I admit to being sucked down a rabbit hole. When I overheard that conversation in a community centre, about a German spy parachuting into England dressed as a nun, I had just wanted to confirm or deny that it actually happened. In searching for “spies dressed as nuns”, I came across the story of Margaret Spencer. While the conversation I had overheard was basically a synopsis of a fictional story, Margaret seemed to be presenting her story as fact. I was hooked… and suddenly we have another five-post series. It has taken far longer to write than I had thought. In part this was due to me feeling the need to read a couple of books, one on SOE agent Violette Szabó and the other on Britain’s Fifth Column. With those under my belt, I feel I have a better overview of clandestine missions to France and how Fifth Columnists were handled, both of which impinge on the Margaret Spencer story.
My earlier post on Margaret (née Payne) Spencer received several comments and emails. One of most helpful was from Alan Starr, who actually had the text of the 2014 Eastbourne Herald articles detailing Margaret’s wartime exploits. I was already in the process of beating the bushes of Sussex contacts in Hove and Brighton to see if someone could track down the articles at their local library. Alan saved me (and my contacts) a LOT of work! In addition, Alan sent a copy of a document written by Margaret on 8 May, 2005, and deposited with the Pevensey & Westham Historical Society. The title of the document is: “The Beginning and the End of Sister Evangeline” and tells the tale of Margaret and her dear friend, and fellow agent, a Grey Friar named Pierre de Coursey, as they exposed and eliminated a German agent from the depths of MI6.
Margaret wrote the Evangeline article as part of the 60th anniversary of VE Day (Victory in Europe) celebrations. I am going to start with this document for a number of reasons: (1) it was published in 2005, before the Eastbourne Herald articles (2014); (2) it was actually written by Margaret and has not been filtered through an editor or a journalist; (3) the information in the document provides us with a timeline against which we can compare the information from the later Eastbourne Herald articles.
In order to comply with Fair Use laws, I am unable to reproduce the article in full here. I will summarize some sections and focus on quoting the key ones. The document is typewritten and 11 pages long, double-spaced. There are no section headings so I have added some for navigational purposes. Let’s get started…
Introducing Pierre de Coursey
Margaret begins by stating that before she can tell us about Sister Evangeline, she first needs to share a bit about her French “contact”, Pierre de Coursey. Before he died in 1999, Pierre asked her to write the story of their adventures together. According to Margaret, Pierre played a vital role in her missions on the Continent. One does wonder if, had he not made this request, Margaret would have stayed silent about her adventures.
According to Margaret, Pierre was born on 29 June, 1917, the feast day of St. Peter. It would make sense that a lad born on St. Peter’s Day would be named Pierre (Peter). He was born in Provence, in Southern France, the only child of wealthy parents. According to Margaret, Pierre had a very privileged childhood. He was educated by the monks at an abbey near the chateau where his family lived. All of this sounds fuzzy. There are no details, no nearby town or city, no name of the chateau, no idea what Pierre’s parents did for a living. All we know about Pierre’s father (nameless) was that he attended Eton, and that Pierre was sent there as well. Given that Eton educates boys aged 13 to 18, we can presume that Pierre’s education at the Abbey was from ages 6 to 12 (ish).
After graduating from Eton at the age of 18, Pierre made a life-changing decision. Rather than going to Cambridge University, he decided to go to Assisi and become a Franciscan Monk. This seems like an “out-of-left-field” decision and couldn’t have gone down well with his father. Mind you, we don’t know what his father did for a living. Perhaps there was no “family business” to turn over to their only child. Pierre’s move to Assisi would have taken place in 1935 according to his age and year of birth. Margaret then states that Pierre was ordained a priest by the Pope at St. Peter’s Basilica (Rome) on Easter 1940. This is a pretty specific event, and might be worth trying to track down via the Vatican archives (at some point).
