Harold Cole, known as Harry Cole, Paul Cole, and many other aliases, was a petty criminal, a confidence man, a British soldier, an operative of the Pat O'Leary escape line, and an agent of Nazi Germany.
41 Facts About Harold Cole
1.
2.
Harold Cole became a double agent for the Germans in December 1941 and betrayed to the Gestapo 150 escape line workers and members of the French Resistance, of whom about 50 were executed or died in German concentration camps.
3.
Harold Cole survived the war but was killed while resisting arrest by French police in Paris in January 1946.
4.
Harold Cole was born in London and grew up in Hoxton, an East London slum.
5.
Harold Cole's parents were Albert Cole, an unskilled labourer, and Alice Ann Godfrey, formerly a servant.
6.
Harold Cole left school aged 14 and, as a teenager, he became known as a con man, embezzler, and petty criminal.
7.
Harold Cole was in jail several times between 1923 and 1939.
8.
Harold Cole claimed to have served in the British Army in Hong Kong in the 1930s, and in 1938, he was in France masquerading as "Wing Commander Wain" of the Royal Air Force.
9.
Harold Cole quickly escaped but was caught and jailed once more until his guards released him in June 1940 as the invading Germans were overrunning British forces in northern France.
10.
Harold Cole remained in France when British forces were evacuated from Dunkirk.
11.
Harold Cole presented himself as Captain Delobel of British intelligence.
12.
Harold Cole persuaded a wealthy industrialist, Francois Duprez, to finance his efforts to assist British soldiers and airmen to escape France and return to England.
13.
Harold Cole spoke poor, accented French, and the document enabled him to pretend to be unable to speak and hear if necessary for deception and in the presence of Germans.
14.
Harold Cole began to spend most of his time in Marseilles.
15.
Harold Cole was known to Scotland Yard and MI9, the secret British organisation which financed the Pat and other escape lines.
16.
Harold Cole was described as a con man with a string of convictions for housebreaking and fraud, but his background was disregarded because of his efficiency in helping British soldiers.
17.
However, Garrow and the Pat Line leaders slowly learned that Harold Cole was keeping the expense money paid him in his pocket rather than distributing it to his helpers.
18.
The fear was that Harold Cole, if allowed to live, might betray the Pat Line and its members.
19.
Now on the run from the Pat Line in Marseilles, but not yet discredited to most of his associates in the Lille area, Harold Cole took refuge in a house in La Madeleine, and there on 6 December 1941 he was arrested by the, an executive branch of the.
20.
Whatever the truth, Harold Cole quickly complied with the German demand for information about the Pat Line.
21.
Harold Cole wrote a 30-page statement for the Germans, identifying dozens of his associates and describing the operations of the northern section of the Pat Line.
22.
Harold Cole withheld some names and information from the Germans.
23.
Harold Cole did not betray Jeannine Voglimacci, the hairdresser in La Madeleine, but wrote her a letter threatening retribution if she continued to work for the Pat Line.
24.
Harold Cole took refuge in Paris and Lyon after he betrayed the Pat Line, escaping German control and now a fugitive from both the Germans and the outraged survivors of the Pat Line.
25.
The sentence was later changed to life imprisonment, and Harold Cole remained imprisoned until the end of 1943.
26.
Harold Cole was arrested along with Cole on 9 June 1942, but in the subsequent trial, she was judged innocent of espionage.
27.
Harold Cole gave birth on 31 October 1942, but the child died on 12 January 1943.
28.
Warenghem heard from friends that Harold Cole was inquiring about her.
29.
Kieffer and Harold Cole retreated as the Allies advanced, and in April 1945, in the Black Forest, they shed their uniforms and burned everything that might have identified them as German soldiers.
30.
Harold Cole refashioned himself as Captain Robert Mason, a British secret agent whom the SD had captured.
31.
Kieffer was released after questioning, and Harold Cole was given the uniform of a US Army lieutenant and an identification card as a member of Allied intelligence.
32.
Harold Cole was given the job of arresting and interrogating Nazis in the Bad Saulgau area.
33.
Harold Cole gathered a group of thugs under his command.
34.
Harold Cole accomplished the task with maximum looting and brutality, including the unauthorised execution of at least one former SS officer.
35.
However, British intelligence was on Harold Cole's trail, watching two of his ex-mistresses in Paris.
36.
Harold Cole sent a postcard to one of them with a return address.
37.
Harold Cole shared the postcard unwittingly with an MI9 officer.
38.
On 11 June 1945, Harold Cole was found and arrested by MI5's Peter Hope after a fight in which Harold Cole shot Hope in the leg.
39.
Harold Cole was killed in the ensuing gunfight after slightly wounding one officer.
40.
Harold Cole's body was later identified by Albert Guerisse, his Pat Line colleague who had survived imprisonment by the Germans.
41.
Some soldiers whom Harold Cole helped evade German capture defended him.