Another British centenarian, with a rich war background, has passed away at 103. We learn a great deal of Mr. Natzler's life, but most notably we get the sense that without the screw-ups of his SOE service, we might not have heard about his passing at all. He might just have been another very senior gent to finally faded away.
The SOE was the wartime British spy agency, Special Operations Executive. They were responsible for a good bit of derring-do in gathering information about the Germans, and in fooling the Germans. There are innumerable books about those in the SOE. And the British, still loving to never forget the war, are always eager to turn out SOE stories and mini-series.
For a guy who rarely talked about his wartime experience, "we honestly don't know exactly what happened," his son said, there is a great deal of detail in his obituary about those wartime experience, not all flattering.
Did the obituarist get a British version of Freedom of Information Act and get into the SOE records for Pierre? It would seem so.
The obituarist blends in biographical narrative, and a wartime narrative that shows Mr. Natzler was certainly not the Spy Who came in from the Cold, but rather the spy who seemed to get lost.
Obviously, Mr. Natzler, born in Vienna,, moving to France and then England, was proficient in several languages, thus making him a great candidate for spy school. And he was drafted into that branch of the service.
He was parachuted behind enemy lines in France with the assignment of finding a safe route through France to neutral Spain. The jump worked fine, but the Resistance left him with a bike at the drop spot, and Mr Natzler had never learned to ride a bike. Growing up affluently in Vienna he learned to ride horses, but not a bike.
That's the first of the troubles he encountered on landing. His identify card was dated 1940, not 1943. Okay, whose fault was that? Maybe he should have spotted it before pulling the ripcord, but there has to be some responsibility to lay at the feet of the person who conceived of the mission.
If that dumb cluck had asked if Pierre could ride a bike, and instead had a horse waiting for him, then Pierre could have been a WW II version of Paul Revere and heroically found the route. Instead, he set out, wobbled on the bike without a map (another cock-up by the mission planner?) and instead of heading for Spain, made his way to a safe house in Paris where he had to sleep in the same bed with another agent because there was only one bed. Why someone didn't get the floor is not disclosed.
Taken on a hunting trip for food by members of the spy school at Loch Morar, Pierre's city boy roots were evident when his only familiarity with a rifle was gained "at the Prater fun-fair in Vienna." Pierre rooted for the stag to make his escape. Hunting was too much like work.
Then there was the time on a train coming back into England when his suitcase popped open and contraband oranges spilled out, oranges he intended to sell on the black market. Another intelligence officer described the hapless Pierre as "undisciplined," while another felt he was more "of a fool than a knave." Is that from Shakespeare? No. The OED tells us it's F. Donaldson: "He is far more fool than knave." Hand it to the British.
Not all his wartime activities could be mad fun of. In 1941 in Casablanca he sent regular reports back to the Free French military intelligence while also helping British former POWs return home. For his business activities after the war, he was appointed chevalier of the Ordre National du Mérite by the French government for his service to industry. At points in his life he was Austrian, then a French citizen, and then eventually a British citizen.
Despite being considered a bumbling spy, he was still allowed into the Special Forces Club in England. And we know how the British love their clubs. I'm sure he yukked it up with Beefeaters and Schweppes, swapping war stories with his chaps on padded, leather upholstery.
So, Pierre enters the pantheon of those who are remembered for one thing in their life: Wrong Way Corrigan; Bill Buckner; Steve Bartman. The list goes on.
The obit's final kicker: "He never did learn how to ride a bike."
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Have you considered whether a family member might have written the obit?
ReplyDeleteCertainly a possibility. The London Times obits are not bylined, so there is no one to ask. The obiturists do reply heavily on family interviews. Whowever put it together, knew a lot about Pierre's wartime activities. I saw something online that listed all the infiltrations behind enemy lines by the British during WW II. Pierre's mission was listed.
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