Unearthing Churchill's Secret Army: The Official List of SOE Casualties and Their Stories by John Grehan & Martin Mace

Author:John Grehan & Martin Mace
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War II
ISBN: 9781783376599
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2012-12-18T16:00:00+00:00

NORMAN, Gilbert Maurice

Date of death: 6 September 1944

Place of death: Mauthausen, Germany

Rank: Major

Parent unit: Durham Light Infantry

Service number: 156759

Decorations: Mentioned in Despatches

Date joined SOE: 15 March 1942

Code names: Archambaud/Butler/Gilbert Aubin

Nationality: British

Age at time of death: Twenty-nine

Date of birth: 7 May 1915

Place of birth: Saint-Cloud, France

Location of memorial: Brookwood, UK

Gilbert Norman’s story is a particularly unfortunate one. Born to an English father and a French mother in the Paris suburb of Saint-Cloud, he was seen by his SOE assessors as being ‘perfect in all ways, has got great qualities of leadership and physical endurance’. On 31 October 1942, he was sent into France to join Francis Suttill’s PROSPER circuit as its principal radio operator.

Things went very well for almost eight months. Norman acted as Suttill’s second in command and helped in arranging a number of parachute drops and the dangerous job of transporting and distributing the arms received. He also took part in sabotage operations against railways.

Then, in June 1943, disaster struck the PROSPER network when two Canadian agents, Pickersgill and Macalister, who parachuted into France on the night of 10/11 June, were arrested. On them was found the addresses of Andrée Borrel and Gilbert Norman who were both arrested a little after midnight on 23 June. Norman was sleeping in the house of a locally-recruited sub-agent, Nicholas Laurent, when a man knocked at the door asking for ‘Archambaud’. As he only knew his guest by his cover name of Aubin, Laurent woke Gilbert and told him about the visitor. Assuming that someone who knew his field name must be another agent, Norman went to see the man, only for fifteen men to leap out of the shadows and grab him. The Germans found not only Norman’s radio set but also his back messages.

To make matters worse Pickersgill and Macalister had been carrying a package for Norman – a new set of radio crystals with details of the frequencies to be used – all neatly labelled up by Baker Street. With all this Dr Josef Goetz, the Gestapo’s radio expert, was able to figure out Norman’s codes, transmission times and security check.

Goetz had all the information he needed to be able to transmit to London. It was the big breakthrough that the Gestapo had long dreamed of and he did not want to make any mistakes that might jeopardise the wonderful opportunity they had been presented. So Goetz tried to persuade Norman to co-operate, but the British agent refused.

So Goetz went ahead himself, using Norman’s call-sign ‘Butcher’. In his first message he informed London that PROSPER had been captured. Dr Goetz himself described what happened next: ‘The reply I got from the first message was quite unexpected. The message I got back said: “You have forgotten your ‘true’ security check. Be more careful next time.”’

This second, ‘true’ security check was put in place so that if an agent had been captured by the Germans and forced into transmitting a message, the staff at HQ would know that if the agent did not include the second check then the call had been made under duress.

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