Jacobs The SOE's Brothers of Vengeance

The SOE's Brothers of Vengeance
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7509-9529-0
Verlag: The History Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 316 Seiten

December 1941. After setting up one of the first resistance organisations in Vichy France and escaping over the Pyrenees into Spain, brothers Henry and Alfred Newton received devastating news. SS Avoceta, carrying their parents, wives and children to the safety of Britain, had been torpedoed by a German U-boat. All of their family were dead. From that moment on, the Newton brothers were consumed by revenge. Recruited by SOE, and known to everyone simply as the Twins, they returned to France and waged their own personal war against the Nazis. For nine months they lived on the edge before they were betrayed, and the net finally closed. They were caught by the Gestapo and tortured at the hands of the Butcher of Lyon, Klaus Barbie, before being taken to the dreaded Buchenwald concentration camp. In The SOE's Brothers of Vengeance, acclaimed historian Peter Jacobs reveals the full story of Henry and Alfred Newton. Drawing on personal archives and new research, theirs is a dramatic tale of courage steeped in vengeance - and of the bonds of brotherhood in the face of hell on earth.

Born in Southampton in 1958, PETER JACOBS served in the Royal Air Force for thirty-seven years as an air defence navigator on the F4 Phantom and Tornado F3, after which he completed staff tours at HQ 11 Group, HQ Strike Command, the Ministry of Defence and the RAF College Cranwell. A keen military historian, he has written several books on the RAF, as well as on other subjects of Second World War military history. He lives in Lincoln.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jacobs, Peter

Leseproben

INTRODUCTION

Nearly eighty years have now passed since the sinking of SS , a 3,442-ton steam passenger liner belonging to the Yeoward Line, which was sunk by a German U-boat, , during the last minutes of 25 September 1941 while on her return passage from Gibraltar to her home port of Liverpool. The wreck, records tell me, lies at the bottom of the North Atlantic at a position of 47°57’N and 24°05’W, some 700 nautical miles off the south-west tip of Ireland.

While the loss of the represents a minute part of the immense slaughter that took place in the North Atlantic during the Second World War, its position is important for this story because it marks the grave of seven members of the Newton family, and the consequences of what happened that night would be felt elsewhere for the rest of the war. For, having been told of the loss of their family – their parents, their wives and three children – two brothers, Alfred and Henry Newton, were from that moment on consumed with a passion for revenge. Their hatred of the Nazis was implacable.

I first came across the story of Alfred and Henry Newton a few years ago when I bought Alfred’s medals. I knew very little about him at that stage, other than he had served with the Special Operations Executive, the SOE, during the Second World War. But with the medals came other bits and pieces, including the book by Jack Thomas, published in 1955 and written with the benefit of the brothers still being alive at the time.

Fascinated by what I had read about the Newton brothers – or ‘the Twins’, as they were known within the SOE, even though they had been born more than ten years apart – I simply wanted to know more. My research naturally took me to the Imperial War Museum and the National Archives where the Twins’ private papers and official files are held, having been made available to the public in recent years.

From these sources, we now know far more about the Twins and their family. They had a sister, Lola, who had married before the war to become a Vivet and remained in the Paris suburb of Gentilly throughout the Nazi occupation. She heard nothing of them from 1943 and assumed her brothers must long be dead, but she never gave up hope and kept writing to the Red Cross until she eventually received news at the end of the war that they had both survived. We also know there was an uncle and auntie, Mr and Mrs James Boorn, living in London during the war. And from other sources we now know the true identities of the agents who had worked so closely with the Twins in France, and we know far more about what happened that fateful night in September 1941 out in the depths of the North Atlantic.

And so, we can add substance to the story told in and put the Twins’ story into context. Way back in 1955 the book was unable to reveal certain things, either because of the sensitivities at the time, the Official Secrets Act or simply because Alfred and Henry did not know all the facts.

To understand their story better, I decided to follow the path trodden by the Twins all those years ago. My travels took me to France – Lyon, Paris and Compiègne – and ultimately to Buchenwald in central Germany. It was a humbling experience and I was extremely fortunate to meet many people along the way who were prepared to help (their names are included in the acknowledgements).

However, when I set off on my journey I never imagined that in Lyon I would have breakfast in the room that had once been Klaus Barbie’s office, nor had I ever imagined that I would be given a tour inside the notorious No. 84 Avenue Foch in Paris. The importance of both these places will become evident later, but I am sure there will not be many modern-day historians who have had such a privilege.

