SOE Heroines

The Special Operations Executive's French Section and Free French Women Agents

Bernard O'Connor

• Publisher: Amberley Publishing
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN:
  9781445673615
• Subtopic: Intelligence & Espionage

Nearly forty female agents were sent out by the French section of Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War. The youngest was 19 and the oldest 53. Most were trained in paramilitary warfare, fieldcraft, the use of weapons and explosives, sabotage, silent killing, parachuting, codes and cyphers, wireless transmission and receiving, and general spycraft. These women – as well as others from clandestine Allied organisations – were flown out and parachuted or landed into France on vital and highly dangerous missions: their task, to work with resistance movements both before and after D-Day. Bernard O'Connor uses recently declassified government documents, personnel files, mission reports and memoirs to assess the successes and failures of the 38 women including Odette Sansom, Denise Colin, and Cécile Pichard. Of the twelve who were captured, only two survived; the others were executed, some after being tortured by the sadistic officers of the Gestapo. This is their story.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Foreword & Acknowledgements
• 1 - Background to the Second World War and the British Intelligence Services
• 2 - The Special Operation Executive’s RF Section
• 3 - The BCRA and the Corps Féminin, Corps de Volontaires Françaises and the Corps Des Auxiliares Féminins de L’armée de Terre
• 4 - Training the Women Agents
• 5 - The Special Duties or ‘Moon Squadrons’
• 6 - Supplies for the Resistance Movements
• 7 - German Intelligence Services in France and Hitler’s ‘Commando Order’
• 8 - Sending Women into Occupied Europe
• 9 - Preparing for the Drop
• 10 - French Women Infiltrated in 1942
• 11 - French Women Infiltrated in 1943
• 12 - French Women Infiltrated before D-Day 1944
• 13 - French Women Infiltrated after D-Day
• Plates
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography