Yvonne Cormeau, Star Wireless Operator of the SOE
“It seemed to me the only way we could honorably stand up to our promises.”
So describes Yvonne Cormeau her feelings on the Allied declaration of war against Germany, over forty years later. Listening to her speak, one could mistake her as just another jolly old woman recounting her experiences on the Home Front, all blackouts and blitzes and waiting for her man to come home. And yet, her even-toned received pronunciation belies the history she’s recounting—one of sabotage and safehouses and secret identities.
Like many other English women at the time, Cormeau wanted to play a part in the war; unlike most of them, however, her field was occupied France and her orders given from Baker Street. In time, she would be known as one of the Special Operations Executive’s most effective agents.
The Home Front
Beatrice Yvonne Biesterfeld was born in Shanghai on December 18, 1909, to a Belgian father and a Scottish mother. She had a very cosmopolitan upbringing; in addition to her German nanny and French governess, she was educated around France and in Brussels and Edinburgh. By the time she finished her schooling, the family had returned to London, where she took up light secretarial work before marrying accountant Charles Edouard Emile Cormeau in 1937.
When war broke out in Europe—a fact which did not surprise her, being able to understand most of the speeches being made worldwide—Charles immediately enlisted in the army and left for France, while Yvonne stayed behind to work and provide for their young daughter Yvette. He returned in November to recuperate from an injury; tragically, this sealed his fate, as he was killed shortly thereafter when their home was targeted by German bombers. With their daughter safe in the countryside, Yvonne then swiftly decided she was “willing to do whatever [she] could” and took her husband’s place in the war effort.
Cormeau joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in 1941, serving mainly at RAF Swinderby. However, while her work manning switchboards and phones was good enough, it was a different skill that caught the eye of the SOE—her multilingualism. With passing knowledge of German and fluency in French, she was a promising spy at a time when the Allied Powers sorely needed them.
…Ergo, Sum
After a brief interview with “Captain” Selwyn Jepson (really a novelist working as a recruiter) and a lot of thought, Cormeau eventually accepted her call to spy and began training in early 1943. To her frustration, the SOE practiced gender discrimination in their role selection, as women could not be group leaders—although her feminism had its limits, as she “was quite glad of” the fact that only men were selected for dangerous sabotage operations. For her part, she was assigned radio training despite her lack of experience; after her first lesson, where she was the only woman in her class, the leading signal sergeant offered her private lessons to catch her up to speed about the more technical aspects.
On August 22, 1943, “Annette” was airdropped into Saint-Antoine du Queyret in the Gironde department with little more than the clothes on her back and a handbag full of money. Her job was to serve as a Wireless Operator for the “Wheelwright” circuit, one of the largest spy networks in France at the time. Her landing committee included a man who looked at her in an “underhanded” way; she instantly distrusted him and left for the Pyrenees just a few days later.
As luck would have it, the man was indeed a traitor who turned in several other agents. As SOE historian M. R. D. Foot puts it in his accounts, “Dubito, ergo sum—I doubt, therefore I survive—must be the motto of every successful secret agent,” and the patient yet nervous Cormeau was a shining example (276). So was her boss George Starr, codenamed “Hilaire” and almost always called “The Boss,” who insisted on crafting new ID papers for her as the ones with which she was sent were on paper of too high a quality. The two former acquaintances—he had known her husband in peacetime—would soon become a formidable team and greatly aid the war effort for the next year.
High-Class Disobedience
Cormeau’s cover was that of a nurse who traveled the countryside on her bicycle, although she occasionally posed as a nanny or a cow hand—at least, until one ill-fated siesta on a warm day led to her not noticing a neighbor’s cow joining the herd and being swiftly accused of grand theft bovine, forcing her to retire that job. Her duty was the transmission of messages, both on her wireless set and as a courier; she coordinated the repatriation of downed soldiers, identified dropping zones for people and equipment, and called for new supplies.
Secrecy became second nature; her radio was hidden in grape barrels and haystacks, the weapons she’d requested were buried in beehives, and the .22 revolver she was assigned was stashed beneath the floorboards of a safehouse, knowing that being caught with a gun would be an instant death sentence. Hunger was also a close friend; her “condemned man’s last meal” right before her departure for France would be one of the last good meals she’d have before strict German rationing took hold.
Cormeau was not always one for protocol, however; she spent six months transmitting messages from the same location. This was a huge risk, as the transmitter would be easy to track by the Germans if the signal was consistent; indeed, the nearby Gestapo in Auch knew of an Englishwoman in the area with a radio. However, she had great visibility from the window to spot intruders, and even better, she had chosen a hamlet without electricity or running water; the Germans decided that “no woman would live in such primitive conditions,” according to her amused retelling. Thus, she managed to evade capture for the thirteen months she spent on the job.
Life Under the Jackboot
For Cormeau, the Germans were not actually the main threat. This far out in the countryside, she mainly dealt with weak, recuperating, or inexperienced soldiers; the Pyrenees wouldn’t see “the good ones” until close to D-Day. The Gestapo were also rather distant and confined to larger cities, with most raids being conducted at the tips of vengeful neighbors or starving citizens driven mad by rationing-induced hunger. Much more feared was the local Milice, whom Cormeau refers to as “French traitors;” with their uniforms of blue and their blind devotion to Laval, they were a far larger threat than the easily-fooled Germans.
