Ruth Clement Stowell - the long forgotten MI6 heroine who organised agents to be parachuted into Belgium and Luxembourg on secret missions:

She was also instrumental to the success of the Clarence Service.

This is her story:

Ruth Clement Stowell (née Wright) is one of the hitherto unsung heroines of the Belgian operations. She served as an agent handler, responsible for training and organising the agents who were parachuted into Luxembourg on secret missions.

Her duties included maintaining vital liaison between MI6 in London and the intelligence networks operating in occupied Belgium and Luxembourg.

Ruth Clement Stowell was born in India in 1913. Her father, who worked in the district office for the Indian Civil Service, died a month before her birth. Her mother was a remarkable woman who was determined that Ruth should become as independent as possible. She therefore sent her daughter to Cheltenham Ladies’ College, followed by a period of study in France. Ruth proved to be a natural linguist and became fluent in French. After returning to England, she completed a shorthand-typist course in London before marrying a cousin.

In the late 1930s, Ruth answered an advertisement in 'The Times' placed by the celebrated Arabist author and traveller Freya Stark. In 1938, the two women embarked on an ambitious journey to Aden, where Ruth was to serve as Freya’s assistant and help write up her books. After only a few months, however, Ruth and Freya had a serious disagreement, leaving Ruth suddenly without employment. Undeterred, she went to the British Embassy in Yemen and asked for work. She was informed that there were no vacancies, but she could take up a position in the codes and cypher section.

When war broke out in Europe, Ruth was sent back to England aboard a troopship. She was soon posted to Bletchley Park. As a gifted linguist, Ruth’s fluency in French quickly came to the attention of her superiors. After only a couple of months, one of the Bletchley Park officers invited her to meet his colleagues over lunch at the St Ermin’s Hotel, near St James’s Park in London. At that meeting, she was told there was a vacancy on the Belgian desk (which also covered the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg) and it was at this point that she joined Maurice Jempson to co-run the Clarence Service.

While working on MI6’s Belgian desk, Jempson conducted the interviews with the Belgian nationals who would become agents, while Ruth took charge of preparing all aspects of their training and missions ahead of their perilous parachute drops behind German lines into occupied Belgium and Luxembourg. Her son, John Scarman, later recalled: ‘She ensured that the agents were kitted out correctly; their clothes with Belgian labels, and ensured they had a Belgian haircut before their mission. She was meticulous in her attention to detail and checked their watches, shoes, clothing and went over a strong cover story.’

Ruth was also responsible for the Luxembourger agents who were being sent back on secret missions into Luxembourg. She organised their training and had total oversight of their missions behind the German lines. Her son John says, ‘She had no training for the job; it was exhausting work, with a lot of tragedy. So often, she would have to stay up all day and night during an agent’s mission to wait for news of its success.’ Contributions of women like Ruth in agent-handling and intelligence operations have been largely undiscovered or under-reported in histories of the war. She was absolutely pivotal to the success of MI6’s Belgian and Luxembourg operations, and now she can receive long overdue public recognition for her part in the success of the Clarence Service from the MI6 end.

If this blog post on Ruth Clement Stowell captured your interest, you can read more on Belgian wartime heroism in my book 'The White Lady': amzn.to/3GWutgo

Please also consider following me across social media @DrHelenFry.

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Operation Mincemeat:

British Intelligence took a dead man's body, gave him a new identity, and planted fake documents on him to deceive the Nazis.

Operation Mincemeat became one of the greatest deceptions in wartime history.

Here’s how they pulled it off:

Ahead of the invasion of Sicily in the summer of 1943, the Twenty Committee planned a new covert operation with Section 17M, the section within Naval Intelligence 12 (NID 12) responsible for naval deception and handling of special intelligence from ISOS.

Its head Ewen Montagu served as the NID representative on the Twenty Committee.

The aim of the new major deception was to fool the Germans about the location of the invasion in Southern Europe by floating the dead body of an officer of the Royal Marine off the coast of Spain.

In his briefcase, chained to his wrist, would be papers that included fake invasion plans.

It was a work of total fiction that took some of the most creative minds in intelligence to write the script.

It was codenamed Operation Mincemeat and would be one of the most audacious naval deceptions of the war.

The unknown element was whether the Germans would fall for it...

