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From The Times
February 26, 2008
Pearl Witherington
SOE officer whose leadership of French Resistance fighters was a thorn in the side of the Germans before and after D-Day
Pearl Witherington
“Outstanding. Probably the best shot, male or female, we have yet had,” ran an early report on Pearl Witherington during her training for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in 1943. Once trained, she was parachuted into German-occupied France as an SOE courier. When the leader of her group was caught by the Gestapo, she took over the organisation of a 2,000-strong band of French maquisards, and conducted herself with great gallantry with them. For this she was appointed MBE (Civil Division) but returned the insignia with an icy note saying that she had done nothing remotely “civil”.
Born in 1916 in Paris, from where her father travelled widely as the supplier of Swedish paper used in the manufacture of bank notes, she had an instructive childhood. Her father lived very extravagantly and she once returned to their apartment to see the family furniture being piled up in the street by the bailiffs.
At the time of the German Blitzkrieg into northern France in May 1940, she was working as an assistant to the Air Attaché in the British Embassy, but through being “locally enlisted” was not included in the official evacuation scheme and had to make her way to England through the Vichy-controlled zone (which initially avoided German occupation) then via neutral Spain to Portugal, from where she boarded a coaster to Gibraltar.
She arrived in England in July 1941. Yet although burning with zeal to do something seriously worthwhile for the war effort, it took two years before she found her niche in SOE. At the end of her training, her final report assessed, “This student, although a woman, has got leader's qualities. Cool, resourceful and extremely determined. Very capable, completely brave.” She completed parachute training without hesitation or difficulty; only Morse code gave her problems but she was to be a courier between SOE groups, not a radio operator.
Parachuted into the Châteauroux district on the night of September 22-23, 1943, after failed attempts on the two previous nights when the pilot could not find the dropping zone, she was blown by a high wind away from the DZ but eventually found by Squadron Leader Maurice Southgate, leader of SOE's “Stationer” circuit operating between Périgueux and Montluçon. Three weeks later Southgate was recalled to London for an expected two weeks consultation which ran into three months. Pitched in at the deep end, Witherington took over the handling of the Stationer circuit, aided only by her radio operator and another courier, Jacqueline Nearne.
A sabotage attack on the Michelin tyre factory at Clemont-Ferrand, in which 40,000 tyres for the German army were destroyed, was carried out by maquisards working on her guidance. She judged it less than ideally successful, however, reporting to London, “If they had been better trained they would certainly have done better.” At this stage, she was still without a reasonably safe base and so spent her time travelling about the region at night, when German or Vichy police checks were less frequent, using a first-class season ticket.
Her first narrow escape was not from the enemy, but from a French Resistance group with whom she was unable to establish her SOE credentials until she gave the name of the farmer into whose field she had parachuted. The second occasion was more nerve-racking. After his return in January 1944, Southgate sent her to check out a supposed contact in Poitiers from whom he had received a letter. Warned by a concierge in Poitiers that the house she was to visit was full of Gestapo and the owners arrested, she returned immediately to report to Southgate.
The most urgent task for the Stationer circuit in the spring of 1944 was preparation to receive the three-man groups of “Jedburghs” - SOE officers to be dropped in uniform on or soon after D-Day in June, to guide the various factions and groups of the French Resistance on acts of sabotage helpful, rather than a hindrance, to the Allied landings and subsequent breakout in Normandy. Southgate was arrested by the Gestapo in Montluçon at the beginning of May, and London gave instructions for the Stationer circuit to be divided into two, with Witherington in charge of the northern one - “Wrestler” - operating between the Cher and the Creuse. Her job was to call for air-delivery of arms to four Resistance groups and give them weapons training.
By this point Pearl had been joined by her prewar fiancé, Henri Cornioley, who had escaped from a German prisoner of war camp and linked up with the Stationer circuit. The pair established their headquarters in the empty gatehouse of a chateau belonging to a strongly Pétainiste family, close to the woods where the four Resistance groups had taken refuge.
