The Special Operations Executive (the SOE) was formed in Britain in July 1940 to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe (and later, in Africa and Asia) and to train and equip local resistance movements.
In those horrible dark days from the beginning of World War II in September 1939 through June 1940, all of Europe lay under Nazi domination and the last British troops on the continent were in retreat from the beaches of Dunkirk. All looked bleak.
Into this quagmire, Winston Churchill personally approved a secret organization that would collect intelligence and train, organize, equip and arm a resistance movement behind German lines. Some 400 agents were placed in France alone, 39 of them women.
They called themselves "Churchill's Secret Army," "The Baker Street Irregulars,“ (their HQ was located a couple blocks from Sherlock Holmes’ fictional apartment) or the "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” Its “official” cover was the "Inter-Service Research Bureau."
The inclusion of women as agents was not part of the earliest plan, but in time of war, what is necessary is what gets done. In France, most able-bodied French males were conscripted into labor brigades. Women, however, were exempted so they could farm, make the cheese and wine, and do domestic work. A woman would not automatically be suspect merely by being in France.
The call went out, ever so subtly. The goal? Identify people of intelligence and essential skillsets like language fluency, deep knowledge of a target country, motivation, toughness and willingness to learn.
All successful candidates for recruitment had the benefit of brilliant training conducted by the very best. William Fairbairn personally instructed SOE candidates in close-in combat, martial arts, point shooting, knife-fighting and silent killing. They moved on to rail and power station sabotage, explosives, insertion and extraction, landing field prep, handcuff escape and much, much more.
Usually entering occupied France by night parachute, each “circuit” (the individual SOE cell) was comprised of a leader who coordinated training and equipping French resistance, a courier to relay documents, photos, money and sometimes arms between cells, and a wireless operator, expert in Morse code. Each of the three agents were usually able to do every job.
The average time an agent remained in place before imminent discovery and extraction was 3 to 4 months. The Germans used RDF (radio direction finding) and surprised many a wireless operator contacting London who was not lightning-quick in sending and receiving.
Odette Sansom (Code Name «Lise»)
The first female agent sent to occupied France, Odette Sansom, was French, but living in England. She responded to a BBC appeal asking listeners to send in postcards or photographs of the French coastline as a source of intelligence. She attached a note that she was French and knew the area. Shortly after this, she was invited to a meeting with the novelist Selwyn Jepson -- who was also the recruiting officer for SOE's French Section.
No plan survives the battle. Odette’s original mission to set up a safe house for later agents was aborted immediately upon arrival in Provence because of a weak link in the resistance chain. She became the most daring of couriers, bicycling past countless checkpoints. The Wehrmacht (Army), Abwehr (Military Intelligence,), Gestapo, Vichy French, and the Sicherheitsdienst (the SS) all had scores of pop-up checkpoints, seldom coordinated with the other. Often stopped, she always talked her way through with contraband or documents essential to the war effort.
Until she didn’t. Betrayed by a Vichy sympathizer within the resistance, Odette spent 3 years being beaten and tortured in ways only the Gestapo could devise, shuttled from prison to prison, and starved and interrogated endlessly. Finally sent to one of the death camps, in those 3 years she never gave up a single piece of information.
Yet Odette survived the war. How? In her earliest interrogations she claimed that she was the head of her circuit, not Peter Churchill, who was (and whom the Gestapo believed to be) the leader. She convinced them that Peter was her husband, only allowed on her team because he was a relative of Sir Winston. Indeed, in Peter’s absence to conduct many duties, she did command the circuit.
Finally tiring of Odette’s obstinance, she was sentenced to death at the notorious Ravensbruck death camp. Placed in a completely dark bunker just bigger than her body, suffering from scurvy and dysentery, with deep open scabs, her hair and teeth falling out, she waited for death. Miraculously, one day the sadistic death camp commandant ordered her into his black Mercedes. Knowing nothing of the progress of the war, she assumed she would be taken to the woods and shot.
