Prisoner 45816
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

As a man, I could never think of myself as pretty. When it was revealed to me that I was, only then did I understand how horrific that could be.

It was on board the ship La Martinière that was carrying me and 63 other convicts, to Île du Diable (Devil’s Island) in May 1939. We were chained in the hold so nobody could reach me, but plenty of people were telling me what they expected to do to me, once we hit land. I was terrified. I thought that I had come to grips with my situation, the result of a momentary act of violence that resulted in the death of the young woman I had forced myself upon. But now I knew that my circumstances were much, much worse.

But it was my prettiness that saved me.

When we had already crossed the Atlantic, and shortly after we had docked for less than a day at the port of Martinique to take aboard two further convicts, I had seen a deck officer inspect several prisoners, including myself. The only people who had been on our deck throughout the voyage had been prison guards. That evening the deck officer was back, and he had a guard release me from my shackles and bring me up to a higher deck, where there were passengers aboard.

Because I was filthy, the deck officer had me wash myself with a deck hose, and had me put on some clean calico pants and shirt. He then marched me into a cabin on the upper deck.

The cabin seemed to me to be luxurious. The only other person in it was a young woman, maybe a little older than me, dressed in a colourful knit top and blue wide leg pants. Her hair was blond – shoulder length and in soft waves. She was attractive and stylish. She examined me closely.

“Turn around,” she instructed, and I obeyed. “How old are you?”

“Nineteen,” I replied. At that time, old enough to be sentenced to hard labor in a prison colony.

“He will do,” she said, addressing the deck officer.

“If he agrees,” the officer said. Then he added the mysterious comment: “Remember this could get me into serious trouble. He needs to agree, and we need to keep this whole thing a secret.”

“Who would not agree?” she responded to him, before turning to me to ask: “Do you agree to freedom, or would you prefer prison?”

“Freedom.” The answer was as obvious as she knew it was.

“But there are conditions,” she said. “Freedom or prison?”

“Freedom,” I repeated. “Freedom, whatever the conditions … which are what, exactly?”

“You need to be ma cousine,” she said. I use the French because in English it is the same word, male and female. But here the meaning was clear and surprising. The word she used was feminine. She wanted me to impersonate a woman.

It turned out that her cousin Camille had met a young officer on the voyage, and they had fallen in love and eloped, leaving the ship in Martinique. Clémence, the young woman in the cabin with me, had promised to keep the elopement secret for as long as she could. That meant that Clémence’s father, the commandant of the prison I was headed for, needed to advise his brother of the safe arrival of his daughter at the Port of Cayenne in just three days.

Somebody needed to pretend to be Camille. That would be me. The advantage was that Clémence’s father had not seen his niece Camille since she was an infant. The disadvantage was that I was not female. But as Clémence pointed out, finding a woman on a convict ship is not possible. I was young, small and slight, and that was enough.

“I will try,” I said. A chance at freedom justifies effort, and how hard could it be? I had the example of my mother, who was the most feminine of women, a dancer and (as my father had described her before he died) a seductress. As a young boy I had watched her and worshipped her. I could remember her movements and expressions, but could I imitate them?

In modern times I think that many may think that I had developed some unnatural fascination with my mother, and that I regarded all other women as of no value by comparison. Maybe there is some truth in that. As I look back, I often wonder why I was the young man I was, and why I did the things that I did. I am no psychologist, but what I do know is that by becoming Camille everything changed for me.

“I will help you,” said Clémence. “You will need to stay here with me. Camille’s cabin is next to mine and has an adjoining door. We have much to do to get you ready.”

“And what about me?” I asked. “What is supposed to have happened to Prisoner 45816?”

“He fell over the side,” said the officer flatly. “Men fall overboard all the time without being noticed. Lost at sea. He will never arrive to complete his sentence. Deceased before he could.”

“It’s the best solution for you,” said Clémence. “You can start a new life after you have done this thing for me, and for Camille. Now, let’s get started. Marcel, you can leave.”

The officer seemed worried. Maybe he had good reason. But at the time, my desire for freedom and to avoid years as a sexual victim, was stronger than any desire for this girl, or any perverse thoughts that I might otherwise have had. He left.

