one hour of television. This volume is, therefore, a golden opportunity to present that material in as much detail as the narrative will allow. I am indebted to a great many people who contributed much to the research and who deserve proper recognition. Daniella Dangoor, who combed the French archives exhaustively; Dr Stephen Badsey, military historian, who volunteered his time and knowledge in areas that were remote from my experience; Dr Katherine Herbig at the US Naval College in Monterey, California, an expert in strategic deception, who allowed me access to many papers unavailable in Britain; and finally – but most importantly – Larry Collins, author of Fall from Grace , who allowed me to read the typescripts of a great many invaluable interviews that were recorded with people now long dead.
    The most valuable archival material that was uncovered was found in the private papers of Henri Déricourt. These contain his pilot’s log books and licences, birth and marriage certificates, letters, financial records, military records, forged documents, a manuscript for a novel together with a vast quantity of miscellaneous trivia – even a receipt for his coffin. The name Déricourt is perhaps not so well known as Burgess or Maclean, but nevertheless he deserves to be recognized as one of the most accomplished intelligence agents of all time.
    The bulk of the detail contained in this book is drawn from interviews with over fifty veterans and survivors of the secret war. These included some half dozen SS and SDofficers in Germany; a number of pilots and crew who flew with Déricourt over the years; SOE officers; and countless members of the French Resistance. A surprising number of retired MI6 officers have also spoken to me freely about their work, and about Claude Dansey in particular. In fact it was the character of Dansey that proved the most difficult to unravel. A great