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Home | Active service | On enemy territory | Extraordinary courage | Women at war | Secrets and spies | Find out more | Credits
Sonya D'Artois | Lise de Baissac | Nancy Wake | Pearl Witherington
Princess Noor Inayat Khan GC | Violette Szabo GC | Odette Sansom Hallowes GC
'The prettiest thing imaginable', her commander thought when she was dropped in France in 1944. Sonya's father was in the RAF, and she lived with her mother in France. Her mother was visiting England when war broke out and Sonya escaped through France and across the Channel alone, aged 15, with no documents.
She joined the Women's Royal Air Force (WRAF) at 17 but was bored and asked for a transfer to SOE. 'I asked how we got to France and he said by parachute and I said well that's all right.'
She met her husband while training: he helped her with map-reading. On a parachute jump together she winked at him as she jumped, and he proposed to her on the ground. But once married, they had to be sent on separate missions.
She used her expertise in explosives sometimes daily, gave weapons training to new recruits, hid fugitive airmen and cycled hundreds of miles as a courier. She ate in expensive restaurants, and had hidden her revolver in her handbag on the day that 20 of her people were captured.
While her husband was up all night 'talking to married women on the telephone', organising the best communications network in the resistance, she was 'sleeping in a ditch with 15 Frenchmen'.
They met again in liberated Paris; she became pregnant and had to leave the service. She went to Canada as a war bride and had four children. She decided to teach the girls French as 'it was more becoming'. Nevertheless, her daughter and two grandchildren have black belts in karate.
Lise was the first woman to be parachuted into France, along with Andrée Borrel, who was killed in 1944. Lise and her brother were born in Mauritius and fled France after the island surrendered.
She was working as a shop assistant in London when her cousin told her about SOE. She maintained communications between three resistance networks, set up drops of weapons and other agents, and organised resistance groups until her cover was blown. She was flown out as the whole network was arrested and still feels the sadness of their deaths: 'If I had not asked them, they would still be alive.'
She returned to Normandy as second-in-command to her brother and cycled around giving orders as the Germans retreated. After the war, she worked for the BBC and today lives in Marseilles.
'She is the most feminine woman I know, until the fighting starts. Then she is like five men.' Nancy grew up in Australia. After working as a nurse, she left for Europe and a career in journalism, seeing at first hand the persecution of the Jews in Austria.
In 1939, she married a wealthy man and settled in Marseilles but, once the war was under way, soon started organising escape routes over the Pyrenees. The 'White Mouse' was eventually followed by the Gestapo, and she took her own route out of France to London. Her husband was left behind but he refused to betray her and was tortured and executed.
Nancy joined SOE for training. She missed one course and, said a friend, 'they sent her on another course with only men and no women around, and she was in her element'.
When she was dropped into the Auvergne, her parachute stuck in a tree. Her agent said he hoped all trees could bear such beautiful fruit. Nancy told him not to give her 'that French shit'. Soon she was leading 7,000 men. She led a section of 10 men against a machine-gun post, using a bazooka and pistol, and brought all of them safely home.
She stormed Gestapo headquarters with grenades and felled a sentry with a fatal karate chop. Hardest of all, she rode several hundred kilometres over 71 hours on a bicycle to deliver vital messages.
Nancy Wake was admired and respected by her fighters. She mocked a later film which showed her cooking breakfast for them: 'There wasn't an egg to be had for love nor money and even if there had been, why would I be frying it when I had men to do that sort of thing?'
After the war she eventually returned to Australia and was the most highly decorated Australian - but she has never received a medal from her home country. Now she says that if they did offer her such an honour, 'they can stick their award and be thankful it's not a pineapple'.
She hopes to go down in history as the woman who turned down 7,000 sex-starved Frenchmen, and says: 'I got away with blue murder and loved every minute of it.'
Her commander recalls: 'She used to say, "I don't think it's very nice to go into a restaurant on my own." She'd come into France on her own, but didn't think it was nice to go into a restaurant on her own!'
Pearl came from Hertfordshire but was working in Paris. She and her family escaped in 1941 with help from the resistance, and she started work as a secretary in the Air Ministry.
Bored with office work, she signed up as a FANY. After training she was sent to the southern Loire. When the organiser was arrested and sent to Buchenwald concentration camp, Pearl took over the command of the Wrestler network and built it up to over 2,000 men who she trained and armed. Her group held off 2,500 German troops with 150 men. Pearl escaped through a cornfield.
In June 1944, her network cut the railway line to Paris 800 times. She became so important, the Germans put up posters offering 1 million francs for her capture.
'When we got back to London all the heads of circuits were there; they were all men, and I was the only woman. The head of it all said "Gentlemen!" And he turned to me and said: "That applies to you, because you've done a man's job!" I'm the only woman who's ever done such a thing: going from a courier to military commander!'
Others were not so keen to recognise her achievement. She was recommended for the Military Cross but, as a woman, was not allowed to receive it. She was awarded a civilian MBE that she returned because she had done nothing as a civilian. 'Why should secret agents who risked their lives be treated like someone who sat behind a desk during the war?'
More Indian people won George and Victoria Crosses than English people, and Noor Inayat Khan was one. She had been a wireless operator in Paris before betrayal, arrest, two escape attempts, interrogation and imprisonment (chained hand and foot). She died shouting 'Liberty' as she was shot in Dachau aged 29.
Noor was born into an Indian royal family at the centre of Sufism, a form of Islam based on love and tolerance. Born in Europe, to an American mother, she studied in France, played the harp and wrote children's stories for a national newspaper.
In England, she joined the FANY and trained for SOE work. Deception was difficult for her because of her strong religious beliefs. She was beautiful and stood out, but her determination to challenge Nazism inspired her to take the covert flight to France. She was the first woman wireless operator sent in.
Living among Germans in an apartment block, Noor even persuaded one to help her string the 'washing line' she used as an aerial. Her messages were vital for the war and resistance, and she evaded capture for over a year, refusing offers to return to England. Her betrayer, who may have been motivated by jealousy, was paid 1,000 francs.
The heroine of the film and book Carve her name with pride, Violette Bushell worked as a hairdresser and sales assistant after school in Brixton. Etienne Szabo, her husband, was shot down and Violette decided to put her French ancestry and birth to use in SOE.
She was parachuted in near Rouen, was arrested twice and returned to England. Undaunted she went back to France but was ambushed, taken to Ravensbruck concentration camp and shot.
Odette had three small daughters when she left England to work with Peter Churchill in the south of France, setting up local networks of the resistance. She was captured, imprisoned, starved and tortured.
From her cell she heard the executions of most of her fellow resistance members but she survived to collect her George Cross and to marry Peter Churchill. She says: 'I am a very ordinary woman to whom a chance was given to see human beings at their best and at their worst.'
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