Free The Final Curtsey by Margaret Rhodes

Perhaps it was ‘Passport Control’ on the ground floor, but upstairs we were MI6. The big chief, ‘M’ to James Bond fans, hid behind the letter ‘C’. He
wrote in green ink, and God-like powers were attributed to him by us underlings. Years later I was told that the spy Kim Philby had at one time been in line for the ‘C’ job. He would
probably have written in red ink. But my boss, a Major Maufe, was an excessively dull character. When forced to make a rare venture into the social circuit and attend a smart cocktail party given
by people he didn’t know, he introduced himself by saying: ‘I’m Maufe’, as in ‘Orf’. The invariable response was: ‘Oh, so sorry you couldn’t stay
longer.’ Thereafter things became a touch confused.
    My department co-ordinated the work of our secret agents in the Near East. They all seemed to travel by caique. Then I went to work for the Deputy Director DD/Admin, with a very nice lady whose
husband was an agent and I remember her distress when he broke both ankles dropping by parachute into occupied France. With the ever vigilant Gestapo on their tail, mobility could mean the
difference between life and death to our agents. I never learnt his fate, but I hope so much that he survived. One of my daily tasks was to read every single message transmitted by our spies all
over the world. It was fascinating, but frightening too. I knew all about Germany’s war time race for nuclear weapons being conducted at their heavy water plant in Norway and it was a
tremendous relief when in 1943 a team of British trained Norwegian commandos succeeded in blowing up the plant. The Special Operations Executive described it as one of the most daring and
successful acts of sabotage in the Second World War.
    I was also aware of the Peenemunde project on the Baltic coast where the Germans were developing their new secret weapon, a rocket to be launched on London and the south east and the building of
the rocket launching sites in Holland and France, with the aim of bringing Britain to its knees. It was to be Hitler’s last throw. The evidence had been brought to Winston Churchill by his
son-in-law Duncan Sandys who, having been badly wounded in the battle for Norway in 1940 had been made responsible for the search for and the discovery of secret weapons. My husband, Denys Rhodes,
later worked for Duncan Sandys when he was involved in the foundation of the European Movement, a forerunner of the European Community.
    In 1943, it was useful, but scary, to know that the V1 and V2 rockets were stoking up long before they actually fell on us. Forewarned was forearmed, and one of the girls with whom I worked and
shared a flat in Chelsea went to bed every night wearing a tin hat. She failed in her attempt to persuade me to take the same precaution. I thought it was carrying personal safety too far. When the
V1 onslaught began it was frightening, mostly because of its total unpredictability – its fall being decided by its petrol tank. The moment one heard the engine noise cease, one knew it had
started its descent. But defiantly nicknaming these death-carrying projectiles ‘Doodle Bugs’ helped to allay the fear and they became just another horror to get used to. I had
first-hand experience of this one Sunday, in June 1944, when I was on duty in ‘Passport Control’ and heard a V1 cut out. It sounded very nearly overhead and stupidly I craned out of the
window to see where it would fall. A rather crusty old colonel saw me as he was passing and rugby tackled me down on to the floor, a rescue operation accompanied by some round curses. That was the
rocket which hit the Guards’ Chapel, in Wellington Barracks, barely a hundred yards away. It was the middle of the morning service. Sixty-three servicemen and women and fifty-eight civilians
were killed. The V2s were even more frightening as they were silent and gave absolutely no warning of their approach. They were like an express train