“Fortunately, you have little in the way of a beard, and even body hair,” she observed. “But what you have will have to go. You need to go to your room and shave your body completely. Even down there. I will work on your face, and those eyebrows. And fortunately, I have a wig that will work.”

She proudly displayed the wig. I knew it was quality. My mother had one like it. It was a “flapper” model – a bob with bangs that had been popular in years gone by.

She showed me my cabin. It was smaller than hers but just as well appointed. The bed was what I had dreamed about since I was first arrested. But for now, I had to do what she said. I shaved my body as instructed. I knocked on the adjoining door and presented myself to her naked, wearing only a sly smirk.

“That will not do,” she observed without humor. “Our object is to conceal that and not flaunt it”. And with that she hit the head of my growing penis with the fountain pen she held. It immediately went slack.

I could have killed her at that moment. It was painful. But as I nursed my sore organ, I once again reminded myself of what was at stake. I did not even speak. I accepted the garment that she offered. It was a corset of some kind that included a crotch designed to tuck back what I had and present a smooth front. It fitted perfectly.

“This will do for now,” she announced. “Capucine will do better. We will need to tell her about you. But nobody else. Now, I have been writing some note about your family. Papa will ask, so you need to have all of the answers. Keep it and learn it. I will do your face and then you need to sleep. Tomorrow I need to teach you about how to be a lady.”

I sat down and she went to work on my face with tweezers. I did not flinch. I took it all. At the end of it my face was inflamed, but she used perfumed cream to soothe it, and I slept with a cloth on my pillow.

The following day she arranged for Marcel to bring us breakfast to the cabin. The fewer on board who saw me, the easier it would be to explain the differences between the old Camille and the new. And we had no time to promenade on deck, I had to learn to speak and to walk as a young lady. Clémence was obviously pleased with my ability to pick things up. She had no idea how easy it was for me with my perfect mother as my example.

The old Camille had left most of her clothes behind. She and her lover were travelling light. Apparently, he was French Canadian from Montreal and they were headed there. Clémence had the address of his parents and would be able to write to her care of them.

I had plenty of clothes to try on and get used to wearing. French Guiana is hot, so the best clothes were light, but I needed to conceal any male aspects to my build. To my advantage was the fact that I had lost weight while in custody (prison food did not appeal to me) so my arms were thin. My shoulders were broad but the fashion at the time included puff sleeves which worked well.

To my own surprise I found a female voice quite easily as well. It took a little practice, but I was soon engaging in long mock conversations with Clémence about great aunt Hortense and her two dogs. I had a range of stories that were real and some I had invented. I was finding the whole exercise great fun.

There was another aspect to it that was both pleasing and unsettling. Sometimes when I looked in the mirror, I saw my mother in me. Pleasing because we were apart and having the image of her in the mirror was like a having a photo on your bedside table. Unsettling because she was me, and I was her. I kept thinking that she would have hated this hairstyle. I would have to change it the first chance I got.

Clémence’s father was there at the dock to meet us. He embraced her warmly and greeted me with a kiss on each cheek. At that time, it was a common greeting between two men as well, but there was something about the smell and feel of a man’s cheek that seemed very different at this time.

His name was Claude and he was a very upright man. I mean that he seemed taller than he was, and he was stiff and formal. He took his job seriously. He had us immediately taken to the verandah of the hotel near the wharf so that we could sit in the shade with cool drinks while the convicts were brought from the hold and paraded in front of him.

He gave the speech that I suppose he always gave the poor souls who had arrived to endure their sentences of hard labor – something to the effect that they should give up hope of freedom until their allotted time was up, that good behavior had modest rewards but bad behavior had the harshest imaginable punishment. And I sat on the verandah in my pale green dress sipping a tropical juice with soda and ice. I knew my good fortune and I knew that I must protect it.

I had the chance of escape, but for now it occurred to me that I was in greater comfort than even the free souls who walked the streets of Cayenne. They seemed hot and busy, and not at all happy. I had people waiting on me hand and foot. My clothes felt light and cool. I was in conversation with a pretty young woman on a tropical verandah. I could live this way for a little longer.

After the convicts had been paraded away to pens for further transportation to the island in smaller boats, Claude escorted us to his “townhouse”. It was a mansion to my eyes. There was accommodation for his family in the commandant’s house on the island, but he preferred that we stay in town.