Section 17M set to work in meticulous detail on Operation Mincemeat to ensure that nothing was left to chance.

By the planning stage, the section had 14 members, two-thirds of whom were women.

The female secretarial team was nicknamed ‘the Beavers’, the youngest of whom was 18-year old Jean Leslie.

The first priority was to acquire a corpse and preserve it until the operation was set to go.

Sir Bernard Spilsbury (British pathologist) and Bentley Purchase (coroner of the St Pancras mortuary) were consulted by Section 17M.

In St Pancras mortuary was the corpse of 34-year-old Glyndwr Michael, an unemployed labourer of no fixed abode who had committed suicide with rat poison.

He was about to be given a new identity and the leading role in Operation Mincemeat.

The details of his new identity were to be worked out by Montagu, Flight Lieutenant Cholmondeley and Joan Saunders.

They decided on ‘Major William Martin of the Royal Marines’, born in 1907.

It was not only a matter of identity but creating a new personality – his likes and dislikes – and his family background to be more convincing to the Germans.

They spent the days discussing and slowly compiling a portfolio of the man.

In the evenings they went off to the Gargoyle, Montagu’s club in Soho, where over drinks they continued to build up their imaginary hero.

Major Martin was given identity papers, and a card to show he was a member of the Naval and Military Club in London, with a history of mounting debts as confirmed in a fake letter from his bank asking him to pay off an overdraft of £27. 19. 2d.

The fictitious paperwork and apparent extravagant lifestyle were necessary to hold his cover.

Joan Saunders noticed that Major Martin had no love life and it would be more realistic for him to have a girlfriend.

The women of Section 17M created ‘Pam’ as the pretty young fiancée.

A photograph of ‘Pam’, whose real name was Jean Leslie, was placed on his body to authenticate the cover story further.

The snapshot black and white holiday photograph was of Jean Leslie, taken by a friend and member of the Grenadier Guards who had fallen in love with her.

Miss Hester Leggett who headed the secretarial team has been credited with writing the fictitious love letters purporting to be from Pam, but in reality it was probably a combined effort by a number of women.

On 3 April 1943, the body of Major Martin was dressed in the battle dress and flashes of the Royal Marines by Montagu and Cholmondeley, with assistance from the coroner.

A briefcase with the forged documents was strapped to the wrist of the corpse, and included invasion plans to deceive the Germans that an Allied assault was soon to take place on Greece and Crete.

The body was placed in a specially manufactured air-tight container to prevent deterioration and loaded onto submarine HMS Seraph.

The submarine left the port of Greenock in Scotland and headed for Spain.

At 04:30hrs on 30 April 1943, the body was launched from HMS Seraph near Huelva, off the coast of Spain.

It was picked up by a Spanish fisherman who passed it to Spanish naval headquarters.

This set off a chain of events that would lead to the invasion plans falling into the hands of the Germans.

The Spanish naval authorities refused to hand over the briefcase to the British consul and instead sent it to Madrid where the three letters were opened and photographed.

The envelopes were then re-sealed to look untouched and passed to the British Naval attaché.

The photographed versions were dispatched to the Germans with a request for strict secrecy.

The German Intelligence Service in Portugal finally heard about the documents and was summoned to a conference on 12 May.

In the interim period between the body’s discovery and the conference, a post mortem by Spanish authorities concluded death by drowning.

On 2 May 1943, Major Martin was buried at Huelva and his funeral attended by Spanish naval and military officers.

On 12 May, at the Admiralty in London, Juliette Ponsonby picked up the day’s decrypts from the teleprinter room.

Bletchley Park had intercepted a wireless message sent by general Alfred Jodl, the chief of the Operations Staff of the German forces, responsible for all planning and strategic operations, and he confirmed that an enemy landing on a large scale was projected in the near future in the Eastern and Western Mediterranean.

Copies of Jodl’s message were dispatched across the German High Command, and Montagu knew that the Germans had been duped by Operation Mincemeat.

It achieved its aim of convincing the Germans that an invasion was planned for Sardinia, rather than Sicily and resulted in the Germans dispersing their troops and sending reinforcements to Sardinia.

A whole Panzer division was moved from France to the Peloppennese and establishing communication headquarters at Tripoli in mid-May 1943.

