Donald Darling
Donald Darling, code named Sunday (born ?, died 1 December 1977[1]), was an agent for the clandestine British organizations MI6 and MI9 during World War II.
The purpose of MI9 was to help prisoners of war to escape and downed airmen and stranded soldiers to evade capture in German-occupied Europe and return to Great Britain.
He financed and advised the escape and evasion lines which rescued soldiers and airmen and guided them to safety in neutral Portugal and Spain and British-owned Gibraltar.
As part of his work, Darling contributed intelligence to MI6 about conditions and events inside occupied Europe through knowing many of the key people involved in resistance and escape lines.
As the allied forces reconquered Europe from Nazi Germany, Darling was briefly in charge of the escape and evasion office (Room 900) of MI9 in London.
"[7][3] Darling's mission was secret and he was not popular with the females in the Embassy who considered him "a dashing young fellow with a sports car" who was "doing something with Red Cross parcels when he should be in the [military] forces.
Through Gulbenkian, Darling became aware of the Pat O'Leary Line, based in Marseille, headed at that time by Ian Garrow and dedicated to helping British soldiers stranded in France after the Dunkirk evacuation escape to Spain.
During the war, the Pat line smuggled more than 600 allied soldiers and airmen and a large number of other people wishing to escape the Nazis out of France.
The diplomats in Spain and Dansey of MI6 in London were skeptical of de Jongh, fearing she might be a German agent, but Darling had heard of her through his contacts.
Darling disagreed with Dansey and in April 1942, he convened a meeting in Gibraltar with Guérisse and James Langley, a leader of MI9, to discuss killing Cole.
[17] From his interviews, he acquired a detailed knowledge of the escape lines and their workers – so much so that his files were kept in weighted sacks to be sunk into the sea if Germany invaded Gibraltar.
[18] In March 1944, Darling was ordered back to London where he took over the evasion section (Room 900) of MI9 replacing Airey Neave who departed to seek out survivors of the escape networks after the D-Day invasion of France on 6 June 1944.
The cases included investigation of Nazi collaborators, paternity claims, locating lost airmen and soldiers, and identifying those people who had helped evaders.
[4][3][19] About 7,000 airmen and soldiers, mostly British and American, were helped by the escape lines to evade German capture in Western Europe (mainly France, Belgium, and the Netherlands) and successfully returned to the United Kingdom during World War II.