Clémence introduced me to Capucine, or “Cappy” as she called her. Cappy was a black woman from Haiti. She was strongly built and had heavy features. She had small pointed breasts which seemed on permanent display. When we were alone, she explained the situation to Cappy.

In her husky voice Cappy said to me: “My my, you are such a pretty thing. And I am sure you can only get prettier. I know exactly what to do.”

Later I learned that Capucine was an experienced practitioner of the arts of voodoo. I have to say, even after all that has happened, that I am no believer in voodoo being supernatural, but there is no doubt that Cappy had access to herbal potions that seem beyond even modern drugs in their capacity to alter human form and behavior. I was to be a target for her treatments.

But for now, she was to help Clémence in making me more feminine.

Claude was at the prison for a few days, but he returned to town on Monday and we had a formal dinner to welcome me to Guiana. Both Clémence and I were dressed in proper gowns. Claude had invited two young officers from the garrison to add to the conversation, as well as two older couples from the local community. This was the first opportunity that I had to learn more about the powers that my other exercised with such skill. I had both of the young officers pursuing me rather than Clémence, a fact that irritated her.

She said to me afterwards: “Where did you learn to behave like such a slut?”

Honestly, I would have struck her down at that moment were it not for Cappy, who put a strong arm between us – a very strong arm.

Clémence stormed off and Cappy sat me down and gave me a good telling off. She pointed out what I already knew: That I was living in luxury instead of in torment on the island, that I was toying with men instead of being impaled by them, that I was drinking fine wine and eating the best food rather than dining on gruel.

That was when she gave me my first cup of her special tea. That was when I became a living zombie.

Now, in voodoo a zombie is not a half dead being that eats human flesh. That is a Hollywood creation. Haitian voodoo priests would “kill” a person by sending them into a deep sleep, and then bring them back to life in a trace where they could exercise control over them. In many cases after living as a zombie for a while, the “undead” person would return to the living as a normal person. That was what happened to me.

Cappy had decided that I needed to be controlled. Her potions could modify my body too. It was not until a year later that Cappy showed me her penis and I truly understood. My breasts were then not as big as hers, but like her, I was no longer a man. She had somehow introduced something into my boy that changed its shape and also the texture of my skin and hair. I found it more fascinating than horrifying, at the time.

But to say that I spent that year in a trance would not be true. I lived and saw and felt and tasted a life of ease and comfort. The only difference was that instead of my mind being a squirming mess of strange and violent thoughts, it was at peace with my circumstances, and rather than oblivious to my physical changes, welcoming of them. For the first time, I was a happy person. Intoxicated by Cappy’s medicines perhaps, but happy, nonetheless.

Clémence became aware of my changes and Cappy’s role to play in them, but she welcomed them. She approved of the fact that I no longer had violent urges or what she described as “creepy gazes”. We became much closer friends.

As time went on, I was able to dispense with my only two discomforts – the corset and the wig. The corset because the organs it once strained to conceal were now so insignificant that simple panties could make them disappear. The wig because whatever were the feminizing tonics Cappy had given me, they promoted the growth of a full head of dark brown hair, that I enjoyed arranging in styles that I knew my mother would be proud of.

I am not sure exactly when I ceased to be Cappy’s zombie, but I know that my love of femininity endured afterwards. But what did emerge was restlessness. I knew that I needed to get away from this place. And Clémence came to share that sentiment.

The original intention was that Camille would stay in Guiana for only a few months and would be back in France well before Christmas 1939, but events intervened. War was declared against Germany on 3 September and within hours the British passenger liner Athenia was sunk by a German U-Boat with the loss of over 100 civilian lives. Claude and his brother Gilbert (notionally my father) agreed that if travel by sea was not strictly necessary, it should be avoided.

Clémence and I were happy to avoid a winter, but by April of 1940 we were ready to consider leaving Guiana. The best destination was Canada, where they spoke French. Clémence has been corresponding with the original Camille, now addressed as “Madame Ducos”. She would welcome us.

Claude was to be recalled to France to resume his military career and so he welcomed our departure with sadness but relief. We packed more than we needed, and we left with only Cappy as maidservant, initially sailing to Martinique, Guadaloupe, and Haiti before disembarking in Florida.