Inevitably, though, I came across some inconsistencies between what I had discovered and the story told in that, in places, is colourfully and dramatically told. For example, the book describes an uncomfortable moment in a café in Lyon during July 1942, involving the Twins and four Germans. In the book, the Twins claim that one of the Germans, wearing a trench coat and accompanied by a large Alsatian dog, was the notorious Klaus Barbie. This is unlikely to have been the case. Barbie, the ‘Butcher of Lyon’, did not arrive in the city until the Germans occupied southern France later that year, some four months after the Twins claimed to have seen him, although they would meet Barbie all too soon.

There are also inconsistencies between published sources – an example being when trying to establish how many were on the same preliminary training course at Wanborough Manor as the Twins. In it is suggested there were eleven on the course. Sydney Hudson, meanwhile, who is known to have been on the same course as the Twins, refers in to being in a group of some twenty. John Starr, who is also known to have been on the same course, refers in Jean Overton Fuller’s book, , to there being about fourteen, while in Patrick Yarnold’s , the course is said to initially have had eight members, which then increased to twelve. When trying to determine if the Twins met up with Brian Stonehouse after the three had been dropped into France together, the Twins’ mission report clearly states they had twice met up with him in France. Yet, according to Tom Bower in his book, , published some forty years after the war, Stonehouse is quite emphatic that he never met the Newton brothers after their insertion into France.

Such inconsistencies do not affect the overall story of the Twins. The point of highlighting some of them here is to show the difficulty we now face when trying to piece together a sequence of events that happened nearly eighty years ago.

Where discrepancies do exist, I have chosen to go with the version that is either the most consistent or that I consider most likely to be correct. However, if there are any errors, then I can only apologise in advance. And, it is imperative that we do not fall into the trap of making accusations or questioning today the decisions made by individuals at the time. We are seldom in possession of all the facts. Only those who were there know what really happened.

However, we must start somewhere, and using the official files, records and private papers of Alfred and Henry, all backed up by the personal accounts of those who served with them, there is more than enough to be able to tell this remarkable story, although there is only limited space to tell it. Please note that I use Alfred and Henry when referring to them individually throughout the book, but collectively as ‘the brothers’ before they joined the SOE, after which they become ‘the Twins’, although to the French they were Auguste and Artus and to the Germans, ‘’.

Finally, as this book is about the Twins and their time with the SOE, the story concludes at the end of the Second World War, but rather than leave you wondering what happened next, it is worth briefly summarising the rest of their lives here, as both Alfred and Henry recovered to some extent from their ordeal.

They initially ran the Red Tape club in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, in partnership with their wartime colleague, John Starr. After running the club, Alfred worked for the British Overseas Airways Corporation in London, planning flights for businessmen and celebrities, while living in a tiny Chelsea flat. He married Doris in 1952 and the couple settled in Staines, from where they ran a printing business.

Henry, meanwhile, had been granted a full disability pension after the war and was unable to work again. He lived a quiet life in Walthamstow, then part of Essex, where he enjoyed breeding terriers and making rugs in his workshop. In 1954 he married Margaret and the couple settled in Walthamstow.

In 1959 the Twins’ story was serialised in the under the title ‘Twins Against the Gestapo’, in which they were described as ‘Britain’s toughest secret agents’. They were also amongst half a dozen former SOE agents who returned to Paris and Lyon in 1966, filmed by National Broadcasting Company cameras for viewers in the United States.

Their time in captivity had crippled them and they were both compensated under the terms of an Anglo-German agreement, made in 1964, in respect of UK nationals who were victims of Nazi persecution during the Second World War. Alfred’s numerous medical problems were mounting and so he and Doris spent time living in New Zealand and Spain before returning to Middlesex in the mid-1970s, where he became something of a recluse in his suburban home, venturing no further than his garden. Alfred died in a nursing home in Ashford on 6 July 1978 at the age of 64.

Henry had also suffered the mental scars of his wartime ordeal and was left in a nervous state. His deteriorating health also meant a move. He and Margaret moved to Herne Bay in Kent and then to Alicante in Spain where, on 16 January 1980, Henry died at his home at the age of 76.

And now, sixty-five years after first appeared, and with the benefit of now having access to new and more in-depth material, it is time to retell the story of Alfred and Henry Newton, and to set it into a more meaningful context that we can better understand. It is a remarkable story of courage based on a burning desire for revenge. I hope you...