John Ashford Renshaw Starr (6 August 1908 – 1996), code names Emile and Bob, was a British artist and an agent in
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
of the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
's clandestine
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a secret British World War II organisation. It was officially formed on 22 July 1940 under Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton, from the amalgamation of three existing secret organisations. Its pu ...
(SOE) organization during World War II. He was the organiser (leader) of the Acrobat network (or circuit) which operated in
Dijon
Dijon (, , ) (dated)
* it, Digione
* la, Diviō or
* lmo, Digion is the prefecture of the Côte-d'Or department and of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in northeastern France. the commune had a population of 156,920.
The earlies ...
. The purpose of SOE in occupied France was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance. SOE agents allied themselves with French Resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England.
Starr was wounded and captured by the German
SS on 18 July 1943 and imprisoned for the remainder of the war. After World War II, Starr was accused by several other SOE agents of collaboration with the Germans while he was a captive. John Starr's brother
George Starr was also an SOE agent.
Early life
Starr was born in
Heaton Moor
Heaton Moor is a suburb of Stockport, Greater Manchester, England. Within the boundaries of the historic county of Lancashire, it is one of the Four Heatons and borders Heaton Chapel, Heaton Norris and Heaton Mersey. Heaton Moor has Victorian ...
, Lancashire,
[''1911 England Census''] the son of an American father, Alfred Demarest Starr, a bookkeeper who became a naturalised British subject, and an English mother, Ethel Renshaw, he was a grandson of
William Robert Renshaw. He studied art in Paris and in 1934 he married a French woman, Michelle Vergetas, and the couple had one child, Ethel. Starr tried to join the
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...
in 1938 but was rejected because his father was an American. He was in Paris when World War II began in 1939, and in early 1940 joined the
King's Own Scottish Borderers
The King's Own Scottish Borderers (KOSBs) was a line infantry regiment of the British Army, part of the Scottish Division. On 28 March 2006 the regiment was amalgamated with the Royal Scots, the Royal Highland Fusiliers (Princess Margaret's Own ...
and later was assigned to the
Field Security Police
The Royal Military Police (RMP) is the corps of the British Army responsible for the policing of army service personnel, and for providing a military police presence both in the UK and while service personnel are deployed overseas on operations ...
. He escaped to England when France was overrun by
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
. He joined the SOE in early 1941.
Special Operations Executive
First Mission
Starr parachuted "blind" (without being met on the ground) near
Valence on the night of 27–28 August 1942. His job was to evaluate the food requirements for the
CARTE network The Carte network or Carte circuit or Carte organization was an early and illusory attempt at organizing French resistance to the occupation of France by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The creator of Carte, André Girard, claimed to have ...
, a resistance group which claimed that, with SOE support, it could raise an army of 300,000 men to resist the German occupation of France. Starr made his way from Valence to a villa in
Cannes
Cannes ( , , ; oc, Canas) is a city located on the French Riviera. It is a communes of France, commune located in the Alpes-Maritimes departments of France, department, and host city of the annual Cannes Film Festival, Midem, and Cannes Lions I ...
where he met SOE agent
Peter Churchill
Peter Morland Churchill, (14 January 1909 – 1 May 1972) was a British Special Operations Executive (SOE) officer in France during the Second World War. His wartime operations, which resulted in his capture and imprisonment in German concentrat ...
and CARTE leader
Andre Girard. Starr learned from Churchill and his own experience that CARTE was largely a fantasy of Girard's. He returned to England in November. Oddly enough, as he was boarding a small boat to slip out of France, he encountered his older brother
George
George may refer to:
People
* George (given name)
* George (surname)
* George (singer), American-Canadian singer George Nozuka, known by the mononym George
* George Washington, First President of the United States
* George W. Bush, 43rd Presiden ...
who was arriving in France as an SOE agent.
Second Mission
Starr was held in high regard by SOE and, along with a wireless operator, John Young, he parachuted into France again on the night of 15–16 May 1943, landing near
Blye
Blye () is a commune in the Jura department in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in eastern France.
Population
See also
*Communes of the Jura department
The following is a list of the 494 communes of the Jura department of France.
The communes ...
in the
French Alps
The French Alps are the portions of the Alps mountain range that stand within France, located in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur regions. While some of the ranges of the French Alps are entirely in France, others, such as ...
. He was designated as the organiser (leader) of the
Acrobat network, operating around
Saint-Étienne
Saint-Étienne (; frp, Sant-Etiève; oc, Sant Estève, ) is a city and the prefecture of the Loire department in eastern-central France, in the Massif Central, southwest of Lyon in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.
Saint-Étienne is the t ...
and
Dijon
Dijon (, , ) (dated)
* it, Digione
* la, Diviō or
* lmo, Digion is the prefecture of the Côte-d'Or department and of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in northeastern France. the commune had a population of 156,920.
The earlies ...
. Shortly after his arrival, Starr narrowly escaped being captured in
Clermont-Ferrand
Clermont-Ferrand (, ; ; oc, label=Auvergnat (dialect), Auvergnat, Clarmont-Ferrand or Clharmou ; la, Augustonemetum) is a city and Communes of France, commune of France, in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes regions of France, region, with a population ...
. The Germans had penetrated several SOE networks and captured agents in that area. Starr was joined in Acrobat by saboteur
Harry Rée
Harry Alfred Rée, DSO, OBE (15 October 1914 – 17 May 1991) was a British educationist and wartime member of the Special Operations Executive. Of the more than 400 SOE agents who worked in France during World War II, M.R.D. Foot, the offici ...
and courier
Diana Rowden
Diana Hope Rowden (31 January 1915 – 6 July 1944) served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and was an agent for the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II. Rowden was a member of SOE's SOE F Sectio ...