At the time I spoke no English, but I learned quickly that American men could be easily manipulated. They loved my French accent and my misunderstandings, many of them deliberate. Most thought I was being coy, and I liked to wear crucifix and make constant reference to my fictional Catholic upbringing, but the real reason why we could not go further than a kiss or two, for favors, was because of the ugly truth hanging between my legs.

In the summer of 1940 while Clémence and I enjoyed the wonders of Savannah, Charleston, Washington and New York, my homeland was being overrun by the Nazi invaders. Both Claude and his brother were in the defeated forces. The man who was supposed to be my father had joined the Vichy regime, but I was pleased that Claude had escaped to England from Dunkirk and was with the Free French. Two brothers on opposite sides.

Even in the USA, the French community was divided between those supporting Vichy France and supporters of a Free French regime in exile. The position in Canada was much clearer. Despite the Government there maintaining relations with Vichy France, French Canadians were Free French as we were.

I liked Camille Ducos, and she was clearly grateful that somebody had stood in for her to allow her to conceal her true status. It was something that her father would never approve of. For almost a year she had been sending letters to go to her fathert, to Clémence in Guiana, to forward on the France, full of lies about her time in Guiana, fueled with tales from her cousin. Now with Clémence in Canada, she had to write from there. It should have been time to tell her father the truth, but she did not want to.

To be frank, I found her to be somewhat stupid and naïve. Particularly annoying was her choice in her husband. Pierre Ducos was vain, deceitful and a coward. But he was also infatuated with me. I had been an imposter for his wife, but he had no idea that I was an imposter as a woman, nor Camille. Quite where they thought that Clémence had been able to secure the services of a willing ingenue in such a plot in the jungles of Guiana seems unfathomable, but they never gave it a thought. Naivety in the extreme.

Anyway, I toyed with the idiot Pierre, behind Camille’s back. It is difficult to choose who as the more stupid. But such is love. They were both enamored beyond all sense – her with him, and him with me. She was oblivious to his infidelity of mind, and so were Clémence and Cappy.

It was Pierre’s idea, not mine, that Camille be done away with. Clémence and Cappy had gone north to Quebec City to meet another relative and I was left behind. Somehow, without Cappy and her spells or potions, I lost the sense of morality that had crept into my personality. Pierre could talk about killing, but he could not do it.

And then, when his wife was dead and he could at last have the woman of his dreams, he was to learn that she was not a woman after all. Not between the legs anyway. He did not even have the strength to strike me, let alone ride me as I would have done him, if I were in his position, and he in mine.

He never recovered from the shock whether it be the death of his wife of the discovery of his mistress’s penis. As I pointed out to him, his wife’s absence would be difficult to explain to Clémence when she returned. He should disappear too, leaving a letter behind to say that she could not face her father, and they were headed west, or to Tahiti or Mayotte, or wherever. I never read the letter. Clémence did, in shock.

I know where he did go. Not west but east. Despite being a coward it appeared to him that his only option was to join many other young men at the time, and volunteer to join the Canadian armed forces. He went into the Canadian Airforce, but he did not even have the courage to fly. And yet he was killed in action, they said, in 1941 when he was stationed at an airfield in England which was bombed.

Clémence seemed to accept the unlikely explanation in Pierre’s handwriting without a scratch on the page from her beloved cousin, but Cappy was suspicious. Perhaps I confirmed it when I was back under her influence, although I declined tea from her for weeks.

Anyway, once she had it confirmed that I had a role in the disappearance of Camille she could have killed me, but she did not. She punished me instead. She administered her zombie drug in such strength that I was paralyzed. Then, in the basement of the house, as I sat staring and conscious but unfeeling, she castrated me. I watched it happen. I could see her remove those pale grey egg shapes covered in my own blood, but I could do nothing. It was cruel, but she told me that it was no worse than I had done to others. How could I deny that?

I should have resolved then and there that Cappy should die at my hands, but the truth is that the moment the last bit of my maleness was gone, something of my aggression had gone with it. As she stitched up my empty sack I knew that Prisoner 45816 was gone. I was no longer fighting to restore my life, but to start a new one. Cappy was my enemy, but immediate vengeance could wait. I wanted to get back to France.

