Anthony Brooks
Telegraph 15/05/2007
Anthony Brooks, who has died aged 85, was one of
the most successful of the resistance organisers sent into
France by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the
Second World War.
Barely 20 years old when he was first parachuted
into enemy territory, he organised the "Pimento" circuit
that grew to encompass a vast expanse of southern France
with headquarters in Lyon and Toulouse. After the Second
World War he joined the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)
and embarked on a career that carried him through many
reaches of British Intelligence.
Anthony Morris Brooks was born at Orsett, Essex,
on April 4 1922. Both his parents, Douglas and Beryl, were
scions of industrial dynasties, but Tony's early years were
not spent in affluent circumstances. His parents separated
in his early childhood, and he and his brother were brought
up by their mother in the south of France and Switzerland,
where Tony learned to speak French like a native. He was
educated at Chillon College on Lake Geneva and - after his
mother's death - Felsted School.
In the summer of 1939 Brooks was in France,
staying with relatives in the Jura and employed in their
plaster works. At the outbreak of war he tried to join up,
but was rejected as too young. Instead he stayed on in
France throughout the "Phoney War" until, following the
German invasion, he fled with his family to the south-west,
hoping to find sanctuary with relatives at Montauban.
The terms of the Franco-German armistice
permitted his family to return to their home, but Brooks did
not join them for several weeks. This proved of great
significance for his later wartime activities, as during
this time he made several contacts in the area, including
the Swiss René Bertholet, an inveterate opponent of the
Nazis.
It was also at this time that Brooks began his
career in the resistance. At Montauban he encountered a
British soldier who was seeking to escape to Spain, and he
was able to provide the fugitive with the means to continue
his journey.
On his return to the Jura he discovered that his
aunt was already involved with an escape line assisting
British servicemen, and soon Brooks was conveying fugitives
south to Marseilles by lorry or by rail. Their destination
was the Seamen's Mission, an important staging post in an
expanding operation run by the War Office's MI9 and over
which SIS kept a close watching brief.
In May 1941 Brooks was tipped off that he was
about to be interned by the Vichy authorities, and he
decided to make use of the escape line himself. For some
weeks he worked at the Seamen's Mission, and took charge of
it for a period while its head, the Reverend Donald Caskie,
was absent.
In June Brooks led a small party on foot across
the Pyrenees, but, soon after arriving on Spanish soil, they
were arrested; after incarceration in several prisons they
were interned in the concentration camp of Miranda d'Ebro.
Brooks spent six weeks in the camp before the British
Embassy arranged his release and transfer to Gibraltar.
Back in England Brooks was interviewed by both
MI9 and SIS with a view to his recruitment as an agent, but
neither organisation felt that he possessed the maturity or
the ability to pass himself off as a Frenchman. His details
were also passed to F Section of SOE; and although they too
noted his youth and lack of military experience, they
selected him for training as an agent.
He passed the course with flying colours in
April 1942 and was straight away chosen to serve as the
assistant to "Robert", an organiser in the Unoccupied Zone.
Brooks was parachuted back into France at St
Leonard de Noblat, near Limoges, on July 1/2 1942. His
landing was far from perfect, for his parachute (the
notoriously unreliable "A type") imparted a broken pendulum
effect to his descent that concluded in his crashing into a
tree, cracking vertebrae and dislocating his knee.
Fortunately a local farmer looked after him - the first, but
not the last, occasion when luck and the generosity of
Frenchmen came to his aid.
On arriving at Toulouse to rendezvous with
"Robert", Brooks was astonished to discover that his contact
was René Bertholet. The two men forged a close personal and
professional bond, and the older agent's experience proved
of immense importance in his protégé's fledgling career.
Bertholet introduced Brooks to a series of
likely recruits in Toulouse and Lyon, including railwaymen,
farmers and even members of the Vichy Customs Investigation
Branch. It was not long before Brooks assumed full control
of the network, Pimento, with Bertholet only occasionally
leaving Switzerland to meet him.
Initially the network confined its sabotage to arson
and inserting abrasive grease into railway truck axle boxes,
but the German occupation of the "Free" zone in November
1942 allowed London to lift its "no bangs" injunction over
operations in Vichy France.
