Triumph and tragedy
GILES MILTON applauds a masterful new account of the Special Operations Executive and the female agents who put their lives on the line to sabotage the Nazi war machine
There has been a flurry of books in recent years about the female agents of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), including multiple biographies of Noor Inayat Khan, Christine Granville (Krystyna Skarbek) and Virginia Hall. There have also been a number of general accounts of SOE women working undercover in Nazi-occupied France, with a focus on oft-repeated stories of high adventure and derring-do.
Kate Vigurs’ new book takes a different approach. She has investigated the lives and undercover work of all 39 women who served with the SOE in France, including those whose stories have never before been told. In so doing, she provides a fascinating account of the dangers to which they were exposed.
SOE started to employ women (about 3,200 in total) in the spring of 1942, two years after it was established with a mission to “set Europe ablaze”. Alongside the women who worked in SOE’s Baker Street headquarters were others – all fluent French speakers – who were sent into the field as secret agents. Their work was skilled and highly dangerous, requiring specialist training in Morse code, wireless transmission, fieldcraft and pistol shooting. Once their training was complete, agents would be dropped into France (often at night, by parachute) where they were to support the work of the French Resistance.
Landing in the dark was always terrifying and often disastrous. When Éliane Plewman parachuted into France on 14 August 1943, the promised support network was nowhere to be found. There were no landing lights and no reception committee. She managed to locate the pre-agreed safe house run by the Resistance, only to discover that the Gestapo had arrested all the occupants. Plewman showed considerable initiative in making her way to Marseilles and joining a local
Four of the female operatives were killed by lethal injection; one was said to have been still alive when bundled into the oven for cremation
Resistance network, undertaking vital work as a courier. Not content with delivering messages (and dodging the Gestapo in the process), she also carried out major acts of sabotage. In one spectacular operation she destroyed 30 locomotives, causing a significant setback to the German war effort.
Equally courageous was Nancy Wake, whose well-publicised story loses nothing in the retelling. On parachuting in, she had the misfortune to land in a tree, prompting a quip from the Resistance fighter sent to meet her: “I hope that all trees in France bear such beautiful fruit this year.” Wake’s response was brusque: “Cut out that bullshit and get me out of this tree.” She would later play a leading role in the so-called “Freelance” Resistance network, which numbered more than 7,500 guerrilla fighters.
SOE’s F (French) Section had many successes, including impressive acts of sabotage, assassination and the arrangement of huge arms drops from England. But there were also tragic failures and arrests. The final chapters of Vigurs’ book detail the grim fates of those captured by the Nazis.
Interrogation and torture were followed by brutal incarceration in concentration camps. Four of the female operatives were killed by lethal injection; one of the four – never identified – was said to have been still alive when bundled into the oven for cremation. Another four were abused and then murdered at Dachau. Only a few of those captured managed to escape with their lives.
Vigurs has produced a meticulously researched and highly readable historical narrative. It’s a tale of triumph and tragedy, of romance but also ruin: 14 of F Section’s heroines died in hideous circumstances. Mission France stands as a fitting epitaph to their courage and humanity.