1941, Friday 21 November;
The four barges were moored in the river, close to a small jetty, they would begin unloading tomorrow morning when the lorries arrived. A light rain was falling, reducing visibility, and with no moon, only the distant light from a watchman’s brazier, over on the bank, reflected off the nearest oil drums, the Japanese markings warning of aviation fuel, briefly made visible. 1,600 drums, delivered by a Japanese Army transport ship, down by the coast, loaded onto these barges and then a tug had pulled them upstream to the quayside area of Thu Due, a riverside district of Saigon. They were bound for the JAAF occupied airfields around Saigon and further south at Soc Trang, to fuel aircraft of the Japanese 3rd Army Air Division, commanded by Lt Gen M Sugawara.
It was late in the night, or early in the morning, depending on how you viewed 3am. A small fishing boat came down the river, indistinguishable from all the rest you might find, dirty, nondescript, an oarsman, wearing a straw hat at its helm, nets bundled on its deck. It appeared to clumsily bump into the nearest barge, but softly, and a grapple flew out, catching the side of the barge, holding the boat tight to her, figures appeared from beneath the nets, arms reaching out, and two magnetic charges were quickly attached to oil drums. The grapple released, the boat swung out, and then back in, knocking into the side of the second barge, and again magnetic charges were fixed.
A night-watchman called out, carefully picking his way along the third barge by torchlight, to close on the fishing boat, calling out loudly in French, “who are you, what are you doing?” A reply came back, in Vietnamese, apologising. “Speak French” the watchman demanded angrily, a second watchman now appearing on the last barge, asking his companion what was happening. Second Lieutenant Peter Rule, his ‘nom de guerre’, of the Royal Engineers, appeared in the torchlight of the watchman, a ‘Ruby’ pistol in his hand aimed and cocked. He hissed at the watchmen, speaking in his native French tongue, “shut up, and get off these barges before you die”. Oaths of surprise were quickly met with another firm “shut up and start swimming”, with the pistol being waved to help them understand.
The boat swung free, before quickly closing against the third barge, the river’s current propelling her down to it. A grapple made her firm, and Rule was quickly across, onto the barge. Both watchmen stood, hands rising in the air, still not fully comprehending what was taking place. Rule’s free hand grabbed the nearest watchman, and shook him, the pistol waving in his face, “do you understand?” he growled in French, the watchman nodded and Rule pushed him away, sending him stumbling against an oil drum, before coming to the conclusion that taking to the waters was a good idea, the second watchman beating him to it by a couple of seconds.
The grapple released, the fishing boat swung out, away from the barges, heading for mid-stream, the two watchmen angling their swing with the current towards the bank, a hundred yards away. Reaching mid-stream, a small engine started, pushing the fishing boat a little harder, following the rivers course, around a bend, godowns built along the bank hiding the barges from their view as they turned a corner. A small charge blew, a drum ruptured, aviation fuel splashing out, all around, a second charge blew, again a drum split wide opening, a quick flash, and suddenly a fire, the drum exploding, splitting several drums stacked above it, the fire instantly igniting them too. A fireball roared out, climbing high into the air, lighting the river and both banks with its glow, rising above the godowns, for the eyes of Rule and his three companions to see. The low dark clouds above helped to cast an orange canopy over them all, adding to the theatre of the night.
The boat continued on down, another mile before briefly closing with the opposite bank, allowing Rule to jump out onto a rickety wooden jetty, before casting off, the fishing boat continuing down to the sea, heading for where the rest of the fishing boats would be, to collect a catch worth of a night’s fishing. Rule quickly ran up the alley between two godowns, to the road, and climbed into the passenger side of a black Renault Celtaquatre, the driver, a French woman in her mid-twenties, behind the wheel. “Thank god your safe Pierre”, she said in French, affection smiling from her eyes. “Quickly Sylvia, we have no time to lose, we must be away from here”.
Later, once back at their villa, and the car parked in its garage, they had gone to bed, hoping to get some sleep, tomorrow they must be up and acting as if it was just another day. But, in bed, sleep didn’t come easy, sirens could be heard as the French Gendarmerie responded, along with the Fire Brigade to the awful fire, burning out some barges on the Saigon River. The nervousness of the French authorities as they claimed an accidental fire had happened, something the Japanese fundamentally didn’t believe, masked the unreal situation, as the Vichy authorities stepped up their hunt for Free French agents in the city.
Rule and his mistress, Sylvia would lay low now, for the foreseeable future, her estranged husband, a tax inspector for the Finance Ministry, working up in Hanoi, in ignorance, until such time as Rule’s contact in the British Consulate, an underling of Consul General Sir William Meiklereid, would provide him with further work. He lay there reflecting how in the last two months, he’d gone from an engineer working on a Malayan rubber plantation, through an education at the SOE school on using explosives, while Sylvia had undertaken a course as a radio operator, her small transmitter stored in a battered suitcase in the loft. The whole thing seemed surreal, including their return back to Saigon by submarine, on HMS Regulus, climbing into a fishing boat off the coast at night, along with another two, to sneak back home.
The other two were single men in their forties, one a commercial salesman, the other a journalist, both able to travel as part of their everyday activities, but now gathering information. An older couple, husband and wife for nearly thirty years, had also returned at the same time from Bangkok, he worked as a low-level manager in Saigon’s city’s water works, while she was a secretary to an official in the mayor’s office. Supposedly, they had been on a touring holiday in Thailand, but had been in Singapore with the others, trained on basic spy practices, of surveillance, tailing, and the use of dead drops. All six of them were now trained on how to kill by knife or pistol, whether they were capable of it or not was another matter. But whatever their background, age or occupation, and for different motives, the loss of a son fighting the Germans, Patriotic fervour, or money, they were united in supporting the Free French cause, however they could.
