The Heroines Of Soe

Author : Squadron Leader Beryl E Escott
Publisher : The History Press
ISBN 13 : 0752462458
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Heroines of SOE written by Squadron Leader Beryl E Escott and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2010-12-26 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Britain's war in the shadows of male spies and subterfuge in the heart of occupied France is a story well known, but what of the women who also risked their lives for Britain and the liberation of France? In 1942 a desperate need for new recruits, saw SOE turn to a previously overlooked group – women. These extraordinary women came from different backgrounds, but were joined in their idealistic love of France and a desire to play a part in its liberation. They formed SOE's F Section. From the famous White Mouse, Nancy Wake, to the courageous, Noor Inayat Khan, they all risked their lives for King, Country and the Resistance. Many of them died bravely and painfully, and often those who survived, like Eileen Nearne, never told their stories, yet their secret missions of intelligence-gathering and sabotage undoubtedly helped the Resistance to drive out their occupiers and free France. Here, for the first time is the extraordinary account of all forty SOE F women agents. It is a story that deserves to be read by everyone. 'They were the war's bravest women, devoted to defeating the Nazis yet reluctant ever to reveal their heroic pasts. Now a new book tells their intrepid tales.' Daily Express Squadron Leader BERYL E. ESCOTT served in the RAF and is one of the foremost experts on the women of SOE.

Author : Beryl E Escott
Publisher : The History Press
ISBN 13 : 0752462458
Total Pages : 267 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Heroines of SOE written by Beryl E Escott and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2010-12-26 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Britain’s war in the shadows of male spies and subterfuge in the heart of occupied France is a story well known, but what of the women who also risked their lives for Britain and the liberation of France?In 1942 a desperate need for new recruits, saw SOE turn to a previously overlooked group – women. These extraordinary women came from different backgrounds, but were joined in their idealistic love of France and a desire to play a part in its liberation. They formed SOE’s F Section.From the famous White Mouse, Nancy Wake, to the courageous, Noor Inayat Khan, they all risked their lives for King, Country and the Resistance. Many of them died bravely and painfully, and often those who survived, like Eileen Nearne, never told their stories, yet their secret missions of intelligence-gathering and sabotage undoubtedly helped the Resistance to drive out their occupiers and free France. Here, for the first time is the extraordinary account of all forty SOE F women agents. It is a story that deserves to be read by everyone.

Author : Rick Stroud
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1471155676
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Lonely Courage written by Rick Stroud and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-02-23 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘A fascinating, superbly researched and revelatory book – told with tremendous pace and excitement’ William Boyd 'This compelling and complete account of the extraordinarily courageous women of SOE is at turns enthralling, edge-of-smart exciting and also heart-breaking. The way in which they were sent into Nazi-occupied Europe and left to face unspeakable danger remains astonishing and Stroud's book is a reminder and fitting testimony to their immense bravery.' James Holland On 18 June 1940 General de Gaulle broadcast from London to his countrymen in France about the catastrophe that had overtaken their nation – the victory of the invading Germans. He declared ‘Is defeat final? No! . . . the flame of French Resistance must not and will not be extinguished’. The Resistance began almost immediately. At first it was made up of small, disorganised groups working in isolation. But by the time of the liberation in 1944 around 400,000 French citizens, nearly 2 per cent of the population, were involved. The Special Operations Executive (SOE) set up by Winston Churchill in 1941 saw its role in France as helping the Resistance by recruiting and organising guerrilla fighters; supplying and training them; and then disrupting the invaders by any means necessary. The basic SOE unit was a team of three: a leader, a wireless operator and a courier. These teams operated in Resistance circuits and the agents were given random codenames. The aim of this work was to prepare for the invasion of Europe by Allied forces and the eventual liberation of France. It was soon decided that women would play a vital role. There were 39 female agents recruited from all walks of life, ranging from a London shop assistant to a Polish aristocrat. What linked them was that they knew France well, were fluent in French and were prepared to sacrifice everything to help defeat the enemy. The women trained alongside the men, learning how to disappear into the background, how to operate a radio transmitter and how to kill a man with their bare hands. Once trained they were infiltrated behind the lines by parachute or tiny aircraft that could land in remote fields. Some of the women went on to lead thousands of Resistance fighters, while others were arrested, brutally interrogated and sent to concentration camps where they endured torment and death. Lonely Couragetells their story and sheds light on what life was really like for these brave women who tumbled from the sky.

Author : Bernard O'Connor
Publisher : Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN 13 : 1445673614
Total Pages : 774 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book SOE Heroines written by Bernard O'Connor and published by Amberley Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 774 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The amazing stories of 38 female spies who operated in occupied France and Vichy France, many told for the very first time.

Author : Russell Braddon
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Woman in Arms written by Russell Braddon and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Kate Vigurs
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300258844
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Mission France written by Kate Vigurs and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The full story of the thirty-nine female SOE agents who went undercover in France Formed in 1940, Special Operations Executive was to coordinate Resistance work overseas. The organization’s F section sent more than four hundred agents into France, thirty-nine of whom were women. But while some are widely known—Violette Szabo, Odette Sansom, Noor Inayat Khan—others have had their stories largely overlooked. Kate Vigurs interweaves for the first time the stories of all thirty-nine female agents. Tracing their journeys from early recruitment to work undertaken in the field, to evasion from, or capture by, the Gestapo, Vigurs shows just how greatly missions varied. Some agents were more adept at parachuting. Some agents’ missions lasted for years, others’ less than a few hours. Some survived, others were murdered. By placing the women in the context of their work with the SOE and the wider war, this history reveals the true extent of the differences in their abilities and attitudes while underlining how they nonetheless shared a common mission and, ultimately, deserve recognition.