From all of this, we can presume that Pierre was fluent in French (born there), English (studied at Eton), Italian (went to Assisi to become a monk) and probably Latin (was a Catholic). It is also helpful to note that Margaret claims he was actually a Catholic priest, not simply a Catholic monk (or brother). If Pierre was ordained at Easter 1940, that would have been around 24 March. The Second World War was six months old, but was still in the Phoney War phase. Nazi Germany was dealing with Poland and the Allies were manning the Western Front where nothing was happening. But that would soon change. Denmark and Norway were attacked in April 1940 and the Low Countries and France followed in May 1940. The German Blitzkrieg (lightening war) blew apart the Allied defences and most of France capitulated quickly
(From Britannica)
According to Margaret: “During the summer of 1940 [Pierre’s] parents, grandparents and their staff were all murdered by the Germans when they overran the Chateau.” This seems highly unlikely. Provence was never “invaded” by the Germans, the line of their advance never reaching that far south, particularly in the summer of 1940. Provence was well within Vichy France. Unless, of course, the chateau was not in Provence, but somewhere else in France. Even then, it would be extremely excessive for the Germans to simply murder everyone in the chateau. Margaret noted that, upon receiving news of this atrocity, Pierre returned to France and joined the Resistance. As a Franciscan monk, however, Pierre would have been under obedience to the head of his monastery and his religious order. It seems unlikely that his superiors would have given him permission to enter what was essentially a war zone, and possibly compromise the safety of all other monks. But, for the sake of Margaret’s narrative, let’s run with it.
Pierre left his monastery in Italy and went to France to join the Resistance, in the summer of 1940. According to Margaret, this was how the two of them met. Margaret was ordered to make contact with a young priest, a Grey Friar. From that moment onwards, Pierre was Margaret’s “Control” (i.e. handler or overseer) whenever she was in France. Conversely, when Pierre came to England, Margaret served as his “Control”. I am by no means an expert on MI6 or SOE operations, but it seems a bit odd for two relatively new and inexperienced agents to serve as handlers for each other. Generally speaking, a handler would be someone higher up the hierarchical chain of command, and definitely someone with more experience. We also need to remember that Margaret was working as a Draper’s Assistant and living at home in Eastbourne in September 1939. In less than a year, she was a trained and trusted agent for MI6?
Margaret seems determined to demonstrate that she and Pierre had a very close and trusting relationship. According to her:
“On one occasion Pierre saved my life by deliberately standing in front of me when the Germans were taking ‘pot shots’ at me. At that time I had to scramble onto a plane and it was three weeks before I knew whether he had been killed. In fact, he had been rescued and taken to a Monastry [sic] where he was nursed back to health by the ‘brothers’.”
So, Margaret was scrambling to board an aeroplane in France, presumably after a mission. The Germans were close enough to see the aircraft and the two people standing next to it, even though it was likely nighttime. They were taking “pot shots” at Margaret, but not at Pierre, which seems strange. Why would they not be taking “pot shots” at the two of them, or at the aeroplane? If it was night time, it would make sense that the Germans might not be able to aim with any degree of accuracy, in which case, any human body would have been a target. The point of this little vignette seems to be, however, to demonstrate that Pierre put himself in harms way to save Margaret. The details are not important to Margaret. It also sounds like Pierre was indeed hit by the Germans, and needed to be nursed back to health. Why the Germans did not capture him, if he was wounded, is a mystery. How did he get to the monastery? Many questions. Not a lot of answers.
Margaret then jumps forward in time to the post-war period. According to her, from 1952 to 1970, Pierre served as a parish priest in Provence. From 1970 to 1999, he lived in Paris where, along with two lay brothers, he ran a drop-in centre for the “down-and-outs”. Through that entire time, he and Margaret kept in touch and were “dear friends”. When Pierre died, he bequeathed his priest’s ring to her, something that she was proud to wear: “In every way he was a Good Man”. In case we might be thinking that Pierre and Margaret had a “thing” going… we must remember, he was a “Good Man” and a “dear friend”. Perhaps she really did know a French monk. Perhaps they really were good friends. Perhaps.
Now that we have met Pierre and know what a good person he is, Margaret begins the tale of an adventure that seems staggeringly unlikely. But I’ll let you be the judge of that.
