Island Life Magazine Ltd August/September 2008 | Page 53

FEATURE

under his cup with a warning
that she was an enemy agent.
Roland’s new career as a spy
had begun!
British Intelligence wanted
him to go into France to
find the information they
needed. His cover was to be
a watch smuggler, dangerous
if any of the crooks in the
Paris underworld he mixed
with suspected him of being a
British spy. “I knew I would
end up with a second belly
button”, Roland laughed.
The girlfriend of one of his
shady acquaintances in Paris
worked in a German military
bakery. By bribing her to tell
him how many sacks of flour
were used every day, Roland
could estimate the strength of
the German garrison in Paris,

he also reported on troop
movements and made lists of
high-ranking officers billeted
in the Ritz. He discovered the
whereabouts of a V1 rocket
site by listening to two old
ladies chatting on a train and
describing a tunnel near their
village.
Although the Allies were
winning war, the net was
closing in on Roland when he
returned to Paris on his last
mission to find where the V2
rockets were being made. By
now he had crossed the border
into France 27 times and the
Gestapo knew his name but
luck was with him once more.
He met a man who blurted
out that he was working in an
armaments factory and was
scared of what would happen

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to him when the Americans
arrived in Paris. Roland had
the information he needed to
pass on to London.
At the end of the war
Roland was awarded the Croix
de Guerre by the French
government and a Certificate
of Service from Field Marshal
Montgomery. He returned
to France many years later
to meet Phillippe, one of his
guides nicknamed ‘The Crow’,
and the two men corresponded
regularly for many years.
As I said good-bye to Roland
I knew that few people in the
Isle of Wight realised that
just down the road was a man
whose wartime exploits read
like a film script.

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