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On February 5, 1945, Violette Szabo, French WWII secret agent, was executed by rhe Nazis at the age 23. From the article:
"In the end, the SS officers brought them out of their barracks and took them on a long walk to a quiet spot behind a crematorium. The three women, spies for Britain’s Special Operations Executive, had survived hard labor and inhuman conditions at Ravensbruck Concentration Camp for women, where thousands of children perished from starvation, hundreds of women were sterilized, and Jews and Gypsies were maimed or murdered in Nazi medical experiments. By the winter of 1945, with Russian forces approaching, the SS moved quickly to exterminate as many prisoners as possible in an attempt to prevent future testimony of atrocities.
Two of the spies, wireless operators Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe, were so malnourished they had to be carried by stretcher. Clothed in rags, their faces black with dirt and their hair matted, they had withstood torture and interrogation only to find themselves huddled together, freezing as their death sentences were read to them. The third spy, 23-year-old Violette Szabo, was still strong enough to walk. The Germans would save her for last, forcing her to watch as her two friends were made to kneel. An SS sergeant drew a pistol. Szabo went to her knees, taking the hands of her friends. How had it come to this?
Just four years before, she was Violette Bushell, a pretty, Paris-born girl selling perfume at the Bon Marché department store in South London. Then she met Etienne Szabo, a charming, 31-year-old officer with the French Foreign Legion, at a Bastille Day parade, and they married five weeks later. But Etienne soon shipped off to North Africa, where General Erwin Rommell and his Panzer divisions were on the move through the sands of Egypt. Szabo was killed in October 1942, during the Second Battle of El Alamein. He would posthumously receive the Croix de Guerre, the highest French military award for bravery in battle, but he would never see his daughter, Tania, born to Violette in London just months before he died.
Afterward, Violette Szabo seethed in London, working in an aircraft factory but yearning for some way to become more actively involved in defeating Nazi Germany. When, by chance, she met a recruiter from the Special Operations Executive, she decided to volunteer. Winston Churchill had created the SOE to send agents behind enemy lines for strategic purposes; she was fluent in French and, though just 5-foot-5, athletic and surprisingly strong for her size. She was already a crack shot in a family comfortable around guns and target practice; under rigorous SOE training, she became an accomplished markswoman. Reports described her as a persistent and “physically tough self-willed girl,” and “not easily rattled.” She was living in Brixton with her parents, who could care for Tania while she was away.
By February 1944, Szabo was finishing parachute training and gearing up for her first mission in France. The SOE codemaster, Leo Marks, observed that she was struggling with her poem code, a cryptographic method of sending and receiving messages with random groups of words from an assigned poem serving as a key, where each letter is assigned a number. Agents would have to memorize the poem exactly, but Szabo was making small spelling mistakes that often rendered her encoding indecipherable. She was despondent, but Marks tried to solve the problem by handing her a different, simply-worded poem, one whose iambic pentameter, he thought, might improve her concentration while encrypting:
The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours.
The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.
A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause.
For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.
“Who wrote this?” she asked, clearly moved. Marks brushed the question aside with a promise he’d look into it. In truth, Marks had written it himself after the woman he loved had been killed in a plane crash in Canada the year before. Original poems, Marks believed, made it more difficult for Germans to decode.
Szabo continued to train, memorizing her cover story and attending briefings on the details and rendezvous points of her mission. In April 1944, she was dropped near Cherbourg, where she helped sabotage infrastructure and spied on industrial plants the Germans were using to support their war machine. After a month of SOE work, she treated herself to a shopping trip in Paris, spending 8,500 francs on a black dress at a couturier—the first “lovely dress” she had ever owned, she told a supervising agent upon handing over the receipt. She had returned to England. Szabo sometimes brought her daughter into the SOE offices at 64 Baker Street in London—where agents became known as the Baker Street Irregulars after the Sherlock Holmes group of boys who “go everywhere, see everything and overhear everyone”—as she awaited her next mission.
