THE BOURNEMOUTH HONEY TRAP
Born Noreen Baxter in Valetta, Malta, her father, Richard, was in the Royal Navy. Her mother was Nora Weild.
Richard had retired from military service and the family were living in London when the Second World War broke out. He was recalled to the Navy and went on to serve in Norway and the Far East.
Noreen’s brother was at boarding school in Yorkshire. Her mother moved out of London to Bath, leaving Noreen to continue with her education at the French Lycee in London. Consequently, Noreen became fluent in French.
In 1943, the Lycee was handed over to the Free French Air Force. Most of the students left the school but Noreen stayed. From then on, she did very little studying. “I spent most of the time careering around Kensington on the back of a motorbike, clinging ecstatically to the muscular waist of a French airman.”
Noreen was called up for military service. She wanted to join the WRENS (Women’s Royal Navy Service), “Because the hats they wore were very stylish.” Noreen had a cousin in the WRENS and would ‘borrow’ the hat. She thought it looked, ‘seductive’.
However, Noreen was told the only vacancies in the WRENs was for cooks, so instead she applied for a job with the BBC.
As she had received her call-up papers, so the Labour Office refused to let her join the BBC – because they were not a reserved occupation.
Nevertheless, Noreen had been noticed elsewhere, and to her surprise she was called for an interview. She thought the WRENS had changed their mind and had decided to accept her. However, she realised something was wrong when it took place in a closet – “A windowless broom cupboard.” She was bemused that her interviewer was an army officer who never asked a single thing about the navy. “He was leaping around like a demented kangaroo – in and out of four different languages – And he seemed very surprised I could keep up.”
Without realising it, Noreen had been recruited to the SOE (Special Operations Executive), run by Colonel Maurice Buckmaster, and who were colloquially labelled, ‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’.
It was her linguistic skills that were in demand andNoreen joined the F-Section (France). They were based at Montagu Mansions on The Mall and nicknamed ‘The Crazy Gang’.
F-Section recruited and trained spies and agents who were sent into France to perform sabotage and to help the Resistance.
Noreen was too young to be sent on a mission, so she wrote and typed messages each evening, which were then sent to France.
Very quickly, Noreen’s abilities were recognised. She was transferred to the F-Section training base at Beaulieu in the New Forest. This was known as the ‘Finishing School’ for agents. She lived in a cottage on Lord Montagu’s estate.
Here, agents were trained in covert operations, surveillance and decoys. They were taught how to follow someone and how to recognise if they were being followed.
Agents were taught lock picking and how to blow up safes (by a professional burglar), the art of disguise (ageing was achieved using ashes or white shoe cleaner), and how to write with secret ink (made from egg white or urine). They were also shown how to put itching powder into German underwear!
They were even instructed in assassination techniques and how to respond to torture i.e. sleep deprivation (and worse!)
Noreen began to sit in on the debriefing of agents returning from France, often hearing harrowing stories of death, torture and betrayal. “Many of those agents weren’t very much older than I was. Hearing their incredible stories, witnessing their courage, their total dedication, I changed almost overnight from a teenager to a woman.”
She also fell in love with an agent called Bill, who was twelve years older than Noreen. He was regarded as the SOE’s top agent and Noreen was stunned when he fell for her (although she was extremely glamorous).
They had an affair for a few months and got engaged. Then he was sent on a dangerous mission. All SOE agents were told that they only had a 50% chance of survival in enemy territory. “They faced their fears. And then they left.”
Noreen was very worried, but Bill was confident. He called himself a ‘born survivor’.
They had a farewell lunch in an intimate restaurant. “He took me back to the office and we said goodbye at the bus stop. I don’t think we even said goodbye.”
Bill was never heard of again.
Other people told Noreen she should be proud of his bravery and his sacrifice for freedom and his country. “I didn’t want a dead hero. I didn’t want a medal in a velvet box. I wanted Bill.”
“An awful lot of women who worked with SOE had their hearts broken.”
Another story that stayed with Noreen throughout her life, was that of a 35-year-old Jewish radio operator. He had already completed one mission to France and had been hunted by the Gestapo. Noreen could not comprehend that he was going back again. He knew what would happen to him if the Nazis captured him.
He spent his last evening talking with Noreen – nothing romantic.
As the evening drew to a close, he handed Noreen a Star of David with a dove of peace attached to the chain. He said, “I’d like you to have this.”
Noreen said she couldn’t possibly accept it. He was so disappointed.
He told her that he had no-one else to give it to as all his family had been killed in concentration camps. “I’ve nobody left in the world. And I’d like to think somebody remembers me – someone thinks of me when I’m over there.”
Noreen agreed to take it on the condition she would give it back to him when he returned from France.
He never did – and she kept the Star of David with her for the rest of her life.
Noreen was increasingly involved in the training of the agents. Those learning to follow people, trailed her through the nearby towns of Bournemouth or Southampton.
She quickly learned how to lose her tail. Noreen would go into a department store and head for the lingerie department. Men were extremely embarrassed to follow her in there – especially as she held up underwear to be examined – ‘unmentionables’ as she called them.
Noreen then stepped up to be involved in a more serious part of the training, known as ‘The Bournemouth Honey Trap’.
When an agent had qualified and was deemed ready for the field, their achievement was heralded by a meal with the officer in charge of the training, Chief Assessor Colonel Woolrych (“We called him Woolly Bags”), in the posh Royal Bath Hotel. During the evening Noreen appeared, dressed in her finest apparel. She was be introduced to the agent as a close friend – “Oh how lovely to see you. Why don’t you join us for dinner?”
