Harold Cole

French citizens helped British soldiers and airmen flee German-occupied northern France for relatively benign southern France, called Vichy France and unoccupied by Germany until November 1942. Marseilles was the usual destination. However, the Germans and Vichy French government made it more difficult for the British soldiers and their French helpers to travel southward. Cole's contacts and wide-spread network had the sophistication and technical capability to provide false identity cards, travel documents, clothing, guides, and travel expenses to British evaders and escapees.[7]

Despite his influence, Cole had detractors. One of the most active women helping British evaders, Maud Olga Baudot de Rouville, said of him, "he was always borrowing money, or begging petrol, and never repaying it, and he talked ill of people behind their backs...he had women everywhere and was always going on sprees with them." She eventually broke off contact with Cole.[8]

In January 1941, Roland Lepers led a group of eight British soldiers and airmen south to Marseilles, where he came into contact with Ian Garrow, the leader of the clandestine Pat O'Leary escape line (Pat Line) which was dedicated to transporting British soldiers stranded in France to neutral Spain from where they could be returned to Britain. Garrow was impressed. He gave Lepers FRF10,000 (about $3,700 in 2020 US dollars) for expenses, and when Cole visited Marseilles in February, Garrow named him the head of the Pat line in northern France and gave him another FRF10,000 for expenses. In the following months, Cole and Lepers transported a group of five to ten English soldiers and airmen south to Marseilles every two weeks, for which Cole received reimbursement for the expenses he claimed from Garrow. Abbé Pierre Carpentier, a French chaplain, organised the difficult and illegal border crossing between occupied France and Vichy France. Cole began to spend most of his time in Marseilles.[9]

Cole was known to Scotland Yard and MI9, the secret British organisation which financed the Pat and other escape lines. He was described as a con man with a string of convictions for housebreaking and fraud, but his background was disregarded because of his efficiency in helping British soldiers. However, Garrow and the Pat Line leaders slowly learned that Cole was keeping the expense money paid him in his pocket rather than distributing it to his helpers. Albert Guérisse, a Belgian who became the leader of the Pat Line after the Vichy French arrested Ian Garrow in October 1941, arranged a meeting on 1 November 1941 with Cole and himself and several leading members of the Pat Line in the Marseilles apartment of Dr. George Rodocanachi. They arrested Cole and confronted him with the evidence of his fraud and double-dealing. They locked him in a bathroom while they debated his fate, with some favouring execution. The fear was that Cole, if allowed to live, might betray the Pat Line and its members. Cole forced open a window and escaped.[10][11]

After Cole's escape, Guérisse and an Australian agent, Bruce Dowding, rushed north to warn Cole's associates that he might betray them, but many refused to believe the two men, who were unknown in Lille.[12]

Now on the run from the Pat Line in Marseilles, but not yet discredited to most of his associates in the Lille area, Cole took refuge in a house in La Madeleine, and there on 6 December 1941 he was arrested by the Geheime Feldpolizei, an executive branch of the Abwehr (German military intelligence). Author Murphy speculates that the raid may have been a sham and that Cole had been a German agent before his arrest.[13] Whatever the truth, Cole quickly complied with the German demand for information about the Pat Line. He wrote a 30-page statement for the Germans, identifying dozens of his associates and describing the operations of the northern section of the Pat Line.[14] Arrests of Cole's former associates began that same day. François Duprez was one of the first arrested; Abbé Pierre Carpentier was arrested on 8 December. Duprez later died in a German concentration camp, and Carpentier was executed. Cole accompanied the Germans on some arrests. Cole, however, withheld some names and information from the Germans. He did not betray Jeannine Voglimacci, the hairdresser in La Madeleine, but wrote her a letter threatening retribution if she continued to work for the Pat Line.[15] After the destruction of the Pat Line in Lille, SOE agent Michael Trotobas re-created an escape line based in Abbeville.[16]

Cole took refuge in Paris and Lyon after he betrayed the Pat Line, escaping German control and now a fugitive from both the Germans and the outraged survivors of the Pat Line. On 9 June 1942, he was arrested by the Vichy police in Lyon and charged with espionage. Vichy was under the thumb of the Germans but maintained some of its independence by prosecuting German and Allied secret agents, and Cole qualified as both. On 21 July, Cole was convicted and sentenced to death. The sentence was later changed to life imprisonment, and Cole remained imprisoned until the end of 1943. The Germans did not trust Cole enough to order his release from prison, although he may have done some work for them while a prisoner.[17]

In the summer of 1941, Cole became romantically involved with Suzanne Warenghem, one-half English, 19 years old, living in Paris, and a successful guide for the Pat Line. Despite warnings of Cole's double-dealing, she became his chief assistant and lover, apparently believing he was a British agent. Cole and Warenghem were married on 10 April 1942 in Paris. She was arrested along with Cole on 9 June 1942, but in the subsequent trial, she was judged innocent of espionage. During the trial, she finally realised that Cole was a traitor to Britain and France. "She was naive, because she was a real patriot," a British agent said. Alone, penniless, and pregnant, she found her way to Marseilles, where the Pat Line helped her, although she was under suspicion because of her association with Cole. She gave birth on 31 October 1942, but the child died on 12 January 1943. [18]

In March 1943, Warenghem was re-arrested on the charge of helping a British agent escape prison. She was sent to Castres prison. On 16 September 1943, she escaped along with Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent Blanche Charlet.[19] Charlet and Warenghem reached open country and, helped by a local farmer, took refuge in a Benedictine monastery. There, they sheltered in a guest house for two months before the monks took them to an escape line that helped people flee France by walking across the Pyrénées mountains to Spain. Heavy snow prevented them from crossing the mountains.[20]

Having failed to cross into Spain, Charlet and Warenghem, now in touch with SOE headquarters in London, undertook a cross-country saga. First, they journeyed to Paris and then to Lyon. Warenghem heard from friends that Cole was inquiring about her. Frightened, she took the false identity of Aline Le Gale and slept with a pistol under her pillow. From Lyon, Warenghem and Charlet travelled to the Jura Mountains near the border of Switzerland. In April 1944, SOE arranged for Charlet and Warenghem to escape France. To do so, they crossed France again to Brittany, where they were picked up on a beach by a small boat and rowed offshore to a motor torpedo boat, a dangerous operation as the Germans were fortifying the French coast in anticipation of an Allied invasion. They were fired on during their escape, but their boat outpaced German pursuers and arrived safely in Plymouth on 20 April 1944. Warenghem, who changed her name to Suzanne Warren, never saw Cole again.[21][22]