A Former King; A Covert Kidnapping; A Pious Nun
I will say this for Margaret, she does cover a lot of ground in one paragraph:
Early in the war I was flown to France and asked to identify a man frequently seen in the company of two S.S. men there. I soon realised that he was a very well known Englishman who, at that time, was supposed to be in Nassau in the Bahamas. When I arrived back in England I contacted Headquarters straight away – with hindsight that was not a good move. Three days later I was picked up by a car and driver whom I did not know and put aboard a plane with a pilot I did not know: “Oh. you foolish girl”! We landed in France where, with a gun in my back, I was walked along a road towards a car. Luckily for me, and without my realising, we chanced to pass two French Resistance men who saw what was happening. My hands were tied and I was pushed into the back of the car with two German soldiers in front, one driving. Off we went, and to say that I was frightened would be the biggest understatement of them all. I began to wonder at what stage I should take my cyanide pill! The pills were given to us not as a coward’s way out but in order to protect our colleagues because none of us could know how we would stand up to tortures.
What would the time frame have been for this little vignette? “Early in the war”… could that mean 1939 or 1940? If there were S.S. men in France, this would seem to indicate that the incident took place after the Germans invaded France. And if Pierre was involved, then it definitely took place after the Germans invaded France. So we are probably looking at late 1940 or perhaps 1941.
As for the well-known Englishman, who was supposed to be in the Bahamas… could it be the former King Edward VIII? It seems rather ridiculous to think that Hitler would have let Edward slip out of his grasp, when the English were so determined to keep Edward out of German hands. It also seems rather odd that Margaret, a lady who likely never met the Duke of Windsor would have been sent to France to identify him, or any other “well-known” Englishman. Let’s not even get into the logistics of finding this Englishman, and getting close enough, through all of the S.S. men to actually identify him with certainty.
Margaret then says that, after returning to England, she contacted “Headquarters” to let them know what she had seen in France. Given that she was apparently working for SIS, we can presume that this would have been MI6’s headquarters. If we are to believe Margaret, then headquarters had been infiltrated by Nazi agents, who had quite a network at their disposal – cars, drivers, even a pilot and a plane. Where this plane landed is not clear, but one would imagine that they would have landed at a Nazi airfield given that Margaret was essentially being kidnapped. After landing, Margaret was marched at gunpoint along a road to a car. Luckily two random French Resistance men saw this little parade and recognized Margaret as an SIS agent and a friend of Pierre.
Suddenly there was a rattle of gunfire and the driver and his mate were both shot. I was dragged out of the car and literally thrown onto the floor at the back of another car which immediately sped away. I naturally thought this was another German car so I started to shout at them, probably using some choice language. However, in very posh English I was told to keep still and shut up. I realised that it was Pierre and, sitting in the back seat, was a Nun smiling at me. We drove for a very long time with me still out of sight on the floor. We finally drew up at a Convent of the Sisters of Mercy who were part of the Franciscan Order and wore the same grey habit as Pierre. It transpired later that Pierre was very well known at the convent as he frequently took the mass there, so it was natural that he should turn to them for help.
Soooo… two French Resistance men saw Margaret being frog-marched along the road, towards a car. The car, with two German soldiers inside, then drove away with Margaret. Before it had gone too far, however, it was suddenly peppered with gunfire, accurate enough to kill the two German soldiers in the front seat but avoid hitting Margaret. She was then dragged from that car into another car, which she thought was also operated by the Germans. Which is odd… why would one batch of Germans shoot another batch of Germans? We are also not clear who dragged her from the German car – one of the French Resistance men? The driver of the new car? But no, the second car is driven by none other than her friend Pierre, with a nun in the back seat. So, we are to believe that (a) the two French Resistance men had recognized Margaret (fortunate for her) and (b) somehow communicated her situation to Pierre, who (c) just happened to be in the neighbourhood with (d) a car and a nun and… guns? If Pierre was driving, then who shot the German soldiers? The nun? Or was it an ambush arranged by the French Resistance men? It all seems rather far-fetched.
Pierre drove Margaret to a Convent of the Sisters of Mercy. Who were these Sisters of Mercy? There is a congregation, the Sisters of Mercy (or Mercy Sisters), a religious order that was founded in 1831 in Dublin, Ireland. The order spread to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, England, Jamaica and the Philippines. There is no evidence that the order was ever present in France. There are several other Sisters of Mercy congregations but I couldn’t find any that were affiliated with the Franciscans.