‘Woolly Bags’ would receive an urgent phone call, leaving Noreen alone with the agent.
Returning, the Colonel gave his apologies and departed. Noreen then plyed the agent with drinks and spend the rest of the evening with him. Sometimes (not always) they divulged details of their mission to her.
Noreen said, “If it was a fine evening with the moon shining…I would winkle them out onto to the terrace to look at the sea. It could get quite sentimental and then of course when their tongues were loosened, I’m afraid they could talk.”
The following day, on the agent’s final debrief, Noreen walked into the interview and the training officer would ask the man, “Do you know this woman?”
One Danish agent (“He looked like Adonis”), about to be sent back into his home country, behind enemy lines, was particularly enamoured with Noreen. At the hotel, they had gone onto the balcony in the evening sun and the Dane got extremely drunk – declaring his love for Noreen.
The following day, at the big reveal, the Dane exploded in anger (most agents took the deceit in good humour), and screamed “You Bitch!”, trying to get over the table and attack her.
Noreen was extremely upset by this until told by her commanding officer that she had done a terrific job. “Any agent who so easily gives up his secrets to a beautiful woman, cannot be trusted.”
If an agent divulged his secrets to Noreen, he was instantly dismissed.
She admitted, “I hated it. I almost prayed that they wouldn’t talk. It was awful to have to betray them.” However, she could see the necessity of the ‘honey trap’.
At no point was Noreen (or any other SOE operative) allowed to tell their family or friends what they did. Noreen told her mother she had a non-descript job at the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.
In the latter part of the war, Noreen got engaged again – but this broke down.
After the war, Noreen trained as a nurse before joining the BBC French Service in Paris. Whilst there, she met Jacques Riols, a highly decorated French war hero.
Noreen worked for the BBC for five years before moving to Bucharest in Romania, to teach English. She lived in the British Embassy.
After six months, Noreen returned to Paris to work for a press agency. There, she met Jacques Riols again, who was now working in public relations. They married soon afterwards.
Jacques had three children from an earlier marriage – Olivier, Herve and Marie-France – who Noreen adopted. They also had two more sons: Yves-Michel and Christopher. They lived in a beautiful villa near the town of Poissy.
Noreen held dual British / French nationality.
She became a freelance journalist and was regularly on the radio (particularly Woman’s Hour) and sometimes appeared on television.
Noreen also started writing novels. A quartet, ‘The Ardnakil Chronicles’ were loosely based on her wartime experiences in the SOE (‘Katherine’, ‘To Live Again’, ‘Before the Dawn’ and ‘Where Love Endures’).
She wrote a total of seven novels and two non-fiction books, ‘The Eye of the Storm’, about her struggles with post-natal depression and a book about abortion.
Noreen never mentioned her war experiences until the SOE files were opened in 2000. She said her only regret was that her mother had died without ever knowing what Noreen had done in the war. “My whole life was a lie. I lied to my mother, I lied to my friends.”
On one occasion, Noreen and Jacques took in a lodger, a young man called Paul Harris, who was training to become a vicar. They remained close friends for the rest of her life (he ultimately became a vicar in Bournemouth). Paul was stunned to find out about Noreen’s wartime experiences. She never gave him any clue.
The files revealed that the F-Section had sent over 400 agents into France, 104 of whom never returned (91 men and 13 women). Noreen spent the rest of her life keeping alive the memory of those in the SOE who had died in occupied territory.
Noreen was an excellent public speaker. She visited schools and many other organisations to talk about the SOE. After one public meeting in Cheltenham, she received a standing ovation from the whole hall. She immediately halted the clapping. “It is not me you should be clapping, but those that gave their lives in the war.” The volume of applause immediately increased.
One of the stories she told was about an agent called Francis Cammaerts. He was extremely popular back at SOE headquarters, but had been in France for nine months, on the run from the Gestapo. Eventually they caught him and put him in an impregnable prison.
The SOE learned he was to be executed at dawn the following day. “He was only 29 and had a wife and two children. Everybody was terribly down in the dumps.”
However, another SOE operative, Polish born Christine Granville (Krystyna Skarbek), visited the prison. She wandered around the walls singing a song she knew Cammaerts loved. It was when she heard someone joining in from a cell, that it was confirmed he was actually there.
Christine then demanded to see the Prison Governor, claiming to be a member of the French Royal Family (which she wasn’t). She told the Governor that he knew the war was coming to an end and that the Germans would lose.
She said if he released Cammaerts, she would put in a good word for him after the war. If they shot him, there would be terrible repercussions.
Cammaerts was let go – and the SOE and French Resistance spirited him back to England.
For many years, Noreen’s contribution was not recognized by France as she had not set foot in their country during the war, but they eventually relented, and in 2014 she became a Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur.
That same year, Noreen published a memoir about her time in the SOE. It was called ‘The Secret Ministry of Ag and Fish – My Life in Churchill’s School for Spies’. ‘Ag and Fish’ was the nickname for the governmental department Noreen never actually worked for.
She was awarded an MBE in 2023, which was presented to her in the British Embassy in Paris by the ambassador to France, Dame Meena Rawlings.
Noreen died in Poissy in France.
Dame Meena said of Noreen, “She was just this incredible sharp, sparkly, twinkly, humble, but incredibly impressive woman, even well into her nineties. It was a life well-lived.”
Taking Noreen’s funeral service, the Rev. Paul Harris said, “I will always remember Noreen as a fine example of someone who was prepared to deal with the most serious thing in life, be a woman of faith and yet keep a wonderful sense of humour.”
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