Afterword

This story is fiction – but wound round real characters and historical events.

Maurice Buckmaster was the head of Section F at the Special Operations Executive HQ at 64 Baker Street in London. I wonder if it amused the SOE to share a street with the most famous British fictional detective. Somewhat inevitably, the SOE were referred to as “Baker Street Irregulars” in some quarters.

Operation Biting was a real operation that captured a new short-range German radar system from Bruneval in late February 1942. That operation was led by Major John Frost who later distinguished himself by leading the unit that, in September 1944, took and held the Arnhem Bridge for days against units of the 9^th SS Panzer division during the ill-fated Operation Market Garden. Colonel Rémy (real name Gilbert Renault) was a significant member of the French Resistance and provided some information needed for Operation Biting. SAS troops were used behind enemy lines after D-day to disrupt the enemy, including in the Vosges.

But Colette Roberts is complete fiction as is her final mission in the Vosges. She initially occurs as a brief mention in my first novel Through my Eyes. Again. and then again in the sequel Through different Eyes. It was the latter mention that led to this story.

I needed a description of events around Colette’s execution at Ravensbrück concentration camp for Mutti Frida to relate to her daughter, who is named Colette in honour of the SOE agent. In order to do that, I wrote the first draft of the scene that opens this story and then wrote Mutti Frida’s retelling of that scene in Through different Eyes.

After writing Colette’s execution, a very strange thing happened: this fictional, French/English woman stood by my side for several days, quietly insisting I tell her story – and Colette is the result.

Opening with an execution might be considered melodramatic – and having the victim relating her own execution is unusual – but that’s the way it came out. I tried putting the execution at the end – but it just did not feel right. Perhaps in part the opening was my subconscious desire to warn readers that this story would stray into some dark and difficult territory: Colette’s capture and violent interrogation at the hands of the Nazis.

But when I reached that part of the story, I found I could not write it. For two weeks, I stared at the stationary blinking cursor, unable find a way to write the horrific reality of what she would have experienced. It would be too easy to become a voyeur of her suffering or trivialise the reality that so many experienced.

I reread a torture and interrogation scene of a young woman written brilliantly by a writing friend, but I knew I could not write a scene like that. Finally, I realised Colette did not have to relate what they did to her. I went back through the story, adding her experiences in practice interrogations. From my SOE research, these practice sessions were at least as intense as I have described. Finally, Colette watched her interrogation and torture at the hands of the Nazis from a distance, from outside her body.