"The worst traitor them all."
🧵#OTD in 1946, fugitive British traitor Harold Cole met his end at the hands of French police - bleeding out on the bed of his squalid Paris one-room appartment. 1/9
Born in the East End of London in 1906, Cole had embarked on a career as a petty criminal and had already spent time in prison before the war. Upon the outbreak of war, he joined up with the Royal Engineers and in 1940 was in northern France with the BEF. 2/9
Just before the German attack in the west in the spring of 1940, Cole absonded with the sergeants' mess fund and hid in the city of Lille. He re-emerged after the fall of France posing as a British officer and agent - offering his services to escape lines for Allied soldiers. 3/9
The smooth-talking Cole soon aroused suspicion - especially with the Garrow/O'Leary escape line's Belgian military doctor Albert Guérisse (Pat O'Leary) and the Red Cross nurse and MI9 agent Sister Olga Baudot de Rouville. 4/9
Cole began betraying the escape lines members to the Gestapo for money in the autumn of 1941 and before long, 65 people were in the hands of that sinister organization, including the head of the escape line, Ian Garrow and a man who had helped him in Lille, François Duprez. 5/9
Cole continued his activities under many aliases and many Resistance members were rounded up due to his treachery. Paris was liberated in August 44 and MI9 set up an office there under Airey Neave, who had himself escaped from Colditz in 42, and he set about looking for Cole. 6/9
Cole emerged in the spring of 1945 in southern Germany and amazingly managed to convince the Americans that he was a British intelligence officer. He was given a uniform and put to work for the American Counter Intelligence Corps under the name of Captain Mason. 7/9
MI9's Donald Darling in Paris eventually found Cole and he was arrested and held in prison and once again, like a cat with nine lives, he escaped after convincing American guards that he had been allowed to write his memoirs in the guardroom. 8/9
Cole found refuge above a bar in Rue de Grenelle, Paris. On 8 January 1946 French police, tipped off that a deserter was hiding out there, were met by Cole who fired a pistol at them. He was gunned down and died on the bed. His body was later identified by Guerisse (O'Leary). 9/9
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