Francis Suttill
Francis Alfred Suttill DSO, code name Prosper, was an agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive organization in World War II. Suttill was the creator and organiser of the Physician or Prosper network based in Paris, France, from October 1942 until June 1943. The purpose of SOE in France was to recruit resistance groups and supply them with arms and material in order to carry out sabotage against Nazi Germany.
Under Suttill's leadership the Prosper network was SOE's most important network in France, notable for its rapid growth, wide circle of contacts and collaborators, and the geographical reach of its operations "from the Ardennes to the Atlantic." It has been suggested that the network was too large and diverse, and that security was lax.
In what has been called SOE's "catastrophe of 1943," Suttill was captured by the Germans on 24 June 1943 and later executed. By the end of August 1943, the Germans had captured many of the nearly 30 SOE agents associated with him and hundreds of local French people working with or cooperating with SOE. Many were killed, executed, or died in concentration camps.
Early years
Suttill was born in Mons-en-Barœul near Lille, France, to an English father, William Francis Suttill, and a French mother, Blanche Marie-Louise Degrave. His father managed a textile manufacturing plant in Lille. Suttill studied at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, England until he was 16 when he contracted poliomyelitis. His doctors thought he would never walk again but he recovered with one leg shorter than the other. For the school year 1927/8, he attended the College de Marcq in Mons-en-Barœul, gaining his Baccalauréat. He then read law at the University of Lille and was accepted as an external student at University College London. In 1931, he moved to London to continue his studies and eventually became a barrister at Lincoln's Inn. He married Margaret Montrose in 1935 and had 2 sons.World War II
Prosper Network
In May 1940, Suttill was commissioned into the East Surrey Regiment of the British Army. He was recruited and trained by SOE during the summer of 1942. Charismatic and a natural leader, Suttill was considered by SOE to be "highly resourceful, and smarter than most" and thus chosen for its "most challenging job: to establish a circuit in Paris, covering a vast chunk of central France." His network was named Physician, although more commonly was called by his code name of Prosper.Earlier SOE networks, Carte and Autogiro, led by Frenchmen André Girard and Pierre de Vomécourt respectively, had been destroyed by the Germans. With the allied invasion of North Africa approaching, and tentative plans for an invasion of France in 1943, Suttill's job was to build a network to replace them in northern France. SOE Section F leader Maurice Buckmaster in London envisioned a strong resistance network based in Paris to harass the German occupiers of France.
On 24 September 1942, Suttill's courier, Andrée Borrel, code names Denise and Monique, parachuted into France to prepare for his arrival. He himself left England on the night of 1 October 1942 on a No. 138 Squadron RAF Halifax aircraft and parachuted into France near La Ferté-sous-Jouarre with a Deputy Lt. James Frederick Amps. Suttill was fluent in spoken French, but had an accent and he relied on Borrel, already experienced in the resistance, for much of his communication. After meeting in Paris, Suttill and Borrel took a month long trip around central France, exploring the potential for setting up resistance networks. They posed as an agricultural salesman and his assistant. Their early successes and high level of activity led SOE to send them two wireless operators, Gilbert Norman in November, and Jack Agazarian in December. Most SOE networks had only one wireless operator.
During late 1942 and the first half of 1943, the Prosper network grew rapidly, covering a large part of northern France, and involving hundreds of locally recruited agents and some 60 sub-networks. SOE headquarters in London was both surprised and elated at the rapid progress of Prosper, although concerned about its connections with the communists who were especially powerful in the northern suburbs of Paris. SOE, Suttill, and the French Resistance groups had the expectation that an allied invasion of France would occur in fall 1943. The efforts of Prosper and it's sub-networks were directed toward becoming a potent resistance force to aid the proposed invasion. Suttill stockpiled arms and ammunition parachuted in from England to that end.