On November 23 1942 Brooks received the first of
scores of RAF supply drops, and his men began to develop an
impressive campaign of railway sabotage. From the outset
Brooks was obsessive regarding security, both for himself
and his network. He travelled constantly, often staying with
trusted comrades or at his safe house outside Lyon, whose
address he did not share with even his closest confederates.
While many of his fellow F Section agents made do with
flimsy false identities, Brooks adopted several perfectly
documented aliases (under one of which names he claimed to
have voted in post-war French elections).
Although Brooks preferred to communicate with London
via clandestine courier lines to Switzerland, F Section
demanded that he accept a wireless operator. By now Brooks
was sufficiently confident of his own authority that when
his new colleague, Marcus Bloom, arrived in Toulouse he was
immediately off-loaded on to another circuit, "Prunus". In
April 1943 Bloom was arrested and his wireless "played back"
to London in a Funkspiel (a Gestapo counter-intelligence
operation) in which one of the Germans' main objectives was
to lure Brooks into a trap.
This episode, together with the capture of some of
Brooks's senior aides and a breakdown in his health, led
London to recall him. On August 20, in an operation
organised by the notorious double agent Henri Déricourt,
Brooks - along with several other fugitives - was picked up
by an RAF Hudson from a field near Angers.
Typically, no sooner was Brooks back in London than he
was keen to return to France. In November he married his
fiancée, but he remained impatient to get back to his
network and to breathe life into his primary alter ego
"Antoine Brévin".
His wish was granted, and on December 21 1943 he was
parachuted into France (albeit some hundreds of miles from
his intended drop zone).
He was reassured to discover that Pimento had survived
his absence, and now, once again under his command, it
steadily increased both its sabotage activity and supply
drop operations in the months leading up to D-Day.
Like the rest of F Section's leaders, Brooks's primary
concern was the disruption of German communications, tying
down enemy units and preventing reinforcements from reaching
the bridgehead. Amongst Pimento's many successes in support
of Operation Overlord was the hindrance of the 2nd Panzer
Division "Das Reich" in its movement to Normandy from its
bases in the south-west.
In the final months of the German occupation Brooks at
last emerged from the shadows, basing himself in Lyon.
Arrested by chance in July, his cover story stood up to
hostile interrogation. He was released and accepted the
apologies of his German inquisitor, even exchanging a "Heil
Hitler" with him as he left.
As the Germans evacuated Lyon he attempted personally
to remove explosive charges from the bridges over the Rhône,
and enjoyed the distinction of leading the first US Army
armoured patrol into the city.
Following the liberation of Paris, Duff Cooper, the
new ambassador, was keen to have Brooks join his staff; but
this was not to be, and the erstwhile agent (still only 22)
spent the rest of the war evaluating the efficacy of SOE's
sabotage operations in France.
Not surprisingly, Brooks - now a major with a DSO and
an MC to his name - was amongst a group of SOE officers
invited to join SIS at the end of hostilities.
In the spring of 1947 he was posted to Sofia, opening
up one of the first SIS stations behind the Iron Curtain in
the new Cold War. After almost three years in Bulgaria he
returned to Britain, where his considerable experience of
clandestine work was fully utilised by the training section.
In 1952 a new overseas position was offered to him,
but, having just remarried, he was reluctant to accept the
single-man posting in Hanoi.
At a private interview with the Chief he demurred, a
response that was deemed unacceptable; he was warned that
unless he accepted the post he would be obliged to resign.
Brooks's reply was to take a memo pad and pen from the
Chief's desk and, in the famous green ink, he wrote his
resignation.
For the next four years he managed the family
plaster works in France, but by 1956 he was ready for a
fresh challenge. This coincided with the Suez crisis, and he
rejoined SIS in time to take part in Operation Musketeer.
He was now back in SIS for good, and in his next
posting proved particularly effective in counter-terrorist
operations in Cyprus. He wore his wartime experiences
lightly but, at an early briefing with the military
authorities, he established his credentials by asking if
anyone else in the room had ever been "a terrorist".
Brooks's next posting was to Paris, where his
wartime connections and deep understanding of France were
put to good use.
After a period in Geneva, his final years were
spent on secondment to the Security Service, where his
prodigious operational skills proved highly effective
against the Soviet Union. On retirement from government
service he returned to his earlier engineering pursuits.
In his final years Tony Brooks, sustained by the
care of his wife Lena, fought a valiant battle against
failing health. He had just finished collaborating on an
account of his wartime adventures when he died on April 19.
