Mathilde Lucie CARRE, alias VICTOIRE, La Chatte: French. CARRE was a leading member...

Mathilde Lucie CARRE, alias VICTOIRE, La Chatte: French. CARRE was a leading member of an espionage group in Occupied France known as the WALENTY organisation ('Interallie') originally set up in late 1940 in Paris by the Polish Intelligence Service. She came to Britain in February 1942 with the leader of another Resistance Group, LUCAS, to whom she had admitted that she had been turned by the Germans and that her radio link had fallen under German control. The Germans had indeed successfully turned VICTOIRE into a double agent, yet on her arrival in Britain she apparently changed sides again and for a while her radio link was used as a deception channel. The question whether she had undergone a genuine 're-conversion' was one that taxed all the British agencies involved. Under much suspicion VICTOIRE was investigated by MI5 and when it became increasingly clear that she had betrayed a large number of her Interallie colleagues and associates to the Germans she was interned for the duration of the war. In 1945 she was returned to France where in 1949 she was tried and sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment (and later to be commuted further).

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