On June 7, 1944, the day after Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, Szabo was dropped back into France to disrupt German communications. She quickly established contact with resistance forces, including a young man named Jacques Dufour, and on the morning of June 10, the two set out on a mission by car, Szabo’s bicycle thrown in the back and her Sten gun up front.
As they approached Salon-la-Tour, they came across a German road block. Dufour stopped the car about 50 yards from the soldiers and told Szabo to be ready to run. He leapt out and began firing his machine gun—and noticed, to his surprise, that Szabo stayed with him, firing her Sten Gun and hitting several Germans. He ordered her to run toward a wheat field while he provided cover, and once she got there she fired at the Germans from the flank, enabling Dufour to join her. The two began to run, taking cover in the tall wheat as they headed for the woods.
Soon they heard vehicles in pursuit. Running, crawling, they tried to retreat to safety but found nowhere to go. Szabo was bleeding and her clothes were ripped; exhausted, she told Dufour she couldn’t go any further. She insisted that he flee while she tried to keep the Germans at bay, and fired judiciously for a half-hour while he found refuge under a haystack. When she ran out of ammunition, the Germans closed in. Dufour could hear them questioning her about his whereabouts. Szabo simply laughed. “You can run after him,” she said. “He is far away by now.”
Szabo was turned over to the German secret police, who interrogated, tortured and sexually assaulted her. She refused to cooperate, however, and was transferred to Paris, held by the Gestapo and tortured some more. Fearful that the Allies might mount a rescue mission, the Germans transferred her to a series of camps and prisons. On one transfer near Paris, British planes strafed the prisoner train carrying her. The German guards exited to take cover, but a group of male prisoners were trapped as the bullets hit. Szabo secured a jug of water from a bathroom and crawled to the wounded, even with another woman chained to her ankle, so she could pass jug around and calm them.
By the end of 1944, Szabo had arrived at Ravensbruck, still wearing the dress she’d been captured in months before. There, she joined Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe, where they were put to hard labor, digging wells and clearing boulders for an airfield. They were subjected to more beatings, and women around them were succumbing to tuberculosis and dysentery; Szabo hatched several plans to escape, but to no avail.
By February 1945, more than 130,000 women and children from German-occupied Europe had passed through Ravensbruck’s gates; many stayed for a while, then were transferred to prison and labor camps, but 30,000 to 40,000 women died there. In just weeks, with the Russians only hours away, the Germans would take 20,000 prisoners on a death march toward Mecklenburg, where survivors were liberated by the Red Army.
Szabo was not among them. Behind a crematorium, forced to her knees, holding hands with Bloch and Rolfe until the end, she felt their bodies go limp and collapse into the snow, as one shot, then another echoed through the camp. A pause, then a noise, and the life she had was no more.
Sources
Books: Marcus Binney, The Women Who Lived for Danger: Behind Enemy Lines During WWII, Harper, 2004. Phillip Jones, Quickly to Her Fate, P. J. Publishing, 2010. M.R.D. Root, SOE in France, Frank Cass Publishers, 2006. Conn Iggulden, The Dangerous Book of Heroes, HarperCollins Publishers, 2009. Gordon Brown, Wartime Courage: Stories of Extraordinary Courage by Exceptional Men and Women in World War Two, Bloombury Paperbacks, 2009. Bernard A. Cook, Women and War: A Historical Encyclopedia from Antiquity to the Present, ABC-CLIO, 2006. Sarah Helm, A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII, Anchor, 2007. William Stevenson, Spymistress: The True Story of the Greatest Female Secret Agent of World War II, Arcade Publishing, 2007.
Articles: “Violette Szabo, George Cross,” The Official Violette Szabo GC Site, http://www.violetteszabo.org/homevioletteetienne.html “Violette Szabo” The Allied Special Forces Association, http://www.memorialgrove.org.uk/history.htm “Recollections on the Holocaust,” Degob: National Committee for Attending Deportees, http://degob.org/index.php?showarticle=2018 “Ravensbruck,” JewishGen: An affiliate of the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, http://www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/RavensbruckEng.html “SOE Agent Profiles” by Nigel Perrin, Spirit of Resistance: The Life of SOE Agent Harry Peuleve, DSO MC, Pen & Sword Military, 2008, http://www.nigelperrin.com/soeagents.htm “Daughters of Yael–Two Jewish Heroines of the SOE,” by Martin Sugarman, Jewish Virtual Library, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/ww2/sugar2.html."
