How we owe so much to so few.

RAF Tempsford is a base near me and was the Lysander airfield to take SOE agents into France during WW2. The buildings including Gibraltar Barn are still there today, where they were briefed.

One such agent was Viollette Szarbo who at the latter stages of the war was caught and executed with other SOE agents in France.
The film CARVE HER NAME WITH PRIDE is a remarkable view of how it was. Her five year old daughter went to Buckingham Palace to recieve her George Cross from the King.

Highly recommended viewing, watch out for the smokey room!!
LEST WE FORGET

One of the all time great stories, my wifes grand aunts were with the SOE, Cleo and Helene were both French.
Helenes immigration papers post war had a character reference from Nancy Wake, oddly enough Nancy's(the white mouse) code name was Helene.
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My family use to know an old lady, sadly no longer with us, who said that she had been trained by the Commandos in unarmed combat, during WW2, and had also flown in a Lysander. She never admitted to being an SOE agent but we thought that she probably was. The excuse that she gave for receiving training by the Commandos was that she "liked the look of one the instructors".

I don't think that people were given "joy rides" in Lysanders, during WW2, or received Commando training if they didn't need it.

Like so many she probably took her secrets to the grave.

It would have been a good thing if some heads had rolled at SOE for their security failures that caused so many agents to be caught, tortured and killed. "Pour encourager les autres", but of course all was swept under the rug of victory, so that the same mistakes might be repeated the next time!

Sadly so many were betrayed, as some of their fellow countrymen thought the Germans would win...........others were just unlucky to drop into the spiders web.
470 SOE agents were trained individually for the role behine lines with sadly 100 being killed.
They caused some serious damage between them, and how brave they all were!!;)

There was TV series and a book about all this, circa late 1980s.

The most successful SOE operation was actually run by the Danish underground. This team had a major tricjk up their sleeves; UHF radio.

A local firm called Bang and Olafson designed and built the ONLY UHF radio link operating anywhere in Europe at the time. They also perfected the hyper-directional antenna needed to make the transmissions even more secure. This link operated across the Baltic to Sweden til the end of the war.

The flip side was the Dutch fiasco. This was compromised almost from the start, resulting in little effective action and a lot of "fresh agents being sent to their deaths. The "secret message" regularly embedded in radio messages to London were also IGNORED as "typos" or similar.

Always remember that large chunks of British "spookery" were effectively penetrated by the Soviet from the mid 1920s onward; a situation that continued for decades, post war. US "services also suffered soviet penetration. The soviets also penetrated Japanese intelligence; their man "Sorge" fed a LOT of bogus information to Berlin during the war, whilst posing as a German agent.

The "Great Game" continues to this day; just with new players.

Remember also that noted would-be "spy-catcher" who retired to your parts and whose memoirs reveal a curious fixation with consulting a certain Victor R. at every opportunity, who I read was in turn suspected of having a strong taste for borscht. ;)

A tangled web indeed.

A very interesting book on the lost SOE agents, and the story of Vera Atkins. "A Life in secrets" by Sarah Helm.
Well worth the read.