On June 11, five days after the Allied landings in Normandy, a German military unit attacked the area of their base, probably after spotting the Maquis activity by air reconnaissance. While Henri Cornioley and the 40 men near the base tried to fight off their attackers, Witherington grabbed the cash reserves and crawled into a cornfield, knowing her role was to avoid capture.
She found refuge with a farmer and his wife some miles away, from where she was able to re-establish contact with her main Maquis group and arrange an arms drop. These continued intermittently until the group was well armed and provided with demolitions. (The group attacked near the gatehouse suffered 24 casualties, but Cornioley and the remainder escaped).
From early July, her group regularly attacked German convoys moving north, delaying them with felled trees, then ambushing the stationary vehicles. In one attack on a convoy on Route National 20, the Germans admitted the loss of 76 men killed and 125 wounded.
In her final report she wrote: “It is important to remember that most of France south of the Loire was liberated by the Resistance.” German losses in the area of the Wrestler circuit under her control exceded 1,000 killed and many more wounded. She was eventually appointed MBE (Military Division) but her recommendation for the Croix de Guerre for Henri Cornioley, whom she married in London in October 1944, was rejected.
She settled down to live with her husband in the area where they had worked together with the maquisards. She later played a leading role in setting up the SOE memorial at Valençay. In 1996, with the help of a journalist, Hervé Larroque, she published a memoir, Pauline, whose title recalled her wartime codename.
In 2004 she was advanced to CBE, the insignia being presented to her in Paris by the Queen during a state visit to France.
One official acknowledgement still eluded her - the award of her parachute wings (which she regarded as more important than her appointments in the Order of the British Empire). This was eventually rectified after an RAF parachute instructor went to interview her at her home in France about her wartime experiences, and in 2006 she was presented with the coveted wings.
Her husband died in 1999. She is survived by a daughter.
Pearl Witherington, CBE, wartime SOE officer, was born on June 24, 1914. She died on February 23, 2008, aged 91
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3432757.ece
February 26, 2008
Pearl Witherington
SOE officer whose leadership of French Resistance fighters was a thorn in the side of the Germans before and after D-Day
Pearl Witherington
“Outstanding. Probably the best shot, male or female, we have yet had,” ran an early report on Pearl Witherington during her training for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in 1943. Once trained, she was parachuted into German-occupied France as an SOE courier. When the leader of her group was caught by the Gestapo, she took over the organisation of a 2,000-strong band of French maquisards, and conducted herself with great gallantry with them. For this she was appointed MBE (Civil Division) but returned the insignia with an icy note saying that she had done nothing remotely “civil”.
Born in 1916 in Paris, from where her father travelled widely as the supplier of Swedish paper used in the manufacture of bank notes, she had an instructive childhood. Her father lived very extravagantly and she once returned to their apartment to see the family furniture being piled up in the street by the bailiffs.
At the time of the German Blitzkrieg into northern France in May 1940, she was working as an assistant to the Air Attaché in the British Embassy, but through being “locally enlisted” was not included in the official evacuation scheme and had to make her way to England through the Vichy-controlled zone (which initially avoided German occupation) then via neutral Spain to Portugal, from where she boarded a coaster to Gibraltar.
She arrived in England in July 1941. Yet although burning with zeal to do something seriously worthwhile for the war effort, it took two years before she found her niche in SOE. At the end of her training, her final report assessed, “This student, although a woman, has got leader's qualities. Cool, resourceful and extremely determined. Very capable, completely brave.” She completed parachute training without hesitation or difficulty; only Morse code gave her problems but she was to be a courier between SOE groups, not a radio operator.
Parachuted into the Châteauroux district on the night of September 22-23, 1943, after failed attempts on the two previous nights when the pilot could not find the dropping zone, she was blown by a high wind away from the DZ but eventually found by Squadron Leader Maurice Southgate, leader of SOE's “Stationer” circuit operating between Périgueux and Montluçon. Three weeks later Southgate was recalled to London for an expected two weeks consultation which ran into three months. Pitched in at the deep end, Witherington took over the handling of the Stationer circuit, aided only by her radio operator and another courier, Jacqueline Nearne.