It is odd that Pierre, a priest, frequently “took the mass” at the convent. That language implies that he attended Mass there (i.e. partook), rather than celebrating Mass himself (as a priest) or, at the very least, concelebrating with another priest.
Margaret then shares how she was fed a meal at the convent and taken to her cell for the night. The nuns stripped all of her clothing and burnt it so that she could never be identified by any item. The following morning, two nuns helped her get dressed in one of their habits and gave her a rosary and a missal with the name “Sister Evangeline” written inside. Pierre and Margaret then drove away.
We get no sense from Margaret as to her religious affiliation. One would presume that she was Anglican. Certainly she and her siblings were baptized in the Anglican church and her brother was confirmed at Christ Church parish in Eastbourne. As such, the Roman Catholic Mass may not have been all that different from an Anglican service, with the exception of being in Latin. Would a Catholic rosary have been the same as an Anglican rosary? Would she have known her way around a Catholic missal? How was her Latin? What about the different prayer times for the nuns: Lauds (3am), Prime (6am), Terce (9am), Sext (noon), None (3pm), Vespers (evening), Compline (before going to bed), and Matins (Midnight)? How convincing of a nun would Margaret have been? We also get no sense of whether Margaret could speak or understand French. She makes no mention of it, which suggests that she likely didn’t, or at least didn’t want to call attention to a gaping hole in her narrative.
We drove to a little country church where I was to stay at the priest’s house until collected; little did I know I would be there for three weeks. I was treated with the utmost kindness by the old village priest and his housekeeper. For a few mornings I found it difficult, without help, to dress in the Nun’s habit, standing with a scratchy calico vest, no bra, no belt, very long black wooly knickers (real passion killers!), black wooly socks and heavy lace-up shoes. Over these items went the grey dress, on top of which had to be tied the starched Wimple (that’s the white piece that frames the face). On top, again, went the veil which draped down to below the knees. Finally, a cord, from which hung the rosary, was tied around my waist. At last, I was fully dressed and, golly, it was hot!
Was it a “country church” or a “village”? It makes no sense to remove Margaret from the convent and place her in a more exposed situation in a village. Again, one wonders how she communicated with the priest and his housekeeper? Odd too that she would need help to get dressed. Who helped her? The housekeeper? Would that not have been a dead giveaway? A nun who couldn’t get herself dressed? I’m not sure why she felt compelled to let us know that long black woolen knickers were “passion killers”. Who would have seen her in her underclothes? Pierre? Surely not!
Margaret was sequestered in the village for three weeks and proudly states that she never let on that she was a “fake”. She attended Mass every morning and spent the days in the church or strolling in the churchyard. She stayed in the village for three weeks and that period of quiet had a profound impact on her and “changed [her] life for ever”. On the last morning of her stay, as she took communion from the priest, he whispered “Tonight” to her. Obviously he had known who she was all along. But… why whisper this cryptic message to her at communion when other individuals were present? Surely, given that she was living with him, he could have just told her in the privacy of his office, before or after Mass. Or at any other time during the day.
I also find it odd that no villager approached her during this time. No one said “Bonjour” or “Bonne Soirée”? No one wondered at the strange nun who had just appeared in their village and lived with the priest? It would seem that the living situation would have been more likely to generate some tongue-wagging, the last thing that one would want in this case It also seems odd that Pierre wouldn’t have told her that the old village priest was a trusted confidant. But fear not, Pierre is on his way…
After supper that evening, I went to my room, collected my few belongings and, when it was dark, I went and sat in the church porch. After a while a car drew up with Pierre driving. While he went into the house I got into the car. Very soon we were away and I was eager to find out where he had been and what had happened. Well, he had been to England and seen my brother who was also a member of the S.I.S. and had been instrumental in recruiting me to that organisation. Between them, and one or two trusted men, they found a German agent working at headquarters and he had been dealt with! The agent had been the cause of my betrayal and for the fact that three good men had lost their lives in order to rescue me – a sobering thought.
