A Spy Atones for the Death of Her Son

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 122, 19 November 1932, Page 18

A Spy Atones for the Death of Her Son

■ I.have just seen the.sad and bent figure of a once-beautiful woman, who made history in the Great War, enter a convent on the Franco-Belgian frontier, writes.a special correspondent of "The People/ The French Secret Service knew her as "A.K. 17," on whose head Germany set the price of £50,000. - I know her as a sorrowing wife and mother who is doing penance for an unwitting and agonising sin. She supplied the Allies.with, information .that sent her airman son-to his doom.

In her early days she little dreamed what adventure and war-torn emotion lay in store for her.. She was Elsie Kleber, a native of Alsace-Lorraine—a descendant of the famous Karl Kleber, who served Napoleon in his Egyptian campaign. She married Robert S. Harben, an Englishman, who had become a naturalised German, and went to live with him in Germany.

When the war came, her only son, although years below military age, joined the German army. Her husband was pro-German. And Elsie, with- all the inbred love of France in her veins, listened to a call which was more powerful and more precious than ties of blood —her country. ■ . ' *

She enrolled as an Allied spy in Germany. She was living in Berlin at the outbreak of war, and obtained work in a Government Department, where she gleaned Information. of. priceless value to the Allies..

For two years she pursued that work. Then the chiefs of the French Intelligence Service decided that she could do better service by - moving more about the country, finding out things that were not done so openly as the affairs transacted by the department with which she was.

She accepted the call, and for the last two years of the war she roamed about Germany, discovering secrets that no one else could discover and risking her life again and again for the Allies. Her activities • became known, ana she was denounced bjr the Germans

as the most dangerous of all the Allied agents.

A reward of £10,000, afterwards increased to £'50,000, was offered for her capture, and a whole army of detectives was employed, solely to run down the woman who was known as "Will o' the Wisp" Because of. her elusiveness.

On one occasion the police were so close on her trail that capture was certain if she travelled by train from Essen to Berlin. Just before the train left, a note, thrust into her hand, warned her of her danger, and she flattened herself on the roof of a sleeping carriage, knowing that on the way she must pass through a tunnel, where only an inch might mean death.

When she. came through the tunnel she had fainted, and she finished the journey in a state of collapse. At Berlin detectives were waiting for her, but they did not see" the figure dropping from the roof of the coach on to the "off" side of1 the track and hurrying from the station by another door. Then she. learned of a German plan, for an air raid on British Headquarters at Monterueil. This information was passed on in time to enable ths Allies to take measures that resulted in all the raiding aeroplanes being shot down and the pilots killed. One of those killed was her own son, but though the mother knew of her loss, it was not until recently, that she learned that if she had not given the information to the Allies he would not have been killed.

It was then that she decided to givo up the employment she had occupied in a French. Government Department in Paris since the end of the waf'and enter a convent for the rest of, her life. I had a short talk with this woman just before the convent gates closed on her for ever. The fact that she had gained for her services the personal thanks of Poincare, Clemenceau, Haig, Foch, and other noted Allied leaders, counted for nothing.

I'lnlust do penance," she said, "for bringing death to my son, who was more to me than life itself."