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

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