Pierre had been to England? But had left her in France? For three weeks!? Why hadn’t she gone with him? Oh, right, there was a mole at “Headquarters”, but luckily Pierre and Margaret’s brother (also an SIS member) had found two trusted men (hard to know whom to trust if Headquarters was compromised) and they had dealt with the German agent (and presumably the driver of the kidnapping car and the pilot of the kidnapping plane). It’s not clear who the three good men were who lost their lives to rescue Margaret. If there was a Nazi agent who had infiltrated MI6, and had been “dealt with” (murdered/assassinated?), this would be news indeed. But the only ones we know of are the Cambridge Five who were working for the Soviets… not the Germans. And they weren’t exposed until after the war.
Reading Margaret’s story, every sentence generates more and more questions; they pop up like mushrooms. Let’s focus for a moment on her statement that her brother was a member of the Secret Intelligence Service (a.k.a. SIS or MI6).
Diversion – Margaret’s Brother
This is the first I’ve heard of Margaret’s brother being involved with MI6. In my last post on Margaret, I didn’t really delve into her brothers, so let’s take a closer look at them.
Margaret had three siblings: Irene (born 1908), Charles F. (born 1911) and Nigel Edward (born 1915). Irene we heard about in the last post. Charles died in 1911 as an infant. That leaves Nigel Edward Payne as the sole surviving brother, and presumably the one who served in MI6 and recruited Margaret. What can we dig up on Nigel?
In 1939, at the time of the National Registration, Nigel Edward Payne was living in Sheffield, Yorkshire. He was residing at 382 Brincliffe Edge Road, with several unrelated individuals, likely all boarders of the head of the household, Edith Standfield (born 1913). Nigel’s occupation was: Mechanical Engineering Draughtsman (Senior) – Experienced Plasmatic Tools Compressor IC Engines. That is quite the mouthful and sounds like it might have been a pretty important role during a war when internal combustion engines drove everything from army trucks to tanks to aeroplanes. I rather think that Nigel worked in a reserved occupation and was likely protected from the draft.
A year later, in September 1940, Nigel married Constance Mary Neale at St. Paul’s Church in Burton-on-Trent, north-northeast of Birmingham, in Staffordshire. Constance and Nigel had two children in quick succession: Michael E. Payne (born 1942) and Sheila E. Payne (born 1946). After the war, Nigel invented a number of engineering gizmos whose patents were held by Rolls Royce.
I find it rather hard to imagine Nigel as a covert operative for MI6; that he had the time to go gallivanting around Great Britain, while also holding down a job as an engineering draughtsman, and a husband… and a father. Most of the MI6 and MI5 officers had cover jobs working in vague government offices in London. But if Nigel was actually an operative for MI6, who did neutralize a Nazi mole in MI6 in 1940/41… then it would certainly be a stunning piece of news.
Sister Evangeline Flying a Lysander
Let’s go back to Pierre and Margaret who are driving in the darkness of German-occupied France to a rendezvous…
After driving for a while we drove into a field and found there the familiar black shape of a British Lysander aircraft. This was a small monoplane with fixed undercarriage used extensively during the war for dropping British agents by parachute or landing them into France. These planes were flown mostly out of R.A.F. Tangmere in West Sussex. However, this particular aircraft was normally based at the old Croydon aerodrome from where it was flown by an ‘S.I.S.’ pilot.
Margaret then explains the difference between the S.O.E. (Special Operations Executive) and the S.I.S. (Secret Intelligence Service – MI6). The SOE, according to Margaret, were good at blowing things up and were known as “The Gelignite Gang”. The only reference I could find to “The Gelignite Gang” was a movie from 1956 of that same name that told the story of a gang of safecrackers in Soho. Margaret says that the SOE were disbanded at the end of the war and that “these are the ‘bods’ that are written about and seen in some television programmes”. It does make me wonder what television programmes Margaret watched over the years and how much they may have influenced her narrative. I watched Carve Her Name with Pride (1958) and it was a very good movie, but I wonder if Margaret also saw it.