. Rée soon departed for another network. He did not like Starr's "assertive manner" and believed the network was insecure.
Capture and collaboration
On 18 July 1943 Starr was captured by the Germans after being betrayed by a Frenchman he had recruited. He attempted to escape en route to a prison in Dijon and was shot twice in the thigh and foot. He was placed in the custody of the
Sicherheitsdienst
' (, ''Security Service''), full title ' (Security Service of the ''Reichsführer-SS''), or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence organization ...
(or SD), the intelligence service of the
SS. In Dijon, he said the Germans tortured him by beating on his wounded thigh but he didn't reveal any significant information to them. He was transferred to
Fresnes Prison
Fresnes Prison ('' French Centre pénitentiaire de Fresnes'') is the second largest prison in France, located in the town of Fresnes, Val-de-Marne, south of Paris. It comprises a large men's prison (''maison d'arrêt'') of about 1200 cells, a smal ...
in Paris and in late September to SD headquarters at
84 Avenue Foch
84 Avenue Foch (german: Avenue Foch vierundachtzig) was the Parisian headquarters of the ''Sicherheitsdienst'' (SD), the counter-intelligence branch of the SS during the German occupation of Paris in World War II.
Avenue Foch is a wide reside ...
in Paris.
The head of the Paris SD was an ex-policemen named
Hans Kieffer Hans Josef Kieffer (4 December 1900 – 26 June 1947) was a Sturmbannführer (Major) and the head in Paris of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the intelligence agency of the SS during the German occupation of France during the Second World War. Kieffer' ...
, a man more dedicated to persuasion than torture. Kieffer persuaded Starr to use his artistic talents to redraw a map and some charts of SOE operations in France. In return, Starr was given a private room in the building and dined in the officer's mess which served excellent food. Another SOE prisoner at 84 Avenue Foch was
Gilbert Norman
Gilbert Maurice Norman (7 April 1915 – 6 September 1944) was a British Army officer who served in the Special Operations Executive in France during World War II.
Norman was born in Saint-Cloud, Hauts-de-Seine, to an English father and a Fre ...
who told Starr that the Germans knew everything about SOE and that nothing he said would be news to them. Starr justified his cooperation with the SD by saying he was gathering information on SD operations that would be useful to SOE if he could escape. Along with SOE wireless operator,
Noor Inyat Khan, and a French colonel, Leon Faye, he tried to escape in late 1943 by climbing out the skylight of his room onto the roof of the building, but the three were soon recaptured. Kieffer threatened to shoot them, but relented on condition that they gave their word of honor not to attempt another escape. Khan and Faye declined; but Starr gave his word. Khan and Faye were sent to concentration camps in Germany and later executed.
After the escape attempt, Starr again became friendly with the Germans, even going out to restaurants with some of them and on an operation to identify the bodies of British airmen who had been shot down near Paris. He helped the SD send bogus wireless messages by correcting spelling and editing mistakes. The Germans he worked with later described him as "weak and misguided rather than knowingly treacherous."
A German concentration camp
Starr remained at Avenue Foch until August 1944 when, after the
Normandy Invasion
Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 (D-Day) with the Norma ...
and with
allied
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
armies approaching Paris, he was transported to the
concentration camp
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...
at
Sachsenhausen
Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners ...
near Berlin. According to his account he avoided execution in 1945 due to a quarantine resulting from a
typhus
Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure.
...
outbreak within the camp. The opportunity arose to smuggle himself into a group of prisoners who were being transferred to the
Mauthausen concentration camp
Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria, Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with List of subcamps of Mauthausen, nearly 100 further ...
near
Linz
Linz ( , ; cs, Linec) is the capital of Upper Austria and third-largest city in Austria. In the north of the country, it is on the Danube south of the Czech border. In 2018, the population was 204,846.
In 2009, it was a European Capital of ...
. By using his ability to pass himself off as a Frenchman, he joined a group of French and
Belgian
Belgian may refer to:
* Something of, or related to, Belgium
* Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent
* Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, such as Dutch, French, and German
*Ancient Belgian language, an extinct language ...
prisoners who were released into the custody of the
Red Cross
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million Volunteering, volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure re ...
and taken to
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
as the war in Europe drew to a close.
Post World War II
Starr testified at the war crimes trial of Josef Kieffer. He said that Kieffer had not mistreated prisoners and that he did not believe that Kieffer would "take part in the deliberate murder of British prisoners." Kieffer was found guilty and hanged.
Stories from other SOE agents who shared his captivity at Avenue Foch resulted in doubts being raised about Starr's loyalty, and his case became the subject of an
MI5
The Security Service, also known as MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Go ...
investigation, which concluded that although his behaviour was suspicious, there were no grounds for criminal prosecution. After the war, Starr opened a night-club in
Hanley, Staffordshire
Hanley is one of the Federation of Stoke-on-Trent, six towns that, along with Burslem, Longton, Staffordshire, Longton, Fenton, Staffordshire, Fenton, Tunstall, Staffordshire, Tunstall and Stoke-upon-Trent, amalgamated to form the City of Stoke ...
, with Alfred and Henry Newton, SOE agents (and brothers) whom he had met during his training and also at the Avenue Foch. The brothers had been at
Buchenwald
Buchenwald (; literally 'beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or su ...
concentration camp. Starr later returned to live in Paris, then moved to Switzerland where he died in 1996.
[Glass, pp. 248–252, 267]
References
External links
BiographyS.O.E.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Starr, John Renshaw
British Special Operations Executive personnel
British Army personnel of World War II
British World War II prisoners of war
World War II prisoners of war held by Germany
1908 births
1996 deaths
Date of death missing
Place of death missing
British expatriates in France