Christopher Burney
MBE
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Born
| 1917
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Died
| 19 December 1980
(1980-12-19)
(aged 62?63)
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Allegiance
|
United Kingdom
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Service/
branch
|
British Army
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Rank
| Lieutenant
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Unit
| Special Operations Executive
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Battles/wars
| World War II
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Christopher Arthur Geoffrey Burney
MBE
(1917 ? 18 December 1980) was an upper-class Englishman who served in the
Special Operations Executive
(SOE) during
World War II
.
Biography
[
edit
]
In 1941,
Pierre de Vomecourt
organized AUTOGYRO, one of the first resistance networks of Section F of the
Special Operations Executive
. Among de Vomecourt's recruits were
Georges Begue
, the first SOE agent ever to be parachuted into France, who was assigned as the wireless operator; Noel Fernand Raoul Burdeyron (real name: Norman F. Burley); and
Mathilde Carre
.
Lack of money, weapons, and personnel, along with spotty communications with London meant that AUTOGYRO accomplished little. In frustration, Burdeyron/Burley singlehandedly derailed a German supply train by pulling up a rail, AUTOGYRO's only successful attack, causing considerable German casualties. Impressed, SOE decided to send Burdeyron some assistance. They recruited Christopher Burney, a
lieutenant
in the
British Army
and a trained commando, who had lived in France and spoke idiomatic French without an accent. On 30 May 1942, under the code name "Charles", he was inserted by parachute into France along with
William Grover-Williams
, on a different mission under the code name "Sebastian".
After being blind-dropped into the French countryside, Burney made his way to his rendezvous with Burdeyron. Circling the building, he spotted several suspicious men watching from various positions. He immediately concluded that his rendezvous had been blown and AUTOGYRO betrayed (it had ? Mathilde Carre was in fact, a double agent). He quietly left, and never attempted any further contact with Burdeyron or de Vomecourt.
Burney then tried to create his own network, but after eleven weeks learned that the
Abwehr
was passing around a circular warning bank clerks, hotel clerks, and others to be on the lookout for a man named "Charles" who was asking strange questions, and offering a reward for tips on his whereabouts. The circular contained a good description of Burney who, tall and blonde, was very conspicuous in Normandy. Deciding he had done all he could, he planned his escape over the Pyrenees to Spain and back to England. Grover-Williams offered his help, and Burney met with him several times to organize the escape, but on the morning he was to meet Grover-Williams for the last time, Burney was surprised in his sleep by Abwehr agents who had been tipped off by a hotel clerk familiar with the circular.
[1]
The Germans locked him up, first in
Fresnes prison
, for 15 months of solitary confinement, then in
Buchenwald concentration camp
. While at Buchenwald, Burney would meet
F.F.E. Yeo-Thomas
and also subsequently meet
Phil Lamason
, the senior officer in charge of
168 allied airmen
and would help - at great risk - with their transfer to a POW camp.
Freed in 1945, he worked after the war for the newly formed
United Nations
, helping to commission their building in New York City. When Dutch diplomat and
UN Assistant Secretary-General
Adrian Pelt
was posted from 1949 to 1951 in the Franco-British
UN Trust Territory
of
Libya
as
UN Commissioner
for Libyan Independence, Burney was assigned as his assistant. In the 1950s, banking magnate
Siegmund Warburg
recruited him as a manager for the British and French Bank.
Burney's younger brother, Roger Burney, was one of two British officers killed on 18 February 1942 when the French submarine
Surcouf
was mysteriously sunk in the
Caribbean
.
In 1966,
Frank Kermode
, somewhat controversially,
[2]
included Burney's experience of time passing in
Solitary Confinement
in his own major critical work of Western experience of passing time in
The Sense of an Ending
.
Bibliography
[
edit
]
- The Dungeon Democracy
, 1946, Burney's controversial account of life in Buchenwald
- Solitary Confinement
, 1951, his account of 15 months in Fresnes Prison
- Descent from Ararat
, 1962, an existentialist fable
References
[
edit
]
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