According the Margaret, the SIS, of which she was a part, was for “spies who worked alone”. Except for Margaret and Pierre, of course, who seem to have worked together. There was a group of six people (three men and three women) who were all trained to fly the Lysander, parachute by day or night, operate in armed and unarmed combat and were permitted to shoot to kill with no questions asked. Interestingly, there is no mention of being trained in wireless radio operation or coding. Seems a bit of an oversight. By the end of the war, Margaret was the only one left from her group of six. She thanks her father for teaching her to shoot so well. He had been a chief gunnery instructor for the Navy at Whale Island, Portsmouth. He had won the Bisley Challenge Cup three years running and had taught his daughter about guns and how to shoot.
All of this seems a bit off. So Margaret was part of an elite group of SIS operatives who, with no previous flying experience, were taught how to fly the Lysander aeroplane? The Air Transport Auxiliary used female pilots to ferry aircraft around England (from factories to airfields, for example). Many of those women were already accomplished pilots in their own right before the war began. Why would SIS choose Margaret, a complete novice, to fly a notoriously tricky aircraft? Her father was indeed a Navy gunnery instructor, but whether he actually taught Margaret how to use a gun… I have my doubts. When he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head in 1946, she told the coroner’s inquest that she knew he had the gun, but she didn’t know that he had ammunition for it. If she was as familiar and comfortable with guns as she claimed, then one would think she would have known what weapons and ammunition were in the house.
Now I continue with my story from the point where Pierre and I were in that French field beside a Lysander aircraft. It dawned on me that there was no pilot. Whoever had flown the plane to France, presumably had gone off on some other mission. So it was off with my head dress and on with a flack jacket and helmet. I got into the tiny cockpit and did the usual pre-flight checks. Pierre sat behind me in the navigator’s seat. When all was ready, I signalled to the Resistance men who had accompanied us. They took away the chocks and we were off. In a few minutes I got my bearings, crossed the channel and looked out for familiar landmarks. I came in over Beachy Head with a little back-chat from the radar operators, and flew on to Croydon. There, the cheeky radio operator so-and-so’s asked if I had a passenger. When I said, “Yes”, they said, “Poor bugger – tell him to start praying and they would call out the fire tender and ‘blood waggon'”! Now this was a joke to me but poor Pierre didn’t know I was a trained pilot.
A Lysander aircraft was just left sitting in a French field? With no pilot? That sounds a bit odd. But handy for Margaret. She had a plane with no pilot and of course, she needed to fly it. In her narrative, Margaret makes much of the radar operator and how “poor Pierre didn’t know I was a trained pilot”. Surely by that point, when they are coming in for a landing, Pierre would have already figured out that Margaret could fly the thing… given they had already taken off in the dead of night and navigated their way over the English Channel?? I also question the timing of this flight. Pierre picked her up at night and drove her to the field where the convenient Lysander was located. They took off, presumably at night, and she was able to get her bearings once in the air, from familiar landmarks? At night? She must have had a LOT of flying experience. Which again, seems odd given she had no pre-war flying experience.
Having safely landed in England, Margaret says that a car drove them to a “safe house” in Norbury, not far from Croydon, for a de-briefing. A case with Margaret’s own clothes was waiting for her, so she could divest of herself of the passion-killing knickers. Pierre left for France a few days later and Margaret “went back to nursing at the hospital in Ely in Cambridgeshire”.
This is surprising news. According to Margaret’s earlier comment, the entire Evangeline escapade took place “early in the war”, possibly late in 1940 or in 1941. She makes no mention of seasons, other than to say that the nun’s habit was “hot”, so it’s hard to assign a concrete timeline to this adventure. One would presume it would not have taken place in the winter. From my earlier post, we know that Margaret was a Draper’s Assistant in September 1939, living in Eastbourne with her parents. We also know that at the time she met her future husband in 1942/43, she was a Probationer Nurse in Eastbourne.
It seems rather odd for Margaret to be a Draper’s Assistant in 1939… then a nurse in Ely, Cambridgeshire (1940/41) and then a Probationer Nurse in Eastbourne (1942/43). It also seems a bit of a stretch to believe that any hospital matron in Ely would have allowed one of her junior/probationer nurses to be absent for weeks on end.
Evangeline Adventures in Assisi
This 1940/41 adventure in the “early” part of the war, was not the only mission for “Sister Evangeline”.