Verification of this was received back in England via Special Intelligence and Ultra decrypts.

Operation Mincemeat was supported, too, by female Agent Bronx who informed her German handler that an Allied invasion of France was to take place in September 1943.

Her messages were part of Operation Cockade which was a series of deceptions designed to relieve pressure on the Allied landings in Sicily. It had the dual effect of aiding the Russians on the Eastern front by diverting attention towards other alleged attacks by the Allies in Western Europe.

Documents captured by the Allies at the end of the war corroborated the fact that the Germans had fallen for the fictional invasion plans.

Operation Mincemeat was ‘a small classic of deception, brilliantly elaborate in detail, completely successful in operation.’

An appendix to a report on the operation ended with the words: ‘MINCEMEAT swallowed whole.’

The Double Cross System was proving so successful that by the end of 1943, the system was more powerful and better equipped than before.

The Twenty Committee was confident to tackle the biggest deception of all.

Uppermost in the mind of its members was whether a similar ruse as Operation Mincemeat could deceive the Germans ahead of D-Day...

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Marthe Cnockaert—the woman who saved London:

In WWI, a young Belgian nurse risked her life spying for the British, gathering secrets from the enemy—and ultimately foiling a devastating German attack on London.

This is the story of Marthe Cnockaert—the woman who saved London:

When Marthe Cnockaert (later McKenna) was first approached by her friend, Lucelle Deldonckto, to spy for the British she was horrified.

Unbeknownst to her, Lucelle was operating as a courier behind enemy lines after German forces had occupied Belgium in August 1914.

In January 1915, Marthe started work as a nurse at the hospital in Roulers, a city in West Flanders Hospital, where she helped wounded German soldiers from the frontline.

Her life became more complex after the Germans asked her to betray fellow Belgians.

Born in Westroosebeke, Belgium in 1892, she hated the occupation and secretly wanted to support the Allies but, as she admitted, she was afraid of a German firing-party in the cold dawn.

For a short time, she became a spy for both the Germans and the British.

She offered information to the Germans which she believed would not harm Belgians or the British, but which her handler ‘Otto’ would believe to be important.

She was honest about the dilemmas she faced and admitted to feeling guilty if the intelligence she passed to the British led to the fatality of German soldiers.

Her bravery changed after the sudden death of her German handler.

Her double life ended and she made a decision to work solely for the British. Overcoming her fear of a firing squad, she went on to provide British intelligence with information that would ultimately save London.

Soon after her handler’s death, she and another secret Belgian agent undertook a dangerous task of dynamiting a German ammunition depot.

By day, she gathered intelligence from wounded German soldiers in the hospital. In the evenings she worked as a waitress at her parents’ café and this gave her the opportunity to pick up information from the conversations of German officers and soldiers.

The intelligence was passed to an intermediary.

Marthe worked with two other female agents, one whom she only knew as ‘Canteen Ma’, a vegetable seller, and the other an agent called ‘No. 63’.

‘Canteen Ma’ was an older woman whose activities did not rouse suspicion as she travelled the countryside selling her vegetables. She was able to deliver coded messages and instructions to Marthe.

'Canteen Ma’ disappeared and her fate remains unknown.

Marthe never met ‘No.63’.

She dropped weekly reports for the Allies through the window of a small shop in Westroosebeke.

As a result of her intelligence work, the Allies were able to bomb military targets, ordnance train and ammunition depots.

In May 1916, she was in the shop when German Commander Fashugel entered with one of his lieutenants. He spoke about a church parade for a whole battalion of German soldiers the following day.

He turned to Marthe and asked if she would bring some of the wounded soldiers to the service.

She knew that if she passed this information to the chemist on the square, it would be over the frontier by dawn and a coded message sent to Allied commanders, such that Westroosebeke would receive a visit from Allied bombers.

The additional danger that she was going to be at the parade with wounded German soldiers did not deter her action.

The following day, just as the bishop was finishing the morning service, there was the roar of Allied aircraft overhead, dropping their bombs.

Marthe survived and no one suspected her, but the planes had virtually wiped out the battalion, including Commander Fushugal, with a few survivors and deserters.

The German NCOs and officers collected their heavily wounded casualties to one area and awaited the ambulances.