"In the end, the SS officers brought them out of their barracks and took them on a long walk to a quiet spot behind a crematorium. The three women, spies for Britain’s Special Operations Executive, had survived hard labor and inhuman conditions at Ravensbruck Concentration Camp for women, where thousands of children perished from starvation, hundreds of women were sterilized, and Jews and Gypsies were maimed or murdered in Nazi medical experiments. By the winter of 1945, with Russian forces approaching, the SS moved quickly to exterminate as many prisoners as possible in an attempt to prevent future testimony of atrocities.
Two of the spies, wireless operators Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe, were so malnourished they had to be carried by stretcher. Clothed in rags, their faces black with dirt and their hair matted, they had withstood torture and interrogation only to find themselves huddled together, freezing as their death sentences were read to them. The third spy, 23-year-old Violette Szabo, was still strong enough to walk. The Germans would save her for last, forcing her to watch as her two friends were made to kneel. An SS sergeant drew a pistol. Szabo went to her knees, taking the hands of her friends. How had it come to this?
Just four years before, she was Violette Bushell, a pretty, Paris-born girl selling perfume at the Bon Marché department store in South London. Then she met Etienne Szabo, a charming, 31-year-old officer with the French Foreign Legion, at a Bastille Day parade, and they married five weeks later. But Etienne soon shipped off to North Africa, where General Erwin Rommell and his Panzer divisions were on the move through the sands of Egypt. Szabo was killed in October 1942, during the Second Battle of El Alamein. He would posthumously receive the Croix de Guerre, the highest French military award for bravery in battle, but he would never see his daughter, Tania, born to Violette in London just months before he died.
Afterward, Violette Szabo seethed in London, working in an aircraft factory but yearning for some way to become more actively involved in defeating Nazi Germany. When, by chance, she met a recruiter from the Special Operations Executive, she decided to volunteer. Winston Churchill had created the SOE to send agents behind enemy lines for strategic purposes; she was fluent in French and, though just 5-foot-5, athletic and surprisingly strong for her size. She was already a crack shot in a family comfortable around guns and target practice; under rigorous SOE training, she became an accomplished markswoman. Reports described her as a persistent and “physically tough self-willed girl,” and “not easily rattled.” She was living in Brixton with her parents, who could care for Tania while she was away.
By February 1944, Szabo was finishing parachute training and gearing up for her first mission in France. The SOE codemaster, Leo Marks, observed that she was struggling with her poem code, a cryptographic method of sending and receiving messages with random groups of words from an assigned poem serving as a key, where each letter is assigned a number. Agents would have to memorize the poem exactly, but Szabo was making small spelling mistakes that often rendered her encoding indecipherable. She was despondent, but Marks tried to solve the problem by handing her a different, simply-worded poem, one whose iambic pentameter, he thought, might improve her concentration while encrypting:
The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours.
The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.
A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause.
For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.
“Who wrote this?” she asked, clearly moved. Marks brushed the question aside with a promise he’d look into it. In truth, Marks had written it himself after the woman he loved had been killed in a plane crash in Canada the year before. Original poems, Marks believed, made it more difficult for Germans to decode.
Szabo continued to train, memorizing her cover story and attending briefings on the details and rendezvous points of her mission. In April 1944, she was dropped near Cherbourg, where she helped sabotage infrastructure and spied on industrial plants the Germans were using to support their war machine. After a month of SOE work, she treated herself to a shopping trip in Paris, spending 8,500 francs on a black dress at a couturier—the first “lovely dress” she had ever owned, she told a supervising agent upon handing over the receipt. She had returned to England. Szabo sometimes brought her daughter into the SOE offices at 64 Baker Street in London—where agents became known as the Baker Street Irregulars after the Sherlock Holmes group of boys who “go everywhere, see everything and overhear everyone”—as she awaited her next mission.
