Character Analysis
Beryl
Beryl is Maddie's working-class friend from Manchester who is with her when she sees her first plane crash and realizes the pilot is female. Later, Julie is envious of her easy life in Manchester, but then feels bad for saying as much because Beryl has probably been bombed and might be dead. She tells us:
My heart twists up and shrivels with envy so black and painful that I spoiled half this page with tears before I realized they were falling, to think of Beryl's long life of loading shuttles and raising snotty babies with a beery lad in an industrial suburb of Manchester. Of course that was in 1938 and they have all been bombed to bits since, so perhaps Beryl and her kiddies are dead already, in which case my tears of envy are very selfish. (1.8.XI.43.61)
No one is really safe, as Julie's reflections on Beryl's likely fate remind us.
Dympna Wythenshawe
Dympna is the pilot of the plane Maddie sees crash with Beryl. She takes Maddie under her wing, in a manner of speaking, guiding her through the process of learning about airplanes, and then through the process of joining the WAAFs and the ATA. Like Julie, she's very upper-crust: "just imagine she's me, raised in a castle and educated at a Swiss boarding school, only a lot taller and not sniveling all the time" (1.8.XI.43.98). Sounds like a plan.
Esmé Beaufort-Stuart
Esmé Beaufort-Stuart is Julie and Jamie's "lady mother" (1.23.XI.43.5). She remains at Craig Castle during the war, doing her part by taking in a troop of grubby war refugees. In the Peter Pan comparison, she "keeps the windows open in all our bedrooms while we're gone, like Mrs. Darling, just in case we come flying home when she's not expecting us" (1.18.XI.43.99). This is such an odd thing to do that it shows that Julie and Jamie come by their streaks of good-natured lunacy honestly.
Jacques
Again, probably not his real name—Julie calls all the male French prisoners in the Ormaie Gestapo Jacques. No matter which individual he actually is, he thinks she's a collaborator and does something classy like spit on her and call her an English pig. She tells us, "Jacques knows, they all know, that I am the collaborator, the only coward among them [...] He spits at me as they drag him out" (1.9.XI.43.7). See ya, Jacques—and definitely wouldn't want to be ya.
Jamaican Rear Gunner
We never find out this guy's name, either—he's the prisoner being held in Julie's former cell when Maddie and the Damask circuit raid the Ormaie Gestapo. Because "they hadn't got to work on him yet" (2.25.15), he manages to help get other prisoners out. Then he hides with Maddie in the barn for a few days and is on the refugee flight to England with her; Maddie describes him as "a lovely man" (2.25.16). He is able to commiserate with her because his best friend has also been killed.
Maman Thibaut
Mother of Etienne, Mitraillette, and Amélie, she is involved in Damask circuit with the rest of her family (except Etienne, of course), but she covers it up by being matronly and obliging. She's the one who makes up Maddie's cover story about being the not-terribly-bright daughter of her cousin in Alsace. Everyone has an oddball cousin, after all.
Marie
This actually is her real name. Marie is the female French prisoner "who whistles 'Scotland the Brave' if we are taken past each other [...] or some other battle hymn associated with my heritage, and she spits too" (1.9.XI.43.10). Von Linden uses Julie's anger at Marie's total refusal to cooperate with her captors to get Julie to reveal that she herself has been lying this whole time. Just before Marie's execution by guillotine, Julie tells her her name, and Marie replies with her own as she is pushed into position.
Michael
This is not his real name. Michael is the youngest child in Peter Pan and the call sign of the SOE pilot with whom Maddie takes a clandestine night flight to France and back. "This young fellow [...] was quite nervous about his navigation skills" (1.22.XI.43.52), so he takes Maddie along to help him on one of his first practice flights.
Papa Thibaut
The father of the Thibaut family, Papa T is as heavily involved in Resistance activities as anyone. Despite his appearance as a simple chicken farmer, he's very brave, constantly risking his own life to help the Damask circuit and hide refugees.
Papa Thibaut's Friend with the Car
Another brave, if unofficial, member of the French Resistance, he and his Rosalie (the car) are available for transport at any time. He and Maddie get into a fight on the road because, despite his otherwise enlightened views, he doesn't think a girl would know how to fix an engine. Maddie thinks he's probably too old for this type of work.
Squadron Leader Creighton / Leland North
This is the guy who introduces Maddie and Julie to the Bloody Machiavellian English Intelligence Officer playing God and tells him they work well together, so really we could say that everything is his fault. His real name is Leland North, but Julie code names him Creighton after the colonel in Kim.
SS-Scharführer Etienne Thibaut
A genuine Nazi collaborator, poor Etienne Thibaut is the guy everyone loves to hate. The Nazis don't really respect or trust him because he's a collaborator—and no one in his hometown likes or respects him either… because he's a collaborator.
Plus he's not even very good at his job: Julie manages to injure him while she's tied up. What's worse for him is that even by being a collaborator, he's helping the Resistance. His status as a collaborator is excellent cover for his family's Resistance activities: "He does not know it but he is quite safe. He is brilliant cover for his own family's Resistance entanglement and there are orders out to keep him alive" (2.2.3). Joke's on Etienne in this one.
SS-Sturmbannführer Nikolaus J. Ferber
If there are Bad Nazis and Not-as-Bad Nazis, then this guy is a Really Bad Nazi. He's von Linden's boss and the one who sends the letter telling him to give Julie the works in terms of punishment.
Theo Lyons
The sister of a pilot Maddie knew at Maidsend who was killed, Theo tips Maddie off about possible opportunities in RAF Special Duties.
Weiser
Weiser is a guard who temporarily has charge of Julie. He burns the back of her neck with his cigarette and forces her to keep writing far past the point where she's making any sense. He gets in trouble with von Linden for it.