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Son epoux, capitaine , inhumé à Laissac
 Christopher James Lord was born around 1901. He died on May 15, 1943 at age 42. He was buried in Laissac Communal Cemetery, France.
" "... The Tale of The Goat, The Rat and The Vole
I recently received a query about Christopher James Lord, codenamed “Vole”, an escape line organiser dropped into France during April 1943. The story of his uniquely disastrous mission is a bizarre and fascinating one....
Having safely returned to London, Waddington had given a detailed report on his mission but could give no explanation for the mysterious disappearance of Vole. Perhaps he'd taken his own life, or slipped away quietly to take unofficial retirement in some French backwater? Mrs Jeanne Lord, who'd already guessed the nature of her husband's secret work and had heard nothing from him since April, badgered the War Office for an explanation. In a preliminary note to SOE's security section Amies concluded, “I think that we shall have to come fairly clean” and at a meeting in December he admitted to her that they had no idea where he was, or indeed if he was still alive.
Skeptical of the account of Lord's mental breakdown, Mrs Lord began her own investigation. Soon after the Liberation she returned to France, collecting evidence from witnesses in and around Laissac, including from her sister who'd received Lord at her hotel after his arrival in France. But the real breakthrough came much later, in March 1946, when by chance her brother heard of a local story involving a body found in a well in the spring of 1943, in the village of Tanus, just a few miles from where Lord had last been seen. With the help of the local mayor, M. Treyat, she had the corpse exhumed. A conclusive fingerprint match against SOE's records was now impossible, but the evidence of an ankle fracture and dental records confirmed it was her husband. Dr Trillot, who carried out the autopsy, also stated that the body had been shot four times, and that a Colt pistol had been found at the scene. Most of Lord's clothes had been removed, and the police files had apparently later been stolen.
Trillot had let slip that he believed “Lord was murdered by two members of the Intelligence Service as ‘ settlement of accounts ’” but when Mrs Lord approached an official at Albi he refused to confirm Trillot's assertion or to investigate the matter further. However, Mayor Treyat did tell her about an incident in May 1943, when he'd given two men the use of an old derelict house of his to conduct what they called a “grand coup”. With them they had taken drink, some glasses, newspapers to cover the windows and an electrical cable: Treyat had volunteered to help with their work, but they told him it would be too dangerous. On June 23, a farmer went to use the well by the house and found the body and an electrical cable floating in it. Treyat knew these men as Jean Trudeau and Albert Lefevre: these were the aliases of Rat and Goat, cover identities supplied by SOE for their mission.
British newspapers picked up on Mrs Lord's hunt for the truth, and the French press speculated that Lord might have been executed on the orders of the War Office (though some conspiracy theorists prefer to believe that SOE had no qualms about killing its own agents, the SOE files show that no orders were ever considered or sanctioned for Lord's assassination, indeed the Belgian Section was as clueless as everyone about Lord's fate). After Mrs Lord's return to London, Scotland Yard sent two detectives to Tanus to examine the evidence; in his official history SOE in the Low Countries, M.R.D. Foot states that one of them was William “Jim” Skardon, better known as the MI5 interrogator of Klaus Fuchs and the Cambridge Spies. According to Foot, it was Skardon's interview with Waddington that extracted a confession that he and Vivian had been present at Lord's death, as Treyat's testimony had already suggested (Waddington claimed that Vivian had been the sole assassin, though he did admit to having helped Vivian throw the body into the well). A statement issued by the Foreign Office in December 1947 merely recorded that Lord's murder had not been instigated by the British government, and that no evidence suggested he had betrayed his mission or his companions.
Waddington's role in the cover-up of Lord's murder may have gone even further. He undertook a second mission in 1944, and was in Belgium just after the liberation of Antwerp, during which time a young British soldier was reported to have visited the offices of the Guaranty Trust Company of New York, where Lord had worked before the war. The porter, who remembered Lord, had been informed by the soldier that “as far as Mr Lord is concerned, you are going to see him in a few hours. He is in Antwerp and has just been to see his bungalow”. The Belgian Section officer dealing with Lord's case found the coincidence of Waddington's location, and the anonymous attempt to disinform the company that Lord was still alive, “troubling”, though no further action was taken.
This evidence only came to light some months after Waddington's service had been recognised with a military MBE, awarded in late 1945. The citation described him as “the most successful wireless operator ever put into Belgium” by SOE. A final mystery remains in Waddington's file: shortly before the award was given, MI5 notified SOE that Waddington had been a member of the National Socialist League and an associate of William Joyce, better known as Lord Haw-Haw (MI5 routinely vetted prospective agents as a part of the SOE recruitment process, but checks made on Waddington in April 1942 had revealed nothing).
I'd be very interested if anyone has any more information that I can pass on to Lord's family." 
Laurent Laloup le mardi 02 janvier 2018 - Demander un contact Recherche sur cette contribution | |