On June 7, 1944, the day after Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, Szabo was dropped back into France to disrupt German communications. She quickly established contact with resistance forces, including a young man named Jacques Dufour, and on the morning of June 10, the two set out on a mission by car, Szabo’s bicycle thrown in the back and her Sten gun up front.
As they approached Salon-la-Tour, they came across a German road block. Dufour stopped the car about 50 yards from the soldiers and told Szabo to be ready to run. He leapt out and began firing his machine gun—and noticed, to his surprise, that Szabo stayed with him, firing her Sten Gun and hitting several Germans. He ordered her to run toward a wheat field while he provided cover, and once she got there she fired at the Germans from the flank, enabling Dufour to join her. The two began to run, taking cover in the tall wheat as they headed for the woods.
Soon they heard vehicles in pursuit. Running, crawling, they tried to retreat to safety but found nowhere to go. Szabo was bleeding and her clothes were ripped; exhausted, she told Dufour she couldn’t go any further. She insisted that he flee while she tried to keep the Germans at bay, and fired judiciously for a half-hour while he found refuge under a haystack. When she ran out of ammunition, the Germans closed in. Dufour could hear them questioning her about his whereabouts. Szabo simply laughed. “You can run after him,” she said. “He is far away by now.”
Szabo was turned over to the German secret police, who interrogated, tortured and sexually assaulted her. She refused to cooperate, however, and was transferred to Paris, held by the Gestapo and tortured some more. Fearful that the Allies might mount a rescue mission, the Germans transferred her to a series of camps and prisons. On one transfer near Paris, British planes strafed the prisoner train carrying her. The German guards exited to take cover, but a group of male prisoners were trapped as the bullets hit. Szabo secured a jug of water from a bathroom and crawled to the wounded, even with another woman chained to her ankle, so she could pass jug around and calm them.
By the end of 1944, Szabo had arrived at Ravensbruck, still wearing the dress she’d been captured in months before. There, she joined Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe, where they were put to hard labor, digging wells and clearing boulders for an airfield. They were subjected to more beatings, and women around them were succumbing to tuberculosis and dysentery; Szabo hatched several plans to escape, but to no avail.
By February 1945, more than 130,000 women and children from German-occupied Europe had passed through Ravensbruck’s gates; many stayed for a while, then were transferred to prison and labor camps, but 30,000 to 40,000 women died there. In just weeks, with the Russians only hours away, the Germans would take 20,000 prisoners on a death march toward Mecklenburg, where survivors were liberated by the Red Army.
Szabo was not among them. Behind a crematorium, forced to her knees, holding hands with Bloch and Rolfe until the end, she felt their bodies go limp and collapse into the snow, as one shot, then another echoed through the camp. A pause, then a noise, and the life she had was no more.
Sources
Books: Marcus Binney, The Women Who Lived for Danger: Behind Enemy Lines During WWII, Harper, 2004. Phillip Jones, Quickly to Her Fate, P. J. Publishing, 2010. M.R.D. Root, SOE in France, Frank Cass Publishers, 2006. Conn Iggulden, The Dangerous Book of Heroes, HarperCollins Publishers, 2009. Gordon Brown, Wartime Courage: Stories of Extraordinary Courage by Exceptional Men and Women in World War Two, Bloombury Paperbacks, 2009. Bernard A. Cook, Women and War: A Historical Encyclopedia from Antiquity to the Present, ABC-CLIO, 2006. Sarah Helm, A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII, Anchor, 2007. William Stevenson, Spymistress: The True Story of the Greatest Female Secret Agent of World War II, Arcade Publishing, 2007.
