Harold Cole

Cole was born in an East London slum. By the time he was a teenager he was a petty criminal committing burglary, embezzlement and cheque fraud. He had served several sentences in British gaols before the start of the Second World War.

In September 1939, after recently being released early from prison, he lied about his criminal past to enlist in the British Army (serial no. 1877989RE). He was assigned to the 18th Field Park Company, part of the Royal Engineers, a unit in the 4th Infantry Division. It was sent to France in late 1939 as a part of the British Expeditionary Force and was stationed in Loison-sous-Lens, where Cole was promoted to sergeant. In May 1940, he was arrested for stealing money from his own Sergeants' Mess and placed in a guardhouse. Cole became a prisoner of war after being left behind when his unit pulled out during the Fall of France.

Cole soon escaped, using a stolen black Peugeot 202. He moved to Lille, where he dabbled in the black market. It was here he reinvented himself as an English gentleman and former Scotland Yard detective who was now a captain in British Intelligence in occupied France. He moved to Marseilles where he helped the French Resistance establish escape route networks with safe houses, couriers and document forgers.

During this period, he referred to himself as "Captain Paul Cole", but he also used a variety of aliases, including Mason, Rooke, Corser, de Loebelle, Anderson, Deram and Godfrey. Cole fashioned himself as a suave upper-class Englishman dressed in plus fours, with plastered-down hair, and a finely-clipped moustache. His espionage work was also given the wholehearted support of Special Operations Executive (SOE) in London.

However, in 1941 Cole was confronted by Albert Guérisse, a Belgian Resistance leader who ran the "Pat O'Leary Line" that helped Allied servicemen reach neutral Spain and English-controlled Gibraltar, about embezzling money, even though the SOE still vouched for his integrity. Guérisse had agents watch Cole to gather evidence that he had been stealing money intended to finance the escape lines to fund a high-society lifestyle of nightclubs and expensive restaurants. Cole was arrested and locked in a room, while the Resistance group decided his fate. While they deliberated and concluded that he should be executed, Cole forced open a window and escaped.

Now on the run from the Resistance, Cole handed himself in to the Geheime Feldpolizei, an executive branch of the Abwehr (German military intelligence). After giving the Nazi security agency 30 pages of names and addresses of Resistance members, he became an agent for the Sicherheitsdienst, collaborating with the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) to find and capture French Resistance members and destroy the escape lines he had helped run in occupied France.[3][4] While working out of 84 Avenue Foch in Paris, he denounced many important figures in the Resistance movement, including Ian Garrow and Guérisse. Cole was often present when they were detained. On some occasions, the Nazi security forces would arrest him too so his treachery remained undiscovered.

It is believed that Cole betrayed at least 150 members of the French Resistance, of whom 50 were executed by the Gestapo.[5] Although employed by the Germans, Cole quickly reverted to his old ways. He married a French girl, but abandoned her when their baby died. Cole also had several mistresses. He stole one girlfriend's life savings after convincing her he would pay her back with money he had back in Britain.

In 1944, Cole fled Paris before the Allies liberated the city. With the war over, in June 1945 he reinvented himself at Bad Saulgau in South Germany by claiming to be a Captain Mason, who was on a secret mission to root out high-ranking Nazis and Werwolf members who had fled to the Alpine Fortress in Bavaria. But Cole was caught after his own self-confidence got the better of him.

He sent a postcard to an ex-girlfriend in Paris telling her of his new life. She contacted the authorities, and he was arrested by MI9. However, despite being imprisoned at the SHAEF military prison in Paris, he escaped from custody by dressing as an American serviceman on 18 November 1945 and walking straight out through the main gate.

On 8 January 1946, after receiving a tip-off, French police found out he was hiding on the fourth floor above a bar on the Rue de Grenelle in Paris. Cole was shot and killed while trying to escape. He was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave in Paris.[6][7]

• Brendan Murphy. Turncoat: the Strange Case of Traitor Sergeant Harold Cole. Published by Macdonald & Co., Great Britain, 1987. (ISBN 0-356-15747-4).
• Security Service files on him are held by the National Archives under references KV 2/415, KV 2/416 and KV 2/417.
• Gordon Young, In Trust and Treason: The Strange Story of Suzanne Warren, E. Hulton, 1959.