At about this time an advertisement appeared in the Montreal newspaper “Le Devoir” calling for French speaking volunteers who wanted to assist the war effort to “help to liberate France even at the risk of their own lives”. Somehow the idea appealed to me, principally because it allowed me to say to Cappy that I wanted to make that honorable sacrifice and by leaving Canada, escape from her.

She stayed with Clémence and I was gone. Her last words to me were: “Use your evil against the boche to free our homeland” - or something like that. I did as she suggested.

I made my way to London aboard one of the ships crossing the Atlantic in convoy. I made contact with “my Uncle Claude” and he made me welcome. Of course, I told him that my father, his brother Gilbert, was dead to me now as a collaborator, which was very convenient. I told him that I was ready to join the Special Operations Executive, the SOE, and return to France as a spy.

“But my dear, you are such a gentle creature …”. The man had no idea who he was talking to, but I loved to hear him say it. Here was somebody, the only other person save the sweet innocent Clémence, who cared for me. I would have chuckled to myself when I had balls to guide me, but Instead I just hugged him and cried. I suppose that I knew that I had changed more than I realized.

I could still kill though. In training I think that my attitude shocked my instructors. They could see that there was a ruthlessness in me. They liked it. I felt at home.

I suggested my codename: “Talon”. It means a bird claw in English, but in French it means a heel, as of a woman’s shoe, like those I had become accustomed to wearing. My supervisor thought that it sounded suitably vicious and happily granted it to me. I made it clear that I would prefer to go back to France not to collect information or make friends, but to kill the enemy, and any collaborators.

I was set to join RF section, which was part of the SOE under the control of the Free French Government in Exile. In September 1942 the first women (Andree Borrel and Lise de Baissac) were parachuted into the Loire Valley, and I was dropped into the Champagne Region with three others, four months later.

Operations in France between in 1943 and 1944 were focused on the Allied Invasion of Europe which we knew would come in the summer of 1944. It was about arming and equipping the French resistance and organizing specific sabotage efforts. But I am not one for logistics and communications. I was interested in killing. Not because of the impulses that had driven me when I was a true man, but because I had become an idealist, a patriot

But we had no instructions to assassinate. The opposite was true. SOE command, in particular RF Section, were terrified of reprisals. I was less concerned, but I made sure that any unauthorized kills that I completed would appear as accidents. I particularly liked accidents which displayed the incompetence of the Germans, which was usually difficult to portray.

Still, there was a major crackdown on resistance and infiltrated operatives like us. In the early hours of 24 June 1943 are large number of fighters including Borrel and de Baissac, were arrested in Paris and thrown into the cells beneath the Gestapo Headquarters in Paris, on Avenue Foch. It appeared to me that their network had been infiltrated, as it turned out that it had.

I was to remain active for another year, but I was careful not to report too much. I had lost trust in the security of our communications, so I preferred not to use them. Later I was to be accused of being “Out of control”. It was an accusation that I denied, but I found secretly satisfying.

With the D-Day invasion the Gestapo made random arrests of many people who were “of interest” rather than suspects. It was a case of checking to see how often the same name came up on random checks in areas where sabotage had taken place. I was arrested, but not treated as an enemy. I did my best to be charming, which is something that I did quite well.

Still, I was put with a group of “security risks” to be sent to Natzweiler-Struthof Concentration camp in July 1944.

It is so shameful that it is rarely spoken of, but the Natzweiler Camp was on French soil and was in part manned by French people, as were its satellite stations in Western France. SOE Agents were executed there, but only English ones. The exception was Andree Borrel. She was killed with the English agents on 6 July 1944. The other French agents including me, lived, but I was to suffer in my own particular way.

Somehow I had managed to get through six weeks in the custody of the Gestapo without the secret between my legs being discovered. That was to change when I got to Natzweiler Camp. There was a doctor in residence there, a Dr. Werner Rohde, an SS Untersturmführer. I did not look forward to having my true genitals revealed, given that nobody since Cappy years before had even seen them. But in the circumstances that I was in, the consequences of that discovery seemed unimportant. To my surprise Dr. Rohde seemed more intrigued than shocked. He spoke no French and little English, but I could see that he was curious as to my anatomy. There were no testicles, I had breasts, and soft skin and hair. He prodded and stroked, and he seemed to nod in approval. He was to have me return a week later. As it turned out, it was for “exploratory surgery”.

