Background
Mathilde Carre was born in Le Creusot, Saône-et-Loire in 1910.
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Mathilde Carre was born in Le Creusot, Saône-et-Loire in 1910.
In the 1930s she attended Sorbonne University and became a teacher.
At the start of WWII she was an army nurse briefly before Capt Roman “Valentin” Garby- Czemiawski recruited her as the cipher clerk and broadcaster for a spy ring he was setting up in Paris for the British. Lily introduced her messages to London with “The Cat reports.” An alluring brunette who confessed to getting an almost sexual thrill out of danger, she gathered information from social contacts with German officers to supplement what Valentin was putting together from more serious sources. The Interallie net was broken up on 17 Nov 1941 when Sgt Hugo Bleicher arrested Valentin and the Cat. She saved her skin by becoming a horizontal collaborator and double agent for Bleicher.
Lily did not inform London promptly of Valentin’s arrest. Then, with full knowledge of all four Interallie radio stations to include security tags imbedded in messages to show that the operator was not under enemy control, she proposed to the SIS that she continue reporting for Interallie but under a former code name. “Victoire." London not only approved but also asked Victoire to transmit SOE messages. The Germans had silenced the last SOE radio operator in France more than two months earlier, so London was elated to receive a properly authenticated message on 1 Jan 1942 from an SOE agent who identified himself as Pierre de Vomecourt (“Lucas”). British operators did not suspect that this and subsequent messages were dictated by the Abwehr. But Lucas soon became suspicious of Lily because of her too-good-to-be-true skill at getting him information and materials including faked papers. When Lucas suddenly accused Lily of being a double agent, she broke into tears and confessed. Instead of killing her and warning his associates, Lucas decided he could turn her into a triple agent.
Now on a hot tin roof, the Cat persuaded the Abwehr to let Lucas lake her on a trip to London he had planned. Mme Carre promised to gel inside information about British intelligence and also to find details of a meeting Lucas was setting up in Paris for all SOE agents. Despite German collusion the Cat and Lucas had two harrowing failures before being embarked on 26 Feb 1942 from a remote cove in Brittany. The coquettish Cat spent several happy months in a comfortable London flat surrounded by sympathetic British intelligence officers—and hidden microphones. When the SIS got all they wanted they had her thrown clawing and scratching into a cage for the duration.
Repatriated in due course, Mathilde Carre was convicted of high treason in 1949. The death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and a reprieve was granted in Sep 1954.
Ainsi vécut Marie, jeune-fille de Nazareth, mère du Christ
1980
