War Hero; Ted Coppin of the SOE

Ted Coppin

Edward Cyril Coppin (usually called Ted) was born on 20th May 1915 at Brightlingsea, Essex, the son of Ted and Harriet Coppin. His father made a living with boats and son Ted was at home on the water from childhood. Like many fishermen along the Essex coast their skills were sought out to captain and crew the luxury yachts that were popular at that time. It was this that took the family to the south of France during Ted’s youth to take advantage of the demand from the rich and famous for his father's skills to captain their luxury yachts. Ted Coppin junior was keen to work with his father and so at 14 he left his school in France, to join his father's shipbroking and ship chandler business on the Quai Saint-Pierre of the Vieux-Port in Cannes. He became an expert motor mechanic and listed his hobbies as swimming, sailing and speed boats.

The German and in particular, the Italian occupation of the south of France, at the start of World War II forced the family to leave and they came back to Essex and settled on the Colchester Road in Coggeshall.

Ted volunteered for the British Army, joining the 2nd Transport Training Centre of the Royal Army Service Corps, in the rank of Private but in November 1941 he volunteered for F (French) Section of the Special Operation Executive (the SOE). After his years in France he spoke the language like a native. He received his training at STS (Special Training School) 25. In this secret world in order to protect his real identity he was known by the alias of Theodore Crowe. Ted subsequently received his commission.

In June 1942 he landed by boat in France to join the Donkeyman network of Henri Frager in Marseilles, where a local recruit, François Basin, proved able enough to become Coppin's lieutenant. He trained a sabotage group comprising a small but efficient team of railway workers who ensured an increase in accidents and de-railings in railway marshalling yards and making good use of abrasive grease on rolling stock - methods of 'unattributable sabotage' that Ted would have learned at the training school.

A delivery of arms by sea was also attributed to Ted Coppin and in the autumn of 1942 he was credited with organising the diversion of goods trains that were meant for Germany towards the Spanish border instead. He built up an extensive intelligence service regarding train movements which continued to report until the summer of 1944.

Ted Coppin was reported missing towards the end of 1942, but a subsequent note on his SOE file gives a report from another agent in the field that Ted was not arrested until 23 April 1943. The secrecy and uncertainty surrounding Coppin's work, whereabouts and fate was reflected in a summary on his file from the commanding officer of French Section, Colonel Maurice Buckmaster:

'Excellent young man who undoubtedly did good work and laid the basis of our Marseilles organisation. He certainly did more work than was ever reported, and I guess that if we ever see him again he will have a lot of most interesting things to say'.

As you would expect, his parents were desperate for information and sent a stream of correspondence to the military authorities. In 1946 they were advised that the War Office's efforts to discover Ted's fate had 'not as yet borne any fruit' but they were given the name of Yvonne Experton and her address in Rives, Isère, near Grenoble. With this information and the help of their daughter, then a secretary in the British Embassy in Paris, the Coppins undertook their own investigations and were able to discover that their son had been arrested on 23 April 1943 by four members of the Gestapo at the Hôtel Sainte Marie in Marseilles, together with Yvonne Experton. Both she and Coppin had been held in the German section of the city's Saint-Pierre prison in the Rue Brochier until they were taken on 28 June 1943 to the Gestapo's offices in the Rue Paradis. They were interrogated separately, but in adjoining rooms, and although Experton was not ill-treated, she reported that Coppin had been tortured, but did not talk. The next day, Experton was transferred to Paris and imprisoned in Fresnes. She was interrogated at the Avenue Foch in October and remained at Fresnes until late January 1944 when she was deported, via the prison at Compiègne, to Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany.

She survived and was repatriated via Sweden in June 1945. She went to the French Section mission in Paris to report that she believed that Ted Coppin had likewise been transferred to Paris and Fresnes (the usual route for a captured British agent) for further interrogation and had then been sent to another camp in Germany in 1944. Coppin's parents had also obtained a report that their son was in Fresnes until at least December 1943, when he was said to have still been in good health and high spirits, but that he had then been deported to Germany. Another, unsubstantiated, sighting of him was claimed in the Mittelbau Dora camp in Germany as late as April 1945. No further details exist on Coppin's SOE file as to his eventual fate, but the Commonwealth War Graves Commission give a date of death of 27 September 1943.

Ted Coppin is officially commemorated on Coggeshall’s War Memorial and at the Brookwood Memorial, near Woking, Surrey, on panel 21, column 3. He is listed at the F Section Memorial at Valençay, France. He received a posthumous Mention in Despatches from the British and the Croix de Guerre from the French. A recommendation by F Section for an MBE (Military) was turned down, although his Wikipedia page does credit him with the MBE. Some reports incorrectly give Ted's age at 22 when he died - he was actually 28 or 29.

Both of his parents are buried in Coggeshall cemetery.

Cyril (Ted) Coppin's SOE file is HS9/350/9 at The National Archives, Kew. In addition to references to him in Peter Churchill's 'Duel of Wits', Ted Coppin is mentioned, as Monsieur Vidal, in Jerrard Tickell's book 'Odette'.