Air operations
Parachute drops of weapons and supplies arranged by Suttill began in November 1942. Parachute reception teams and drop areas were in the Ardennes in Belgium, near Falaise in Normandy, three areas around Le Mans and two around Troyes, soon to be taken over by the Tinker network. Also, both the Privet network around Nantes and the Musician network around Saint-Quentin, Aisne were originally part of the Physician network. There were two main clusters: one in the Vernon/Beauvais/Meru triangle to the northwest of Paris and the other between Tours, Orléans and Vierzon, an area known as the Sologne between the rivers Loire and Cher.Whilst parachute drops were organised by circuit leaders, pick-up operations were organised by a specialist. On the night of 22/23 January 1943, a much-travelled French pilot named Henri Déricourt, code named Gilbert, was parachuted into France, landing about south of Paris. As the air movements officer for SOE's French Section, Déricourt was charged with finding farm fields in northern France suitable for landing small aircraft from England and arranging for the embarkation or disembarkation of SOE agents. He also collected mail and reports, often written in plain text rather than coded, from the agents and delivered messages to them. He accomplished the dangerous tasks of arranging clandestine aircraft landings and the reception and departure of agents without many problems.
Security
In April 1943, Benjamin Cowburn, an experienced and careful agent, delivered radio crystals to Suttill in Paris. Cowburn described Suttill as having a "dynamic personality" and said that "the small world of the resistance rallied to a strong personality." He also saw problems with security and remarked that a large number of SOE agents and their French contacts were going in and out of the same apartment. Suttill responded that SOE headquarters kept sending people to him who needed help and that the address of the apartment had been passed around by agents. He had in fact cancelled this letter box in February and did so again during his visit to London in May 1943. The size and scope of Prosper violated SOE doctrine that agents in different networks should have no contact with each other and even that agents in the same network should rarely meet, but rather communicate through intermediaries or letter-drops. However, the shortage of wireless operators in France resulted in agents from several other circuits having to contact his operators to communicate with London. This made the circuit more vulnerable but despite the German Gestapo and Abwehr becoming more expert at rooting out SOE agents and their French collaborators, this was not the reason for the capture of Suttill and many of his agents and the destruction of the Prosper network.German destruction of Prosper
On 22 April 1943, the Tambour sisters, Germaine and Madeleine, long-time members of the French Resistance were arrested in Paris. Suttill, through an intermediary, attempted to buy their release with a one million franc bribe, but the Germans deceived him by releasing two prostitutes rather than the Tambour sisters. The danger of the arrest to Prosper was that ten of its agents had used the house as a letter-box and meeting place, far more than was prudent.On 15 May 1943, Suttill returned to London for unknown reasons. He was parachuted back in France near Chaumont-sur-Tharonne on 21 May with another SOE agent, France Antelme. On his return, his confidence seemed shattered due to the ignorance of SOE personnel in London about the conditions he faced in the field. On 19 June, Suttill sent a bitter message to London blaming SOE for directing newly arrived wireless operator Noor Inayat Khan to a compromised letter-box. He cancelled all passwords and letter-boxes.
On the night of 15–16 June, two SOE agents, Canadians John Kenneth Macalister and Frank Pickersgill, were dropped to one of sub-network leader Pierre Culioli's reception sites. On the morning of 21 June, Culioli and his courier, Yvonne Rudellat, set off by automobile with the two Canadians to catch a train to Paris, unaware that the Germans had set up extensive roadblocks. They were caught, and the Germans found packages of letters and instructions and radio crystals in the car, two of which were clearly labelled "For Archambaud". This led the Germans to Archambaud because, as Culioli admitted after the war, he had the address of Archambaud in his briefcase when he was caught. Shortly after midnight of 23 June, a German officer pretending to be one of the recently parachuted Canadian agents came to the apartment where Norman was staying, and he and Andrée Borrel were arrested. The apartment was full of identification cards and other documents. The Germans learned, probably from the documents, where Suttill was, and he was arrested mid-morning on 24 June at a cheap hotel where he was staying.
The arrests continued. On 1 July Jean Worms, head of the Juggler Network, and Armel Guerne, one of Suttill's locally recruited seconds-in-command, were arrested in a Paris cafe where Worms ate lunch every day. Over the next three months, hundreds of local agents associated with Prosper were arrested, of whom 167 are known to have been deported to Germany, where about one-half were executed, killed, or died in concentration camps. The communists in the Paris suburbs with whom Suttill worked mostly survived the debacle because of their rigid security practices and their dependence on SOE only for arms and money, not guidance and communications. The survivors of the Prosper Network were mostly in the sub-networks of Prosper in north-eastern France.