During the rest of the war I was sent on many missions, mostly to France, some to Germany and twice to Italy. The Monks at Assisi in Italy were doing a marvellous job of secreting allied soldiers and getting them home but, sometimes, they needed a little help.
Margaret must also have had a passing familiarity with Italian as well as French. Interestingly, she makes no mention of where she learned foreign languages. As for the monks of Assisi assisting allied soldiers… we do know about the Assisi Network which helped Jews, but I’ve not come across any reference to them assisting Allied soldiers. We also know that an Irish Jesuit priest (not a monk, nor a Franciscan), Fr. Hugh O’Flaherty created a network to help Allied soldiers.
On every mission I wore my Nun’s habit – what a wonderful disguise it was: roomy enough to wear a shoulder holster and, because, as a Nun, nobody expected me to speak, it was a case of “Hear all; see all; say nowt”!
It must have been a sight for sore eyes to see a Nun floating down from the sky with her skirts tucked into her knickers! As soon as I landed it was a mad rush to get out of my parachute, roll it up and stuff it in a hedge out of sight. I then had to put myself straight and walk demurely to the nearest road.
I’m not sure where Margaret got that idea that no one expected Catholic nuns to speak, unless they were cloistered nuns, in which case they wouldn’t be strolling around the countryside. I’m also not sure why Margaret would not have worn a flying suit over her nun outfit. Landing by parachute is never a dignified affair and a nun with a muddy and torn habit would certainly have attracted attention. In addition, had the Germans received even the tiniest whiff that nuns were parachuting into France, I’m sure they would have arrested every single nun caught strolling demurely (or not) along a road.
Behind Enemy Lines on D-Day
We now jump ahead in Margaret’s narrative to June 1944 and the Allied invasion of Normandy.
As a fully trained nurse, I had 15 soldiers with German Measles in my hospital at Ely and I was told to discharge them back to barracks whether or not they were fit. That put me on alert and so it was no surprise to receive a message to get ready. On the night of 2nd June, 1944, I was dropped, again by parachute, just outside Bayeux in Normandy. I cannot tell you just what I was there for but it is sufficient to say that I was to pass back to England some useful information including details of German troop strengths, whereabouts and readiness. I made my way towards the seaside village of Arromanches and ‘Gold Beach’. There was a large German defence position, part of their ‘Atlantic Wall’, which the French Resistance men were supposed to blow up. I don’t know what went wrong but the Resistance men were killed before they could undertake their task and it was vital for me to get that information back to England.
Finally, a solid timeline. Margaret claims that by 1944, she was a fully trained nurse (albeit not a Registered Nurse, as we know she does not appear in the directory of RNs). She was still (again?) stationed at Ely in Cambridgeshire in the spring of 1944. This timeline does not match the information we uncovered in my previous post. She met her future husband (D.L. Scott) in 1942/43, in Eastbourne. Hard to imagine her moving around from Eastbourne (1939) to Ely (1940/41) to Eastbourne (1942/43) and back to Ely (1944). Not to mention that she went from being a Probationer Nurse in 1942/43 to being a fully trained nurse by 1944. It does not seem feasible.
She then tells us that she was dropped behind (or within) enemy lines The Normandy coast would have been crawling with German troops, and yet Margaret (dressed in her nun outfit) would have been able to wander down to the coastal defences? She would also have been able to walk around and assess the German troop strengths, their readiness (how would she assess that?) and their whereabouts. One person? Or was she supposed to gather such information from the French Resistance? How would she have connected with them?
Well, as you know, ‘D’ Day dawned on 6th June, 1944, and those who were there, myself included, will remember the tremendous noise of the bombardment; it was unbelievable. I’m sorry but I still don’t want to remember all the sheer hell of the days I was there. Later, when I realised I was there no longer, I felt I was lucky because I don’t think I was tough enough.
Her memories of this time are fuzzy. It seems rather dangerous for her to be behind (or within) enemy lines when the Allies were bombing the German lines. There is also no mention of how she got word back to the Allies about the failed attempt to blow up one of the German defensive positions. Did she have a radio? A pigeon or two tucked in her habit?
