Foreign News: The Countess

“Her courage was of the kind that passed belief,” said a high officer of British Intelligence. “She had a war record almost without parallel . . . There are at least two British officers who would not be alive today if it were not for her.” Moreover, added a distinguished compatriot, “the countess was a most beautiful woman.”

Polish-born Christine Skarbek was indeed a beauty, slim and dark-haired, with startlingly white skin. She also had daring and skill, shown in the way she galloped her father’s blooded horses over the family estate near Piotrkow or skied down the steepest Carpathian slopes. But there was little in the Countess Christine Skarbek’s past to prepare her for the services for which she was praised last week. The pampered daughter of one of Poland’s oldest families, she was in Addis Ababa with her second husband when Poland was overrun. Christine Skarbek, then 24, promptly went to Britain and offered her services.

A Grenade in Each Hand. The British put her to work at once. Posing as a British journalist in Budapest, Agent Skarbek commuted by ski and car across the Tatra Mountains into Poland, to organize escape routes for Polish and Allied officers. Once she and her partner, a childhood friend named Andrew Kowerski, were captured by the Gestapo, but Christine, whose poise in the presence of danger soon became legendary, talked them both out of trouble. According to British Intelligence, she was the only woman who went through six years of Allied undercover work and throve on it. Most women gave up after one or two missions.

As “Jacqueline Armand,” Christine parachuted into southeastern France and joined the Maquis. Once a party of Germans sent a dog to flush her out of a thicket hiding place. Christine made friends with the dog and got away. Later in Italy, she was stopped by a patrol. She raised her hands showing a live grenade in each. As the Italians stood with fingers trembling on their triggers, Christine and her partner backed away and escaped.

A Bluff in the Bastion. Like a good poker player, the Countess Skarbek could play it close to the chest or stake all on a bluff. In 1944, wanted dead or alive by the Germans, she walked boldly into a Nazi prison camp ahead of the American advance, and demanded the release of three Allied officers sentenced to be shot. ”You have three important prisoners here,” she told a sergeant major. “If you shoot them, I will see to it that you yourself are shot when the Americans reach here.” The authority in her words and manner was too much for the noncom. The gates were opened and the four walked out. “It was the bravest deed I ever saw,” said one of the officers later.

By war’s end, Christine’s bravery had earned her a medal from Poland, the French Croix de Guerre, the Order of the British Empire, and Britain’s George Medal for Special Services. But with peace, it seemed, Britain had no more need of her bravery. As Christine Granville (one of her undercover aliases), she took a room in a respectable Kensington family hotel and started job hunting. Too proud to mention either her medals or her war service, she was turned down time & again . as a foreigner. She worked for a while as a $14-a-week salesgirl in Harrod’s department store and as a cloakroom attendant in a Paddington hotel. Last year she got a job as a tourist-class stewardess on a ship running to Australia and New Zealand.

A Dog in the Manger. Her boss on the ship was a small, dark fellow named Dennis George Muldowney. In his rough-cut way, Dennis tried to make her job a little pleasanter. When at last she quit after refusing to clean out the passengers’ lavatories, Dennis followed her to London, where he hung around her like a stray dog. In time he became a pest. Christine complained to the police.

Last week, with Dennis presumably out of the way, 37-year-old Christine made final plans to fly to Brussels and join her old wartime companion Andrew Kowerski, now Major Andrew Kennedy of British Intelligence. At midnight, after dining with a few friends, she went back to her hotel. She had just started upstairs when she heard her name called. She turned around, began talking to the man who addressed her. Then the night porter heard her scream: “Get him off me!” The porter and two other men rushed up, but too late. There on the floor at the foot of the stairs lay Christine Skarbek, heroine, a wooden-handled knife thrust in her chest.

“I killed her,” said Dennis George Muldowney to the police when they came. “Let’s get away from here and get it over quick.”