A sabotage attack on the Michelin tyre factory at Clemont-Ferrand, in which 40,000 tyres for the German army were destroyed, was carried out by maquisards working on her guidance. She judged it less than ideally successful, however, reporting to London, “If they had been better trained they would certainly have done better.” At this stage, she was still without a reasonably safe base and so spent her time travelling about the region at night, when German or Vichy police checks were less frequent, using a first-class season ticket.
Her first narrow escape was not from the enemy, but from a French Resistance group with whom she was unable to establish her SOE credentials until she gave the name of the farmer into whose field she had parachuted. The second occasion was more nerve-racking. After his return in January 1944, Southgate sent her to check out a supposed contact in Poitiers from whom he had received a letter. Warned by a concierge in Poitiers that the house she was to visit was full of Gestapo and the owners arrested, she returned immediately to report to Southgate.
The most urgent task for the Stationer circuit in the spring of 1944 was preparation to receive the three-man groups of “Jedburghs” - SOE officers to be dropped in uniform on or soon after D-Day in June, to guide the various factions and groups of the French Resistance on acts of sabotage helpful, rather than a hindrance, to the Allied landings and subsequent breakout in Normandy. Southgate was arrested by the Gestapo in Montluçon at the beginning of May, and London gave instructions for the Stationer circuit to be divided into two, with Witherington in charge of the northern one - “Wrestler” - operating between the Cher and the Creuse. Her job was to call for air-delivery of arms to four Resistance groups and give them weapons training.
By this point Pearl had been joined by her prewar fiancé, Henri Cornioley, who had escaped from a German prisoner of war camp and linked up with the Stationer circuit. The pair established their headquarters in the empty gatehouse of a chateau belonging to a strongly Pétainiste family, close to the woods where the four Resistance groups had taken refuge.
On June 11, five days after the Allied landings in Normandy, a German military unit attacked the area of their base, probably after spotting the Maquis activity by air reconnaissance. While Henri Cornioley and the 40 men near the base tried to fight off their attackers, Witherington grabbed the cash reserves and crawled into a cornfield, knowing her role was to avoid capture.
She found refuge with a farmer and his wife some miles away, from where she was able to re-establish contact with her main Maquis group and arrange an arms drop. These continued intermittently until the group was well armed and provided with demolitions. (The group attacked near the gatehouse suffered 24 casualties, but Cornioley and the remainder escaped).
From early July, her group regularly attacked German convoys moving north, delaying them with felled trees, then ambushing the stationary vehicles. In one attack on a convoy on Route National 20, the Germans admitted the loss of 76 men killed and 125 wounded.
In her final report she wrote: “It is important to remember that most of France south of the Loire was liberated by the Resistance.” German losses in the area of the Wrestler circuit under her control exceded 1,000 killed and many more wounded. She was eventually appointed MBE (Military Division) but her recommendation for the Croix de Guerre for Henri Cornioley, whom she married in London in October 1944, was rejected.
She settled down to live with her husband in the area where they had worked together with the maquisards. She later played a leading role in setting up the SOE memorial at Valençay. In 1996, with the help of a journalist, Hervé Larroque, she published a memoir, Pauline, whose title recalled her wartime codename.
In 2004 she was advanced to CBE, the insignia being presented to her in Paris by the Queen during a state visit to France.
One official acknowledgement still eluded her - the award of her parachute wings (which she regarded as more important than her appointments in the Order of the British Empire). This was eventually rectified after an RAF parachute instructor went to interview her at her home in France about her wartime experiences, and in 2006 she was presented with the coveted wings.
Her husband died in 1999. She is survived by a daughter.
Pearl Witherington, CBE, wartime SOE officer, was born on June 24, 1914. She died on February 23, 2008, aged 91
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3432757.ece
