Female Agents Behind Enemy Lines—Diana Rowden: Part 5

Diana Hope Rowden

Diana Hope Rowden

All the women who worked behind enemy lines during WWII deserve a place in history.

One that I feel a particular closeness to is Diana Rowden. This is because I walked in her footsteps while living in the Jura a couple of years ago. At the time I was writing one of my WWII books set there and accidentally found out that she operated in the next main village to me – Clairvaux-les-Lacs – a mere twelve-minute drive away, and like my protagonist, she operated from a sawmill, of which there are many in this region.
Unfortunately, it was here that a traitor infiltrated her network.

Diana Hope Rowden had a privileged background. She was born in London in 1915 and spent her early years at Cap Ferrat and the Italian Riviera where her mother rented a villa and yacht. Coincidentally, the yacht was named the Fearless One, it was a name that would later describe Diana perfectly. After boarding school in England, she returned to France with her mother, embarking on a career in journalism at the Sorbonne.

When war broke out she joined the Red Cross and escaped to England through Spain and Portugal. Recognizing her language skills and love of France, she was soon recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in March 1943.

Diana with her brothers Maurice and Cecil

Her training reports noted her as intelligent with plenty of courage and she was flown into France on 17 June 1943 along with three other women. Her code name was Paulette and her mission was as a courier with the ACROBAT network in the Franche-Comté region. There she was known as Juliette Fondeau.

The SOE: Special Operations Executive

Image Diana Rowden Memorial Plaque

Another important member of SOE, Harry Rée (codenamed César) soon joined her. She travelled to the Jura to meet her organizer John Starr (codenamed Bob) in a hotel in Lons-le Saunier, an important town in this region and teeming with Germans. Starr was worried that she looked too English and assigned her to stay in a Château Andelot with the radio operator, Cuthbert Young. Despite her looks, she travelled extensively by bicycle and train as far afield as Marseille and Paris. She was lucky as she had several near misses with the Germans and was arrested at one checkpoint but escaped.

In the Jura, she was in contact with the maquis and was present for at least five parachute drops. During this time, Starr was arrested and Harry Rée was sent to Belfort to form a new network. Rée warned Diana to be careful as the Germans were searching all the villages. At one point she was arrested but soon released and went to live at the sawmill on the outskirts of Clairvaux. After a massive explosion at the Peugeot factory due to Sabotage, she lost touch with Rée who fled to Switzerland. The result was that
ACROBAT needed another organizer.

Image of Croix de Guerre

On the morning of 18 November, a man called “Benoit” came to Clairvaux stating he was the new leader. Benoit passed all the safety checks. A few days after the meeting, the family, resistant, and agents, planned a celebratory dinner that night to welcome their new man, for whom they had been eagerly waiting, and Diana and Cuthbert Young took him to town, where she introduced him to other members of the resistance.

Diana was unaware he was flashing his torchlight behind him, but another resistant noticed three cars with German Field Police arriving and ran off to warn the others. Unfortunately, Diana was arrested in the house but had hidden Young’s precious wireless crystals. Diana and Young were taken to the Lons Police Station where they underwent brutal questioning. It is not known who the imposter was. He was either a German agent or a Frenchman working for the Germans. Later that night, the imposter, dressed as a German, returned to the sawmill to search for the radio, but thankfully the resistants had hidden it. The family was interrogated and sent to Ravensbrück.

On 20 November, Diana was sent to the infamous Gestapo Headquarters at Avenue Foch and further interrogated. Despite this, she did not talk. Worst of all, it was here that she met Starr who was free and working for the Germans.

Natzweiler Death Camp

On 13 May, along with other SOE female agents, they were sent to Karlsruhe Prison. On the 6 th July, under Hitler’s Nacht und Bebel Erlass (Night and Fog) decree which meant they were to disappear without a trace, Diana, and three other agents, Andrée Borrel, Vera Leigh, and Sonia Olschanezky, were sent to the men’s concentration camp, Natzweiler-Struthof, in Alsace. Here the women were separated. Later that evening, Diana was called from her cell and escorted to an isolated cell with eight white beds. Possibly thinking it was a hospital, she was told to lie down to be given a typhus injection which turned out to be a massive dose of phenol. She died almost immediately and was cremated, as were her other three SOE inmates. It is believed that one of them was still alive when she was cremated. Diana was only twenty-nine years old.

It would not be until much later when Vera Atkins, aided by Maurice Buckmaster, searched for their missing agents, that this awful truth came out.

Have you read about Diana Rowden before? Please share in the comments section below

Further reading:

In 2017, having been captivated by her role in the S.O.E, Gabrielle McDonald-Rothwell published her book about Diana’s life – “Her Finest Hour”. Gabrielle spent time in Clairvaux and got to know the family and friends who supported her.

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