The resistance was sparse, but highly active nonetheless. Those with whom Cormeau worked and lived were mainly leftists, including French partisans and Italian communist refugees; the few right-wing rebels were handled by a separate courier, as Starr knew keeping them together could lead to infighting.
In fact, most members were kept separate, as was protocol. Cormeau’s day was restricted to coding and decoding, transmitting messages, and delivering information, occasionally interrupted by a rendezvous with The Boss or doing small chores around the house. Aside from her six-month stint, she kept on the move, particularly once the accurate wanted posters began popping up around town. As 1944 dragged on and people became desperate for action, she’d soon find herself busier than ever.
The Final Checkpoint
With D-Day approaching, Cormeau was closely listening to BBC airwaves, waiting for the standby message that would spur her into action and get her team mobilized. Spring and summer were focused on welcoming new recruits and aiding sabotage missions where railways were blown up and roads were blocked. It was also spent once again fleeing Germans and moving around southern France, always with her trusty radio set in hand.
It would be this radio set that would lead to her closest brush with capture. In June, she and Starr were heading south in his car (he posed as a tobacco inspector to obtain the necessary fuel) when they were stopped by German soldiers. For hours, they were held at gunpoint, not even daring to wipe the perspiration off their brows should they be shot, but when the gunmen were ordered away, they were eventually let back into their automobile. When presented with her radio kit and asked what it was, she calmly opened it up, displayed the equipment to the guard, and claimed it was x-ray equipment—a story which he fell for.
Cormeau’s last few months in France were spent transmitting from a barracks right outside Toulouse, where she and her team were warmly welcomed. The French guard who met them at the entry point gave them a Union Jack sewn from parachute material to put on their car, and one of their American compatriots ripped Old Glory from his sleeve and stuck it on the windshield. However, the local welcome to Allied liberators differed sharply from the attitude of General Charles de Gaulle, who was growing weary of foreign troops and communists sticking around in his perfectly liberated country; after an altercation with Starr, Wheelwright was ordered out of Toulouse within 24 hours, though he didn’t seem to mind that they took an extra day to slip out.
After being demobilized with the rank of Flight Officer, Cormeau remained with the SOE section at the Foreign Office, while also helping to organize veteran get-togethers and serving as an advisor for eight episodes of the spy drama Wish Me Luck. She remarried to James Farrow in 1988, and the pair stayed together until his death in 1992; she herself would pass a few years later on Christmas Day, 1997, at the impressive age of ninety-two.
Annette’s Legacy
By the time she returned to England in September 1944, Yvonne Cormeau had transmitted over 400 messages back to London, the most of any female operative; she was second only to Auguste Floiras of the “Jockey” network, who himself had a much longer stint. Honored with an MBE and a Croix de Guerre among other decorations, she stands as a testament to the willpower of World War II’s clandestine operatives.
Her speed, intuition, and level-headedness allowed her to thrive in the face of danger and ensure that her compatriots would thrive in their operations, and her survival is almost unprecedented in a profession where so many were barely expected to survive the month after arrival. Cormeau plainly stated that she was “willing to do whatever [she] could” for the war effort, and to her credit, she truly went above and beyond.
Further Reading
SOE agents, especially the women, are such a fascinating and niche subject. If you’re still interested, I’d highly recommend checking out Cormeau’s interview with IWM for yourself, if only to hear this incredible woman recount her experiences in her own voice. Hannah Howe also has her own article on Cormeau, along with those on other F Section agents and aspects of the war (and a series of books of her own—check her out!). Finally, if you can get your hands on a copy, M. R. D. Foot’s SOE in France is a highly-detailed collage of agents and operations, written by a man who had special access to the official archives.
And, of course, Cormeau’s true story is one of many that inspired the characters in my novel-in-progress Madeira, where British agents and French partisans work tirelessly to fight the invading Germans while confronting their own inner struggles. Keep an eye out for more information as I continue revisions, and hopefully you’ll hear more exciting news soon!
Works Cited
"Cormeau-Biesterfeld, Beatrice Yvonne." TracesOfWar.com, https://www.tracesofwar.com/persons/35724/Cormeau-Biesterfeld-Beatrice-Yvonne.htm. Accessed 11 June 2022.
Cormeau, Yvonne Beatrice. "Oral History." Interview by Conrad Wood. Imperial War Museums, 9 February 1984, https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80007171.
Foot, M. R. D. SOE in France; An Account of the Work of the British Special Operations Executive in France. Frank Cass Publishers, 2004.
Howe, Hannah. "Yvonne Cormeau." Hannah Howe, https://hannah-howe.com/eves-war/yvonne-cormeau/. Accessed 11 June 2022.
"Wish Me Luck (TV Series 1987-1990) - Full Cast & Crew." IMDb, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0135738/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_cl_sm. Accessed 14 June 2022.
