Today's Reading
I am proud of being a woman in what was very much a man's world. Of the 430 SOE agents in France, only 39 of us were women and 14 of our group never returned. We were a mixed lot, probably because we were chosen for our language skills and therefore were not your standard English girls. We were women of various descent, among them British, French, Polish, Finnish, American, and South African, like me. We had different belief systems, too—Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, etc. Some of us were young and unmarried; others had husbands and children. Some were shop assistants; others were journalists. I had had no opportunity to even have a job because I was only eighteen when war broke out, so my vocation became "fighting a war."
What we women all had in common, though, was the knowledge that it was a dangerous job and that there was great hope from our commanders that we could do something our male counterparts could not: survive. We all knew that the remaining life expectancy of a male radio operator who entered occupied France was just six weeks, and on more than one occasion had it explained to us that the chances of us coming back were 50/50. It is a wonder that any of us actually agreed to the job—I am not sure people would do so today, but you have to understand that wartime is very different. We were all doing our bit, fighting for what we believed in, pushing back against a cruel and expansionist enemy.
Unlike other special forces, SOE operatives wore civilian clothes. That fact alone meant we could expect to be shot as spies if we were captured, and we were at risk of torture by German Gestapo operatives trying to extract information. This all came from the notorious Commando Order that Hitler passed in October 1942. It decreed that any commando or saboteur taken prisoner, whether uniformed or not, would be treated as a spy—even if they had attempted to surrender. They were to be handed over immediately to the Gestapo or the SD (the abbreviation for Sicherheitsdienst, another Nazi intelligence organization) for immediate execution.
I could never escape that sobering thought. And as women there were even fewer protections for us if we were caught and survived the initial threat of execution. Many of the male SOE agents were treated much better by the German authorities than we were, because, allegedly, women were not covered by the Geneva Convention at the time. Our SOE women who died, died horrible deaths after enduring indescribable torture.
The hope, though, was that women could blend into the fabric of society better and draw less suspicion. We would also be able to move around more freely, because with so many French men of working age being sent to Germany as forced labor, any "new" men in a community were met with obvious distrust. The instruction to use women came from Churchill himself, with Selwyn Jepson, the recruiting officer for the French section of SOE, agreeing with him. After the war Jepson was quoted as saying: "In my view, women were very much better than men for the work. Women...have a greater capacity for cool and lonely courage than men." Many men were not of the same view as Jepson and simply did not believe that women should serve behind enemy lines. This was, as they saw it, not a place for the fairer sex, and they probably thought we weren't capable of it anyway. I, for one, felt that judgment at various points in training or on the ground and wanted to prove them wrong.
However, with intelligence-gathering from the front being so crucial to the war effort, women suddenly became useful on the front line, not just in the back room. Getting us into the thick of it was not so straightforward, though: the statutes of the British Army, Navy, and Royal Air Force barred women from armed combat, so it required a workaround by the politicians of the day. That "fix" had us joining the volunteer First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY). The FANYs were an amazing group of women, and they deserve their place in history. The corps' strength in World War II was six thousand—of which two thousand were also in SOE. I could contact the SOE FANYs at any time of the day or night from occupied France, secure in the knowledge that they would be there to hear my message and respond. Wonderful women. I can't tell you how important they were to me. They were my invisible, reliable lifeline to London and a former existence that I often wondered whether I would ever be able to
experience again.
* * *
I was the first (and only) woman to be dropped solo by the Americans, and just the second woman they had ever dropped. (Nancy Wake was the first, a couple of days before me.) Once there I spent my days moving from place to place, only using fellow SOE agent Claude de Baissac's Scientist network if I needed to—unlike other radio operators at that stage of the war who were mostly stationary and connected to a group. I was also one of the very last female operatives to get out of France after its liberation.
Although I still have the feeling that my wartime work is not really anybody else's business, I can see that I should tell my story before it dies with me. In 2024, when the first edition of this book comes out, it will have been eighty years since D-Day happened, and maybe there won't be too many of us left who can remember that day. I can.
I have been reassured that the Official Secrets Act is not a problem for me anymore. So, I would like to set the record straight (if it is wonky anywhere) and tell my own story; which, as I am recalling it, does not seem as long ago as it so obviously is. I appreciate that if you don't speak up, others can fill the void and say things that are not challenged, or may say things innocently while presuming them to be correct, when in fact they are not. I still do not have the internet and I don't want it. But what I do want is to have my story recorded for those people who are interested in World War II and some of the things that went on. Just to set expectations, though: if people are aware of my history, one thing they often ask is "How many Germans did you kill?" I always look them straight in the eye and say, "None."
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