Articles: “Violette Szabo, George Cross,” The Official Violette Szabo GC Site, http://www.violetteszabo.org/homevioletteetienne.html “Violette Szabo” The Allied Special Forces Association, http://www.memorialgrove.org.uk/history.htm “Recollections on the Holocaust,” Degob: National Committee for Attending Deportees, http://degob.org/index.php?showarticle=2018 “Ravensbruck,” JewishGen: An affiliate of the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, http://www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/RavensbruckEng.html “SOE Agent Profiles” by Nigel Perrin, Spirit of Resistance: The Life of SOE Agent Harry Peuleve, DSO MC, Pen & Sword Military, 2008, http://www.nigelperrin.com/soeagents.htm “Daughters of Yael–Two Jewish Heroines of the SOE,” by Martin Sugarman, Jewish Virtual Library, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/ww2/sugar2.html."
Behind Enemy Lines With Violette Szabo
Posted from smithsonianmag.com
WWII World War Two
Military History
Cryptography
Torture
Death Penalty
Posted 4 y ago
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Violette Szabo joined the British Special Operations Executive after her husband died in battle. She endured very intense and strenuous training before she c...
Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for reminding us that on February 5, 1945 French/British Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent Violette Reine Elizabeth Szabo was executed by the Nazis at the age 23.
Violette Reine Elizabeth Szabo GC was a French/British Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent during the Second World War who was captured by the German army, interrogated, tortured and deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany, where she was executed and posthumously awarded the George Cross.
Rest in peace Violette Reine Elizabeth Szabo.
Violette Szabo
Violette Szabo joined the British Special Operations Executive after her husband died in battle. She endured very intense and strenuous training before she could finally start her first mission. Violette's first mission in German occupied France was successful so she immediately volunteered for a second mission. After Violette reached ground on her second and final mission, she was captured by Nazi soldiers and faced a tragic death. Violette received many awards for her bravery and her service in the (SOE)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1o825CZF2s
Images:
1. Violette Reine Elizabeth Szabo.
2. French Foreign Legionnaire Étienne Szabo and his wife Violette Szabo in London on their wedding day August 21, 1940
3. Violette Szabo, pictured with daughter Tania
Background from {[https://www.violette-szabo-museum.co.uk/violette.html]}
"Violette Szabo has to be one of the bravest women in British history. Violette was recruited by the Special Operations Executive during World War II, was parachuted into France, captured, tortured and executed by the Germans in 1944 aged twenty three. Here we take a look at this amazing young woman in more detail.
Early Life
Violette was born Violette Reine Elizabeth Bushell in Levallois Paris on the 26th June 1921. Her father Charles was English while her mother Reine was French. Violette had four brothers and the earliest part of her childhood was spent with her aunt in Picardy as her parents moved to London because of The Depression. Finally when Violette was eleven years old her family were reunited in Stockwell South London, while they ultimately settled at 18 Burnley Road where Violette is commemorated with a blue plaque.
Violette was somewhat a Tom Boy probably due to the fact that she spent much of her time with her four brothers and cousins who were also boys. The competition to be as athletic as the males in the family must have been tremendous and Violette excelled at athletics, gymnastics, cycling and even shooting as her father taught her how to fire a gun! Violettes petite stature, she was only five feet tall, did not hinder her at all as she was said to be as strong as the next man!
School days were spent in Brixton and Violette was a popular student who was much admired as she not only spoke English but French fluently. Violette left school at the age of fourteen and worked for a French corsetiere in Kensington, while later moving to a somewhat less exotic sounding Woolworths store located in Oxford Street in London.
Violette had a happy childhood and although doted on by her father (who spoke only English and would sometimes feel left out of conversations) was head strong and would often have raging rows with him with one row resulting in her making her way back to France alone.
Violette and Etienne
By 1939 Violette was working in a department store in Brixton called Le Bon Marche where she sold perfume. In 1940 she joined the land army strawberry picking in the countryside followed by working in an armaments factory in London. In 1940 her French mother asked her to go out and find a French soldier who would come and spend Bastille Day with the family. It was while searching for a suitable candidate that Violette met Etienne Szabo her future husband.