One of the officers dispatched Marthe with a lorry to the German hospital to nurse them.

The irony for Marthe was not lost – she had been responsible for the intelligence that had led to the attack.

It was also a traumatic experience and she coped by refusing to let herself think.

In the autumn, the German authorities asked her to requisition medical supplies which she was to collect from Rumbelle aerodrome.

It was the perfect excuse for her to observe the aerodrome for intelligence for the Allies, without arousing suspicion. For weeks, she had received messages asking for intelligence on the airfield and now was her chance.

The hospital porter who delivered the requisition form commented to her that all gossip in the canteen pointed to a massive raid on England soon that would cripple the country and evoke fear in the British population.

This was supported by comments from Sergeant Schweitzer who had been posted to the aerodrome and already knew Marthe from the hospital.

She charmed Schweitzer, and he boasted that a colossal raid on London was planned for 1 October and Heinrich Mathy, Commander of Zeppelin air raids on London, was to lead eleven Zeppelins.

Two would leave from Bruges and the rest from Germany.

Schweitzer then started to made advances, grabbed her and smothered her with kisses. She struggled and screamed. It alerted one of the pilots on duty nearby who rushed to her aid.

The pilot recognised her as she had nursed him when he was wounded. Schweitzer was dealt with harshly for advancing on her. The pilot invited her to come back that same evening to dine with him at the aerodrome.

At dusk, as she crossed the complex, she ‘photographed’ in her mind the scene around her.

Her eye caught sight of five single-seater biplanes of a type that she had not seen before.

She made an innocent comment to the Lieutenant about the planes.

He had already consumed a fair amount of alcohol, trusted her and said that the planes were little Albatrosses and were designed for speed.

He told her, ‘They climb like rockets, answer to the slightest touch, and what is better, go a good twenty miles faster than anything the Allies can put in the air.’

After supper, whilst the Lieutenant left the room to shout to his batman for more brandy, Marthe saw two sets of papers; one was authorization for the Lieutenant’s leave for Germany, and the other was a half-written report on the new biplanes.

She swapped the papers inside each envelope, knowing that the report on the biplanes would mistakenly be sent to the Brigade Major (who was supposed to authorise the form for the Lieutenant’s leave).

Marthe knew the clerk (Stephan) to the Brigade Major, and although the clerk was not working for the Allies, he liked her and occasionally passed her useful information.

She knew that he would copy the report for her.

The Lieutenant drank more brandy and became looser with his tongue.

He regaled her with tales of his bravery and how that coming Friday he was due to escort some heavy bombers on a night raid against the British line at Poperinghe in the region of West Flanders.

Marthe left the aerodrome and went straight to the chemist shop to send a coded message about the Zeppelin raid on London and the bombing of Poperinghe.

These were dangerous times as there was a curfew in place.

There was a tense moment as she was detained by the police outside the chemist shop.

She had a permit to travel in and out of the hospital, but not to private houses or shops.

She made an excuse about needing urgent medicine for her father and the police allowed her into the chemist.

The following morning, she used a trusted contact called Alphonse to contact the clerk at the aerodrome for a copy of the report on the biplanes.

Within hours, Stephan came to the shop with the report. But it was too big to pass over the counter without arousing suspicion. Marthe cut the A4 sheets into strips and numbered them.

She then sewed them into the hem of an old skirt.

When ‘Canteen Ma’ arrived the following day with vegetables, the old skirt was handed over to her.

After receiving this intelligence, British bombers headed for Rumbelle aerodrome to attack the biplanes before they could take off. They arrived too late and met the German bombers already en route for Poperinghe.

A furious dog-fight took place overhead, with losses on both sides.

The Germans planes continued to Poperinghe but the town was prepared with its defensive barrage.

One German aircraft fell and the others left without inflicting any serious damage. Poperinghe survived.

At 5pm on 1 October, Marthe heard the drone of Zeppelin engines overhead.

As she stared up into the darkening sky, she prayed that Commander Mathy and his Zeppelins would fail.

She did not hear about the result of the raid until years later. Mathy died that night.

The defences of London were well prepared and the Zeppelin L31 shot down over Potter’s Bar (north London).

Through the intelligence she had passed to the British via her channels, Marthe saved London and Germany lost its foremost air commanders.

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