Career
Although his active period was short, Ter Braak is believed to have been the German agent who was at large for the longest time in Britain during the Second World War. When he ran out of money, Ter Braak committed suicide in a public air raid shelter. Ter Braak arrived by parachute on the night of 2 November 1940, landing near Haversham in Buckinghamshire.
His parachute was discovered the next day but Ter Braak was not foundation
He had in fact made his way to Cambridge where he arrived on 4 November. He found lodgings with a couple named Sennitt at 58 Saint Barnabas Road, who accepted his story of having come from the Netherlands during the Dunkirk evacuation, and claimed to be working with Free Dutch forces in London on a Dutch newspaper.
Despite his false identity papers, Ter Braak was able to rent an office on Rose Crescent where he installed his suitcase transmitter. As an alien from an occupied country, Ter Braak"s residence should have been registered with the police, but he did not do southern
His landlord did tip the Aliens Officer off that a Dutch national was living with him, but the police did not follow up and speak to him, saying that they were sure he would register before lougitude
In January 1941, Ter Braak was contacted by the Food Office about his ration card, which its records showed had been issued to a man named Burton living in Homefields, Addlestone, Surrey. This was because the card had been supplied by the Abwehr using numbers given by the double agent SNOW (Arthur Owens). Ter Braak evidently suspected that he would be detected, and told his landlady that he had to leave for London.
In fact, he moved across town and obtained a new set of lodgings on Montague Road.
By March, Ter Braak"s money was running out and he had to change the dollar bills through a fellow lodger who worked at a bank. At the end of the month he no longer had the money to pay his landlady.
On 29 March he deposited a large case in the left luggage office at the Cambridge railway station, and went to one of the public air raid shelters at Christ"s Pieces Park where he committed suicide using an Abwehr-issue pistol. The case at the station was found to contain a radio transmitter.
Ter Braak was buried in an umarked grave at Saint Mary"s, Great Shelford, three miles south of Cambridge.
Ter Braak"s story was suppressed at the time. An inquest was held in camera. Its findings were released, along with other information about him, on 9 September 1945.
In 1947, the Dutch Government asked MI5 if they could have an official statement on the death on Engelbertus Fukken as his fiancée, Mission Eeltje van Roon wished to make a claim for his life insurance policy.