The couple hit it off instantly falling in love and marrying within a very short time. Etienne was thirty one, while Violette was a mere nineteen years old but never the less knew her own mind. Once the couple had married Violette went to work as a telephonist at the GPO, while Etienne returned to duty in Senegal, South Africa, Syria and eventually North Africa where he was killed during an act of extreme bravery as he led his men from the front in the Second Battle at El Alamein in October 1942.
Violette had meanwhile joined the ATS but following her initial training found that she was pregnant so had to return to London. Her daughter Tania was born on the 8th June 1942 and Violette returned to work, this time in an aircraft factory, while Tania stayed with a minder. It was only three months after Tania's birth that Etienne was killed in action therefore he never saw his daughter which was extremely sad.
Violette Joins the SOE
Violette was devastated by Etienne's death and soon joined the SOE in order to become a field operative and courier. Violette would be extremely useful to the SOE as she could speak both French and English. Violette subsequently became Section Leader of The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, a title that was created in order to keep her real missions secret and undercover.
Violette took part in strenuous paramilitary training in Scotland where she was instructed in Field Craft, Weapons, Demolition and Night and Day Navigation. Violette then attended training in Hampshire where she learned communications, cryptography, weaponry, uniform recognition and escape and evasion tactics. Finally Violette learned how to parachute jump out of a plane and passed the second time around as her first attempt resulted in a badly sprained ankle.
Violette was a much admired member of the SOE known for keeping up the morale of her colleagues as well as her zest for life. Violette was loved by men and women alike not only for her obvious physical beauty but also for her enthusiasm and never give up attitude.
Violettes First Mission
Violettes first mission was as courier to Phillipe Liewer who was head of the SALESMEN circuit in Normandy. The poem "The Life That I Have" was given to Violette as her code poem by Leo Marks Cryptographer at the SOE. This assignment was muted to be extremely dangerous, not something that fazed Violette. She travelled to Rouen alone under a false identity in order that she could investigate the circumstances surrounding the capture of Claude Malraux and an SOE wireless operator the month before.
Violette reported back that over one hundred French Resistance workers had been captured by the Gestapo. Violette returned to Liewer in Paris where she had left him to say that his network was crushed. The couple returned safely to England together.
The Fatal Mission
Violette along with three colleagues volunteered for this mission and were parachuted into Limoges on the 8th June 1944 the day after D Day. The aim of the second mission was to build a new SALESMAN circuit in the Limoges area. Violette was sent by car on June 10th to meet with Jacques Poirier.
The Second SS Panzer Division was moving north towards Violette something she and her colleague were unaware of. The couple came upon a road block and tried to turn around but Violettes ankle, the one she injured previously during training, gave way and she urged her companion to go on without her. Violette was subsequently captured, taken to Limoges Prison then on to Paris. Violette was at that time using one of her aliases, Vicky Tailor and she was taken for interrogation at The SS Security Services headquarters on Avenue Foch.
In August of that year Violette, Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe were deported along with thirty seven others to Saarbrucken Transit Camp located just inside the border of Germany. Their train was bombarded by allied aircraft and it was during this attack that the three women managed to get water for the other prisoners. Ten days later the three women were taken to Ravensbruck Concentration Camp North Germany where thousands of women died during the war, then on to Torgau.
The Final Months
The women were put to work in Torgau and survived under horrendous conditions albeit they were left in a much weakened state. Returning to Ravensbruck the women were placed in solitary confinement where they were brutally assaulted. Around February 5th 1945 Violette Szabo was executed by a shot in the back of her head aged just twenty three. Her two companions Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe met the same fate although these two brave women were so weakened that they were unable to walk to their deaths.
Cecily Lefort who was also an agent of the SOE was put to death in the gas chamber, while all the bodies were cremated in the camp crematorium. The SOE has fifty five female agents of which
13 were killed in action
12 executed
One died from typhus
One died from meningitis
All the operatives who died whether in camps by execution or otherwise were listed as killed in action.