Author : Sarah Helm
Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0307487474
Total Pages : 546 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Life in Secrets written by Sarah Helm and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2008-12-10 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an award-winning journalist comes this real-life cloak-and-dagger tale of Vera Atkins, one of Britain’s premiere secret agents during World War II. As the head of the French Section of the British Special Operations Executive, Vera Atkins recruited, trained, and mentored special operatives whose job was to organize and arm the resistance in Nazi-occupied France. After the war, Atkins courageously committed herself to a dangerous search for twelve of her most cherished women spies who had gone missing in action. Drawing on previously unavailable sources, Sarah Helm chronicles Atkins’s extraordinary life and her singular journey through the chaos of post-war Europe. Brimming with intrigue, heroics, honor, and the horrors of war, A Life in Secrets is the story of a grand, elusive woman and a tour de force of investigative journalism.

Author : Pearl Witherington Cornioley
Publisher : Chicago Review Press
ISBN 13 : 1613744900
Total Pages : 218 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Code Name Pauline written by Pearl Witherington Cornioley and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pearl Witherington Cornioley, one of the most celebrated female World War II resistance fighters, shares her remarkable story in this firsthand account of her experience as a special agent for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). Told through a series of reminiscences—from a difficult childhood spent in the shadow of World War I and her family's harrowing escape from France as the Germans approached in 1940 to her recruitment and training as a special agent and the logistics of parachuting into a remote rural area of occupied France and hiding in a wheat field from enemy fire—each chapter also includes helpful opening remarks to provide context and background on the SOE and the French Resistance. With an annotated list of key figures, an appendix of original unedited interview extracts—including Pearl's fiancé Henri's story—and fascinating photographs and documents from Pearl's personal collection, this memoir will captivate World War II buffs of any age.

Author : Sarah Rose
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0451495098
Total Pages : 418 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book D-Day Girls written by Sarah Rose and published by Crown. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The dramatic, untold history of the heroic women recruited by Britain’s elite spy agency to help pave the way for Allied victory in World War II “Gripping. Spies, romance, Gestapo thugs, blown-up trains, courage, and treachery (lots of treachery)—and all of it true.”—Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake In 1942, the Allies were losing, Germany seemed unstoppable, and every able man in England was on the front lines. To “set Europe ablaze,” in the words of Winston Churchill, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), whose spies were trained in everything from demolition to sharpshooting, was forced to do something unprecedented: recruit women. Thirty-nine answered the call, leaving their lives and families to become saboteurs in France. In D-Day Girls, Sarah Rose draws on recently de­classified files, diaries, and oral histories to tell the thrilling story of three of these remarkable women. There’s Andrée Borrel, a scrappy and streetwise Parisian who blew up power lines with the Gestapo hot on her heels; Odette Sansom, an unhappily married suburban mother who saw the SOE as her ticket out of domestic life and into a meaningful adventure; and Lise de Baissac, a fiercely independent member of French colonial high society and the SOE’s unflap­pable “queen.” Together, they destroyed train lines, ambushed Nazis, plotted prison breaks, and gathered crucial intelligence—laying the groundwork for the D-Day invasion that proved to be the turning point in the war. Rigorously researched and written with razor-sharp wit, D-Day Girls is an inspiring story for our own moment of resistance: a reminder of what courage—and the energy of politically animated women—can accomplish when the stakes seem incalculably high. Praise for D-Day Girls “Rigorously researched . . . [a] thriller in the form of a non-fiction book.”—Refinery29 “Equal parts espionage-romance thriller and historical narrative, D-Day Girls traces the lives and secret activities of the 39 women who answered the call to infiltrate France. . . . While chronicling the James Bond-worthy missions and love affairs of these women, Rose vividly captures the broken landscape of war.”—The Washington Post “Gripping history . . . thoroughly researched and written as smoothly as a good thriller, this is a mesmerizing story of creativity, perseverance, and astonishing heroism.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Author : Robert Bourne-Patterson
Publisher : Frontline Books
ISBN 13 : 1473882052
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book SOE in France, 1941–1945 written by Robert Bourne-Patterson and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2016-10-31 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the archives of the Special Operations Executive lay a report compiled by a staff officer and former member of SOE's French Section, Major Robert Bourne-Patterson, that until recently could not be published. Because of the highly sensitive nature of the work undertaken by the SOE, the paper was treated as confidential and its circulation was strictly limited to selected personnel. Now, at last, it can be made available to the general public.Limited, also, was the time available to Bourne-Patterson in compiling his report in 1946 as the SOE was being wound up and many documents were being weeded from the files. Nevertheless, the paper he wrote gives a good picture of the work of the SOE in France, the country where its operations were most extensive. It contains an overview of operations in France by the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War with detailed records of individual circuits from their inception onwards, containing much information concerning individual agents and their contacts, calendars of subversive activity against the Germans and the names and addresses of personnel connected with the circuits who had survived the war. In writing his account, Bourne-Patterson drew heavily on personal interviews and wartime debriefings by agents.