It was May 1, 1945, 6 days before the end of the war in Europe. The camp commandant drove to the first American infantry unit, whereupon he surrendered his bulletless weapon to Odette and the Americans, believing he could lesson his war crimes punishment by delivering “Mrs. Churchill” to safety. (It didn’t work. From Odette and other survivors’ testimony, he was hanged.)
After a year recovering from her many wounds, Ms. Sansom was the first woman ever to receive the George Cross, the civilian equivalent of the Victoria Cross -- Britain’s highest award for bravery in the face of the enemy. She died at the age of 82 in a small British village.
Each of the 39 brave heroines who volunteered for these hazardous assignments have their own stories to tell. I will tell just two others.
Nancy Wake (known to the Gestapo as “The White Mouse” for her slippery escapes)
Nancy Wake began her war against Nazi Germany before she was recruited to the SOE. Born in Wellington, New Zealand, Nancy Wake worked as a journalist in pre-war Nazi Germany, deeply angered by what she saw. She later married a wealthy French industrialist. Soon after, Germany invaded France. Nancy joined the French Resistance on her own and helped British airmen escape capture. As a civilian, she was credited with getting some 1000 downed fliers and escaped prisoners of war to Spain and on to home.
In December 1940, after being betrayed, she was captured. Convincing her guards she wasn’t the woman they were looking for she escaped to Britain and found a way to join the SOE. It was then she learned then her new husband had been killed by the Gestapo. This turned out to be a bad move on their part when Nancy came back with a vengeance.
Nancy parachuted back into France in 1944 to coordinate Resistance attacks with the D-Day landings. It was time for Nancy Wake to get her revenge. She led an armed raid against a Gestapo headquarters in Montlucon, against German gun factories, troop trains, supply depots and every other target of opportunity.
Ultimately, the Germans offered a 5 million francs reward for her capture or death. Nancy Wake was undeterred and unstoppable. She went on to be the primary recruiter for what became a formidable resistance force of 7,500 men and women. One of her resistance members said of her, “She is the most feminine woman I know, until the fighting starts. Then she is like five men.”
Nancy Wake was the most decorated Allied service woman of the war– receiving medals from 5 different nations, the US, Britain, France, Australia, and New Zealand. She lived to the age of 97 and died in New Zealand.
Virginia Hall (known only as “The Limping Lady” to the Gestapo)
Virginia Hall served in not one, but two special operations organizations in World War II.
Born in Baltimore, Virginia attended Radcliffe and Columbia, studying French, Italian, and German. She also attended George Washington University, where she studied French and Economics. She wanted to finish her studies in Europe, so she landed an appointment as a Consular Service clerk at the American Embassy in Warsaw, Poland in 1931.
A few months later she transferred to Turkey where, in 1933 while hunting birds, she tripped and accidentally shot herself in the left foot. Her leg was amputated below the knee and replaced with a wooden appendage which she nicknamed "Cuthbert."
Realizing that she would never rise in the hidebound higher ranks of the gentlemen-only U.S. Foreign Service, she served as an ambulance driver for the French Army during the Nazi invasion. She independently organized resistance, helped downed pilots, and carried out raids in most of 1941 while posing as an American reporter for the New York Post.
Her infamy spread until the Germans declared the “Limping Lady” one of the most dangerous Allied operatives in France. This before she was an Allied agent. Because of her unique limp, she was soon forced to escape to Spain. There she met a British intelligence officer who referred her to a "friend" who might be able to help her find work of a nature that would very likely appeal to her.
Hall joined the SOE in April 1941 and after training arrived in Vichy France. Virginia was now the second female agent to be sent to France, following Odette Sansom. She based herself in Lyon, where she single-handedly set up the HECKLER network. (A male agent was sent shortly thereafter to be her boss. Virginia decided he was incompetent, tossed him out, and told London he not be returned.) Over the next 15 months [it is unheard of for agents to last that long without being rolled up] she organized resistance; supplied SOE agents with money, weapons, and supplies; and offered safe houses and medical assistance to wounded agents, escaped POWs and air crew members.