The George Cross
Violette Szabo was the second woman to be awarded the George Cross for bravery. Her award came posthumously on 17th December 1946 and was collected by her daughter Tania. Violette was also awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French government in 1947 along with La Medaille de la Resistance in 1973. Violette is also listed on the Valencay SOE memorial as one of the SOE agents who died liberating France. Violette and Etienne are the most decorated married couple of World War II.
The Poem
The life that I have is all that I have
And the life that I have is yours
The Love that I have of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours
A Sleep I shall have a rest I shall have
And death will be but a pause
For the years I shall have in the long green grass
Are yours and yours and yours"
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter SPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D GySgt Thomas Vick SGT Denny Espinosa SSG Stephen Rogerson SPC Matthew Lamb LTC (Join to see)Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. PO1 William "Chip" Nagel PO2 (Join to see) SSG Franklin Briant SPC Woody Bullard TSgt David L. SMSgt David A Asbury SPC Michael Terrell SFC Chuck Martinez CPT Richard Trione
Violette Reine Elizabeth Szabo GC was a French/British Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent during the Second World War who was captured by the German army, interrogated, tortured and deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany, where she was executed and posthumously awarded the George Cross.
Rest in peace Violette Reine Elizabeth Szabo.
Violette Szabo
Violette Szabo joined the British Special Operations Executive after her husband died in battle. She endured very intense and strenuous training before she could finally start her first mission. Violette's first mission in German occupied France was successful so she immediately volunteered for a second mission. After Violette reached ground on her second and final mission, she was captured by Nazi soldiers and faced a tragic death. Violette received many awards for her bravery and her service in the (SOE)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1o825CZF2s
Images:
1. Violette Reine Elizabeth Szabo.
2. French Foreign Legionnaire Étienne Szabo and his wife Violette Szabo in London on their wedding day August 21, 1940
3. Violette Szabo, pictured with daughter Tania
Background from {[https://www.violette-szabo-museum.co.uk/violette.html]}
"Violette Szabo has to be one of the bravest women in British history. Violette was recruited by the Special Operations Executive during World War II, was parachuted into France, captured, tortured and executed by the Germans in 1944 aged twenty three. Here we take a look at this amazing young woman in more detail.
Early Life
Violette was born Violette Reine Elizabeth Bushell in Levallois Paris on the 26th June 1921. Her father Charles was English while her mother Reine was French. Violette had four brothers and the earliest part of her childhood was spent with her aunt in Picardy as her parents moved to London because of The Depression. Finally when Violette was eleven years old her family were reunited in Stockwell South London, while they ultimately settled at 18 Burnley Road where Violette is commemorated with a blue plaque.
Violette was somewhat a Tom Boy probably due to the fact that she spent much of her time with her four brothers and cousins who were also boys. The competition to be as athletic as the males in the family must have been tremendous and Violette excelled at athletics, gymnastics, cycling and even shooting as her father taught her how to fire a gun! Violettes petite stature, she was only five feet tall, did not hinder her at all as she was said to be as strong as the next man!
School days were spent in Brixton and Violette was a popular student who was much admired as she not only spoke English but French fluently. Violette left school at the age of fourteen and worked for a French corsetiere in Kensington, while later moving to a somewhat less exotic sounding Woolworths store located in Oxford Street in London.
Violette had a happy childhood and although doted on by her father (who spoke only English and would sometimes feel left out of conversations) was head strong and would often have raging rows with him with one row resulting in her making her way back to France alone.
Violette and Etienne
By 1939 Violette was working in a department store in Brixton called Le Bon Marche where she sold perfume. In 1940 she joined the land army strawberry picking in the countryside followed by working in an armaments factory in London. In 1940 her French mother asked her to go out and find a French soldier who would come and spend Bastille Day with the family. It was while searching for a suitable candidate that Violette met Etienne Szabo her future husband.
The couple hit it off instantly falling in love and marrying within a very short time. Etienne was thirty one, while Violette was a mere nineteen years old but never the less knew her own mind. Once the couple had married Violette went to work as a telephonist at the GPO, while Etienne returned to duty in Senegal, South Africa, Syria and eventually North Africa where he was killed during an act of extreme bravery as he led his men from the front in the Second Battle at El Alamein in October 1942.
