Andrée Raymonde Borrel (18 November 1919 – 6 July 1944), code named Denise, was a French woman who served in the French Resistance and as an agent for Britain's clandestine Special Operations Executive in World War II. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany. SOE agents allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England.
Described by author Elizabeth Nicholas as a "towering figure" in the French Resistance, in September 1942, Borrel, joined by Lise de Baissac were the first female agents of SOE to arrive in France by parachute, which also made her the first female secret agent known to have parachuted into enemy territory. Based in Paris, she became a member of the SOE's Prosper network (also called "circuit" and "reseau) in occupied France. She worked as a courier. Prosper was SOE's largest and most important network in France and Borrel was an important figure in its leadership. She was arrested by the Gestapo in June 1943. She was subsequently executed in July 1944 at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.
Early life Andrée Borrel was born into a working-class family in Bécon-les-Bruyères, a north-western suburb of Paris, France. She was good at sports, while her older sister (Léone) described Borrel as a tom-boy who had the strength, endurance and interests of a boy and whose favourite pastimes were bicycling in the countryside, hiking and climbing.
Her father (Louis) died when she was 11, and to help support her family Borrel left school at 14 to work for a dress designer. When she was 16, her family moved to Paris, where Borrel spent two years as a shop assistant in Boulangerie Pajo, a bakery. After this she worked at the Bazar d'Amsterdam as a shop assistant which allowed her to have Sundays off so she could enjoy her passion for cycling. In October 1939, Borrel's mother (Eugenie) was advised to move to a warmer climate for her health, so took Andrée and her sister to Toulon on the Mediterranean coast where they had family friends.
Not long before World War II broke out, Borrel's socialist sympathies led her to travel to Spain to help the Republican government in its fight against the Nazi-backed fascists in Spain. However, she found that the war had all but been lost, and returned to France.
War work in Europe (1939–42)
When World War II broke out Borrel went to work with the Red Cross to volunteer her services. She enrolled in a crash course in nursing that she completed on 20 January 1940, which qualified her to serve as a nurse in the Association des Dames Françaises. First at Hôpital Compliméntaire in Nîmes in early February, though Borrel was sent back 15 days later following a decree that nurses under the age of 21 were not allowed to serve in hospitals. This decree was revoked a few days later and she was sent to the Hôpital de Beaucaire in Beaucaire. One of Borrel's co-workers there was Lieutenant Maurice Dufour, and when the hospital was closed they were both sent to Hôpital Compliméntaire. Towards the end of July that hospital was to be closed and, at the request of Dufour, Borrel was allowed to resign from this quasi-military institution, after which she immediately went to work with Dufour for the Pat Line, an underground organisation which Dufour was involved in.
At the beginning of August 1941, Borrel and Dufour established the Villa Rene-Therese in Canet-plage, on the Mediterranean coast just outside Perpignan near the Spanish border. This became the Pat Line's last safe house (before the hard and dangerous route over the Pyrénées), an escape network established by Albert Guérisse (supported by MI9), which helped British airmen shot down over France, SOE agents, Jews and others escape German controlled France. The villa proved too small and at the beginning of October they rented the Villa Anita. Toward the end of December the escape network had been compromised by the Germans. Borrel and Dufour found other accommodation to avoid arrest until eventually escaping over the Pyrénées in mid-February to Spain and from there to Portugal, where they flew to England (Dufour on 29 March 1942 and Borrel on 24 April 1942).
Arrival in England
Soon after landing in England, like all arrivals from the Continent, Borrel was taken to the Royal Patriotic School, the MI5 security clearance centre. Their report concluded:
Mlle Borrel's story seems perfectly straightforward. It is corroborated by Dufour who, on arriving in England, vouched for her. She is an excellent type of country girl, who has intelligence and seems a keen patriot. From a security point of view, I can find nothing against Mlle Borrel and recommend her release to the FFF.
Borrel had wanted to join the Free French Forces but they were not enthusiastic about French citizens who had worked with the British (who were deeply involved in the escape network Borrel had been working with), and were not interested in Borrel as she refused to divulge information about all her prior activities. Borrel was subsequently approached by the Special Operations Executive and joined it on 15 May 1942.
Special Operations Executive (1942–44) SOE training Borrel seemed like just the type of woman SOE needed for a field agent. Her SOE interviewer commented:
Since arriving in London, she attempted to join the Corps Féminin of the Free French movement but they have made it a condition that she should give them all the intelligence concerning the organization for which she was working in France. This she refuses to do and apparently they refuse to employ her unless she does. I think that she would make an excellent addition to our own Corps Féminin and it should not be difficult to get her… She said that she was perfectly willing to let us have the information she refuses to give to the Free French.