After the tanks were beginning to push inland, I was in a little village where our boys were soon expected to arrive. There, I spotted two German snipers at upstairs windows, one on either side of the street. I managed to shoot one and was taking aim at the other when another German must have seen what that ‘naughty Nun’ was doing. I felt a bang in the back; I had been shot from behind and was then bludgeoned over the head with a rifle butt and left for dead.
So Margarete, presumably dressed as a nun, could see two snipers, on opposite sides of the street. How was she in a position to see two sides of the same street? Standing in the middle of the street? From whence she was able to shoot one sniper? The snipers must have been asleep not to have noticed the nun with a gun? Shooting a sniper? With a pistol? How did she know it was a rifle butt that bludgeoned her, if she was hit from behind? If she saw the rifle butt, then surely she saw who hit her. One of the tabloid articles said she was shot by a sniper, but given that she was taking aim at the second sniper, her assailant was likely a German soldier. What she was doing in a village crawling with Germans is unknown.
When I regained consciousness I was back in England at Haslar Hospital with my Dad and brother at my bedside. How I was brought back to England I don’t know but someone friendly must have realised I was still alive and organised my rescue. I had been shot in the back and the bullet was lodged in one of the vertebrae of my spine. The bullet was too close to the spinal cord to be removed and so it remains there to this day. Over the passing years bone has grown over the bullet and has caused a fair amount of discomfort – nursing is not the ideal career for someone with a dodgy back.
At that time, I was told at the hospital that I would be in a wheelchair by the time I was 50. Well, I am now 85 and still walking after a fashion.
Someone had shot Margaret in the back and then knocked her on the head. That would suggest that the assailant was close enough to knock her over the head, which means that she would have been shot from close quarters. Or was she shot from farther away and then hit on the head with a rifle butt? From whatever distance… the bullet only lodged in her vertebrae. One would think that a bullet, possibly from the other end of the rifle butt that hit her in the head, would have shattered the vertebrae. It seems unlikely that a bullet would simply pass through the skin and lodge in a vertebrate where it happily resided for the rest of her life.
And thus we come to the end of Sister Evangeline’s exploits. She was still with the SIS and was back on duty two months later, in August, 1944. That was a rather rapid recovery from a shot to the spine. Someone also decided that she wasn’t allowed on anymore parachute missions and she wasn’t sent abroad again until 1952. There is no mention of her giving birth to a child in 1945… nor her marriage to D.L. Scott, and subsequent divorce. Minor details I suppose. I’m not sure what she might have done for SIS between 1944 and 1952. I suppose they could have kept her on the list of possible agents…
Margaret closes with:
Well, those are the last of my memoires that I intend to tell; the rest are going to stay in the past where they belong.
As we will learn… she did share more of her memories with her family in a series of letters that were then published posthumously in 2014 in the Eastbourne Herald. We’ll have to wait and see how they dovetail (or not) with the Sister Evangeline adventures.
Conclusion
Let me start by saying that I have no trouble acknowledging the exploits of the SOE and SIS heroes and heroines. I have read the story of Violette Szabó and it is inspiring and insanely sad. Many women risked their lives on behalf of the Allied cause and freedom. Their lives and adventures make for dramatic reading. The difference between their story and Margaret’s is… they have facts behind them. Margaret’s story reads like very thin fiction, wishful thinking or a bedtime story for grandchildren. “Tell us about the war Gramma!!” There is zero evidence to support any of her claims.
The holes in her narrative, the inconsistencies, the oddities, the factual errors are just too numerous. I’m not sure what is behind the entire charade, but it does no service to Margaret. Perhaps she had a Catholic prayer book in her possession with “Sister Evangeline” inscribed on the inside front cover? Perhaps she made up a fantastic story about the prayer book, rather than admitting that she was a Catholic-wanna-be? We don’t know.
This story of Sr. Evangeline was the first of Margaret’s accounts that made it into print. After her passing in 2014, three more stories would be printed in the Eastbourne Herald. We will look at each of those articles in the next few blog posts. And just in case your curious, Sr. Evangeline and Fr. Pierre make absolutely no appearance in these other stories. Which is odd, don’t you think?
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