Once again the Nazis, who thought she had fled for good, put out a warrant for the Limping Lady. As they closed in, Virginia escaped in November 1942. Atop the Pyrenees, the handoff to her Spanish guides did not go well. They decided she would slow them down and refused to take her – but she would not be deterred.
Finally at a safe house Spain, Hall radioed London to report that she was OK, but that Cuthbert, her artificial leg, was giving her trouble. The deadly serious reply from a new recruit at SOE, who mistook Cuthbert for an informant, read, “If Cuthbert giving you difficulty, have him eliminated.” Both she and Cuthbert made it back to England.
But Hall wasn’t done fighting Nazis yet. A marked woman, the SOE refused to send her back into France, so Virginia signed on with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (the OSS.) As a member of the OSS, she parachuted into France in 1944, where she disguised herself as an elderly milkmaid (on one occasion selling cheese she had made to a group of German soldiers). She began where she had left off, training French resistance troops and organizing sabotages. She also served as the leader and wireless operator for the OSS. In just one reporting period, Hall’s team was credited with derailing numerous freight trains, blowing up four bridges, killing 150 Nazis and capturing 500 more.
For Virginia Hall's efforts in France, General William Donovan (head of the OSS) personally awarded her a Distinguished Service Cross in September 1945, in recognition of her efforts in France, the only one awarded to a civilian woman in World War II. President Truman wanted a public award of the medal, but Hall demurred, stating that she was "still operational and most anxious to get busy." She retired at 60 from the newly-formed CIA.
The Tradition Continues
If there are Odette Sansoms, Nancy Wakes and Virginia Halls willing to train as hard, carry their full load, and perform the same missions as men, I welcome them. In fact, a number of such women have volunteered to serve in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Cultural Support Teams were organized because male soldiers are not allowed to speak with women in Islamic nations from Mali to Afghanistan. (Many Muslims believe women must have no contact with men other than direct relatives, depriving US forces of 50% of the possible intelligence that could be gathered or friends that could have been made.)
I am not talking merely about strategic intelligence. Immediate knowledge of on the ground force protection value is essential. Troops at all levels, but especially special operators -- Special Forces, Rangers and SEALs out at the tip of the spear – began to ask for help from female convoy drivers, civil affairs, mechanics, or any American female service member.
Recognizing the need for more specialized combat and interrogation skills, Cultural Support Teams (CSTs) were created, consisting of male and female members who became eyes and ears, and sometimes the rifle squad as well. (It also helps that young women in these far-flung places see these American women and might imagine themselves as more than just “wife.”)
These were units whose role was direct combat which resulted in the award of Combat Action Badges and more. The women who qualified were feminine but also tough as nails, maxing the male PT tests and running to the sound of the guns at the same speed, carrying the same pack, as their male teammates.
If you would learn more about these teams, a good place to start might be the book Ashley's War, which most closely follows the life of 1st Lt. Ashley White, 24, who was killed one night, along with two Army Rangers, by an IED. One of those Rangers, PFC Christopher Horns, 20, was on his first combat deployment. The other, SFC Kristoffer Domeij, 29, was on his 14th deployment to a combat zone.
These three were a remarkable team. And she was one of many remarkable women, motivated by love of country and a drive to excel, who joined these teams. A fine athlete (can you do 24 pullups?), a superb student, and recently married to a fellow combat vet, Ashley was the first CST member to be killed in action. This nation has a strong reservoir of women like her, women with grit, compassion, determination and a sense of duty. Forget comic books. These are the Real Wonder Men and Wonder Women of our country.
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On this Veterans Day I honor the memory of the above men and women, and all the others who served then and serve still. Every one of them knew the risks and chose to continue their missions. To those who survived, and those who did not, we owe a great debt.
They willingly gave their tomorrows for our today.
© Joseph L. Shaefer, 2021