He 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.

In September 1939, shortly after World War II began, Cole, fresh out of prison, enlisted in the Royal Engineers of the British army.

[3] Cole was described as "a six-footer, slim-built, and always well dressed, the type of person who can walk into clubs, attractive to gullible women."

[4] Serving in France and relying on his "appealing personality and sharp wits," Cole advanced rapidly to the rank of sergeant with the Royal Engineers.

He 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.

He persuaded a wealthy industrialist, François Duprez, to finance his efforts to assist British soldiers and airmen to escape France and return to England.

In La Madeleine, the upstairs apartment of a hair stylist, Jeannine Voglimacci, served as a meeting place for Cole, his helpers, and British soldiers seeking help.

Cole largely achieved the objective of combining all the disparate individuals and organisations helping British soldiers in the Lille region under his leadership.

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.

[8] In January 1941, Roland Lepers led a group of eight British soldiers and airmen south to Marseilles, where he came into contact with Ian Garrow, the leader of the clandestine Pat O'Leary escape line (Pat Line) which was dedicated to transporting British soldiers stranded in France to neutral Spain from where they could be returned to Britain.

He 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.

However, Garrow and the Pat Line leaders slowly learned that Cole was keeping the expense money paid him in his pocket rather than distributing it to his helpers.

[12] Now on the run from the Pat Line in Marseilles, but not yet discredited to most of his associates in the Lille area, Cole took refuge in a house in La Madeleine, and there on 6 December 1941 he was arrested by the Geheime Feldpolizei, an executive branch of the Abwehr (German military intelligence).

He 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.

He 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.

[17] In the summer of 1941, Cole became romantically involved with Suzanne Warenghem, one-half English, 19 years old, living in Paris, and a successful guide for the Pat Line.

There, they sheltered in a guest house for two months before the monks took them to an escape line that helped people flee France by walking across the Pyrénées mountains to Spain.

[21][22] In the winter of 1943/1944, Cole was released from prison and went to work for Hans Kieffer, the efficient head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the SS intelligence agency in Paris.

With France invaded and the Allied armies advancing, Cole, Kieffer, and other SD operatives fled Paris on 17 August 1944.

[23] Kieffer and 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.

Kieffer was released after questioning, and Cole was given the uniform of a U.S. Army lieutenant and an identification card as a member of Allied intelligence.

[24] Fearing discovery, Cole soon deserted the American army and fled to the sector of a defeated Germany, then occupied by France.

"[27] MI9's leader James Langley said of Cole that he was "a con man, thief and utter shit who betrayed his country to the highest bidder for money."

The evidence cited is that MI6's deputy leader Claude Dansey, who also influenced MI9, opposed the execution of Cole when Pat Line first proposed it.

The unconfirmed claims are that Dansey placed a higher priority on preserving the intelligence gathering operations of MI6 than the escape lines and tolerated Cole's misdeeds to protect him as an MI6 agent.