Borrel undertook training with SOE to become a field agent with their F Section while officially an ensign in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY). Upon the successful completion of her training, she was promoted to lieutenant. The commandant's report contained the following appraisal:
Of sound intelligence, if lacking somewhat in imagination. She has little organising ability and will do her best work under definite instructions. She is thoroughly tough and self-reliant with no nerves. Has plenty of common sense and is well able to look after herself in any circumstances and she is absolutely reliable. Has lost her attitude of over-confidence and has benefited enormously from the course and developed a thoroughly level headed approach towards problems. A very pleasant personality and she should eventually develop into a first class agent.
The men she trained with found her "informal by habit, lower-class, and scrappy." She was said to be "accessible, playful, easy to like, easy to share a smoke and a laugh with, but innocent too, neither hardened nor hurt by the rough wear of war." One of her fellow agents recounted that she said she would kill a German when he was asleep by stabbing a pencil in his ear. The agent said he "had little doubt that she meant what she said."
Parachuted into France
On the night of 24 September 1942 (the night after their parachute drop was aborted due to the signals in the drop zone being incorrect), Borrel ("Denise") and Lise de Baissac ("Odile") left England in an RAF Whitley and become the first female SOE agents to parachute into German-occupied France early on the morning of 25 September,Tentative of History of In/Exfiltrations into/from France during WWII from 1940 to 1945 (Border Crossings, Parachutes, Planes PU & Sea Landings), rev108-31122023 (http://www.plan-sussex-1944.net/anglais/pdf/infiltrations_into_france.pdf ), Le Plan Sussex 1944, p. 62 as part of operation "Whitebeam" to set up resistance networks in Paris and Northern France (circuits and sub-circuits). They were flown in from RAF Tempsford. Borrel dropped first, while they both landed in a field in the village of Saint-Laurent-Nouan, not far from the river Loire, about southeast of Paris, and were picked up by members of a local resistance team. Years later de Baissac recalled the experience:
As it happens, we went twice. The pilot wouldn't drop us the first time because the lights of the landing field were not quite accurate, so we had to come all the way back, which was very trying. You were squashed in that little place with a parachute on your back and your legs drawn up, and, of course, there was the danger too. Back in England they told us the reception committee had a man missing so they couldn't place the lights for the signal the way they were supposed to. We went back again the next night. We sat on the floor of the airplane [a Whitley bomber], much too tense for conversation, which in any case was not possible because of the noise. I don't remember how long it was until the dispatcher opened the hole, which meant we were arriving. We crept nearer, getting our legs into position. We had drawn straws and luck gave Andrée the first jump. I went immediately after her. You had to jump very quickly, one right after the other, because the plane is going on and you might be dropped very far from each other.
Physician (Prosper) circuit
Because of Borrel's familiarity with Paris, it was natural that she be sent there to work as a courier for the new "Prosper" circuit to be led by Francis Suttill (officially named "Physician" but unofficially called "Prosper" after Suttill's codename). In early October 1942, Suttill and Borrel met in a Paris cafe she knew. With information supplied them by Germaine Tambour of the Carte network, Suttill and Borrell embarked on a tour of northern France to begin creating and organizing groups to resist the German occupation. They had early success and on 17/18 November Suttill, Borrel, Yvonne Rudellat, and newly-arrived wireless operator, Gilbert Norman, received near Étrépagny a parachute drop of CLE Canisters with weapons for the resistance. It was the first of many over the next few months.
Suttill initially did not wish to have Borrel work with him because "as a married man" he "might find the enforced proximity a strain." However, SOE insisted she was the best person to serve as his courier. She became more than that. Suttill's French was not flawless and Borrel accompanied him everywhere on their tour, posing as his sister and doing most of the talking. The two of them had cover stories as salesmen for agricultural products. They had success in finding many recruits for resistance groups and farm fields suitable for clandestine landings of airplanes and drops of containers of arms. Borrel, Suttill, and the radio operator, Gilbert Norman, became an inseparable trio. Borrel and Norman became lovers. They were a pair in contrast. He was handsome, "upper-caste", and rich. She was "shrewd and common". Whilst working in Prosper she took part in a wide range of activities including the creation of circuits in Paris and northern France, sabotage, weapons training, and supervising weapons drops. Suttill was impressed with Borrel's performance. In a note to SOE in March 1943, Suttill wrote:
Everyone who has come into contact with her in her work agrees with myself that she is the best of us all. In J…'s absence, she acted as my Lieutenant. Shared every danger. Took part in a December reception committee with myself and some others. Has a perfect understanding of security and an imperturbable calmness. Thank you very much for having sent her to me.
Contrary to Suttill's opinion, Borrel's frequent poker games with other SOE agents in a Paris cafe violated SOE's doctrine that for security reasons networks should be independent of each other with as little contact as possible between and among networks and even among members of the same network.