Xavier by Richard Heslop

Author:Richard Heslop [Richard Heslop]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849547741
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2014-10-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Eventually I managed to sleep for a few hours. When I woke I began to think of the information I could give Buckmaster, and to consider the results of my first tour in the field as a British agent. Self-analysis, I felt, would benefit any future work in France.

I realised that the months had changed me. When I landed in France I had an almost Boy Scout attitude towards the work I would be doing, and considered life a big adventure of cowboys and Indians, A few days in France changed all that, and subsequent meetings with Gestapo agents turned me into a professional, able to hate, but hate with a coldness that kept my temper under control. I had discovered too, that I could kill, play the executioner, if the position warranted it, an ‘ability’ I did not know I had in me when I left England. I had taken unnecessary risks, and I swore to myself I would not take the same risks again. I remembered leaving the revolver in my house at Angers. If that had been found … Never would I repeat the stupid mistake Alex and I made trying to contact Rake, by going back for a second look at a rendezvous. Certain risks were justified, but they had to be balanced against the possible gains.

I felt, too, that I had become too involved in the lives of some people who worked with me. The relationship between an organiser and his associates, I believed, should be roughly those between doctor and patients. If a doctor becomes too involved, or too close to his patients, he is likely to be swayed by emotion rather than logic, and may prescribe the wrong treatment. I had become close to some fine people in France – Madame Blandeau, the Audouards, Boris, couriers, and, of course, Alex, whom I thought of as a brother. His arrest had grieved me deeply. I realised this sort of relationship was dangerous, as I would have risked much to have saved him, and I know he would have done the same for me. But danger lay behind such an association, for in rushing to help Alex I doubt if I would have considered the people I might give away under torture if I failed. I decided that I must never get too close to anyone in the field again, otherwise my judgement might suffer.

I asked myself, too, whether my nerve had been affected by the long strain and whether Gestapo interrogations, imprisonment, and the arrest of friends, had made me too jittery to carry on with the job. I had always been frightened, but had managed to appear calm, and I reasoned that I was still capable of doing my job, for now I was more careful. A few days of relaxation would be enough for me, I felt; then I could be off again.

Over the next few days I was debriefed in London, either at Orchard Court, the headquarters of SOE, or at a house in Baker Street.

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