ABSTRACT
The cell they joined was codenamed Gloria SMH; it had been set up to organise the escape of British airmen who had been shot down over Paris, but by the time that Beckett and Suzanne joined it had become an information network, providing evidence of German troop movements for Allied intelligence. Beckett's job was one to which he was uniquely suited; he received information, translated it into English, compiling and editing a concise document that could be placed on microfilm and smuggled out of the country. The work was very dangerous. Although the group soon learned to be as secretive as possible there were many close calls, and the cell members found that, in practice, they could not ensure that security was as tight as they would like it to be. Beckett, Suzanne and the other members of the cell worked steadily through 1941; their luck deserted them the following year, when the cell was betrayed by a French priest, Fr Abeche, who had
been recruited by the Germans. Beckett and Suzanne narrowly escaped Paris, and after a perilous journey through occupied France, they eventually found a safe refuge in the village of Roussillon, in the Vaucluse region of Vichy (a part of France nominally unoccupied, but in reality ruled by a puppet government on the Germans' behalf). Other members of the cell were not so fortunate. Albert Peron, (a close friend of Beckett) was arrested and interned, dying soon after the concentration camp in which he was imprisoned was liberated in 1945. For his resistance work, Beckett was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Medaille de la Reconaissance Française after the war.