I found out later that there had been a whole series of strange operations conducted by SS physicians at the Ravensbrueck Camp for women, and Auschwitz. Whatever prompted Dr. Rohde to dig a huge hole between my legs, apparently in search of a uterus, I will never understand, but at least I was unconscious and he must have done his work in sterile conditions, because I survived the procedure. What was left of my penis had been destroyed and the exit for urine was now in what I suppose was the “conventional position”, for woman that is.

Werner Rohde had a sideline in “art photography”. He was actually a published artist, as you may care to discover. I became a model for him. He was a strange man. He was prone to drunkenness. When he was drunk, he would tell me that he loved me. He learned the phrase in French and he would whisper it as we lay together. He should have disgusted me, but I found him a very sad person – an artist and a healer trapped in an SS uniform.

But when the SS Officers were put on trial, Werner with eight others brought before a British Military Court in 1948, Werner was the only one to be executed. All he had done was to administer the lethal injections to my co-agents. There were other ways of dying far more painful. Under the Geneva Convention were spies anyway. I was invited to be a witness, but I did not go.

But what about those other SS Oficers, that escaped where Werner did not? They did not escape. I saw to that. In my own way.

Because I was Werner’s medical curiosity, his photographic model and (I suppose) his lover, he kept me in Natzweiler Camp rather than have me go with most of the others to another camp in Germany. In September 1944 most of the prisoners who had not been executed were sent on the “Death March” - to walk from the gates of the camp to the gates of Dachau Concentration Camp, near Munich – a distance of 360 kilometres or 220 miles. Most did not survive.

And as the invading Allies drew near, Werner kissed me goodbye, gave me money and left. Soon after As his own, Rohde kept me behind. On 23 November 1944, the French First Army operating as part of the U.S. Sixth Army Group, liberated the camp and me.

I went to Paris and was treated as a hero. People had learned that not only had I been a ruthless and effective SOE agent, but that I had been the victim of foul medical experiments while in a German concentration camp, experiments that had left me mutilated and unable to have sexual relations and children. Well, definitely not children, but sexual relations? Well, some things need not be discussed.

I was now undeniably a woman, and a hero to the nation. But at that time everybody wanted to claim to be a hero, and all those who collaborated wanted to deny that they ever had. That included my father” Gilbert. He wanted to meet me, and be seen to meet me. Perhaps if his daughter was a hero of the resistance, people could look past his association with the Vichy regime. I would be difficult to avoid a meeting.

As it happened, I had nothing to fear. We met in private.

“You are not my daughter,” he said. “Where is my daughter?”

I told him that she had married one Pierre Ducos (which was true) and that they were living in Canada (living was a lie) and they wanted nothing to do with him (which had been largely true). I., on the other hand, was prepared to lend him my arm and publicly forgive him for his lack of patriotism, if he would accept me as his daughter. He leapt at it.

Claude found it harder to accept his brother. I served as peacemaker. Until the day he died Claude never understood that I was not Camille. His brother and his daughter knew that I was not, but neither betrayed me. It made for interesting family get-togethers.

Clémence came to visit but she never returned to live in France. When her Uncle Gilbert (my father) died, and with Cappy long dead after having moved to New Orleans, Clémence was the only one who new my secret. More than that, she understood the kind of person that I was, and that I was not the good person that I appeared to be. And yet three husbands fell in love with me, and died – I won’t say how.

What an interesting life I have led – don’t you think?

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2020

Authors Note:
I love writing stories with some factual background. This story started with some facts about the penal colonies in French Guiana made famous in the book and movie "Papillon". Then it moved to WW2, the position of the French Communities on the East Coast and in Canada in 1940, the SOE (named agents are real), the the French Concentration Camp, and the villain is also a real person. But I am not sure whether the SS doctor is the same person as the photographer, but how intriguing? The portrait introducing this story is his, but it could be the same woman as in the closing images – right? They have there own tragedy. They are of the beautiful Susan Peters (take my word about my familial similarity to her) who was paralyzed in a shooting accident and starved herself to death in 1952 aged 31.