Violette had meanwhile joined the ATS but following her initial training found that she was pregnant so had to return to London. Her daughter Tania was born on the 8th June 1942 and Violette returned to work, this time in an aircraft factory, while Tania stayed with a minder. It was only three months after Tania's birth that Etienne was killed in action therefore he never saw his daughter which was extremely sad.
Violette Joins the SOE
Violette was devastated by Etienne's death and soon joined the SOE in order to become a field operative and courier. Violette would be extremely useful to the SOE as she could speak both French and English. Violette subsequently became Section Leader of The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, a title that was created in order to keep her real missions secret and undercover.
Violette took part in strenuous paramilitary training in Scotland where she was instructed in Field Craft, Weapons, Demolition and Night and Day Navigation. Violette then attended training in Hampshire where she learned communications, cryptography, weaponry, uniform recognition and escape and evasion tactics. Finally Violette learned how to parachute jump out of a plane and passed the second time around as her first attempt resulted in a badly sprained ankle.
Violette was a much admired member of the SOE known for keeping up the morale of her colleagues as well as her zest for life. Violette was loved by men and women alike not only for her obvious physical beauty but also for her enthusiasm and never give up attitude.
Violettes First Mission
Violettes first mission was as courier to Phillipe Liewer who was head of the SALESMEN circuit in Normandy. The poem "The Life That I Have" was given to Violette as her code poem by Leo Marks Cryptographer at the SOE. This assignment was muted to be extremely dangerous, not something that fazed Violette. She travelled to Rouen alone under a false identity in order that she could investigate the circumstances surrounding the capture of Claude Malraux and an SOE wireless operator the month before.
Violette reported back that over one hundred French Resistance workers had been captured by the Gestapo. Violette returned to Liewer in Paris where she had left him to say that his network was crushed. The couple returned safely to England together.
The Fatal Mission
Violette along with three colleagues volunteered for this mission and were parachuted into Limoges on the 8th June 1944 the day after D Day. The aim of the second mission was to build a new SALESMAN circuit in the Limoges area. Violette was sent by car on June 10th to meet with Jacques Poirier.
The Second SS Panzer Division was moving north towards Violette something she and her colleague were unaware of. The couple came upon a road block and tried to turn around but Violettes ankle, the one she injured previously during training, gave way and she urged her companion to go on without her. Violette was subsequently captured, taken to Limoges Prison then on to Paris. Violette was at that time using one of her aliases, Vicky Tailor and she was taken for interrogation at The SS Security Services headquarters on Avenue Foch.
In August of that year Violette, Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe were deported along with thirty seven others to Saarbrucken Transit Camp located just inside the border of Germany. Their train was bombarded by allied aircraft and it was during this attack that the three women managed to get water for the other prisoners. Ten days later the three women were taken to Ravensbruck Concentration Camp North Germany where thousands of women died during the war, then on to Torgau.
The Final Months
The women were put to work in Torgau and survived under horrendous conditions albeit they were left in a much weakened state. Returning to Ravensbruck the women were placed in solitary confinement where they were brutally assaulted. Around February 5th 1945 Violette Szabo was executed by a shot in the back of her head aged just twenty three. Her two companions Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe met the same fate although these two brave women were so weakened that they were unable to walk to their deaths.
Cecily Lefort who was also an agent of the SOE was put to death in the gas chamber, while all the bodies were cremated in the camp crematorium. The SOE has fifty five female agents of which
13 were killed in action
12 executed
One died from typhus
One died from meningitis
All the operatives who died whether in camps by execution or otherwise were listed as killed in action.
The George Cross
Violette Szabo was the second woman to be awarded the George Cross for bravery. Her award came posthumously on 17th December 1946 and was collected by her daughter Tania. Violette was also awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French government in 1947 along with La Medaille de la Resistance in 1973. Violette is also listed on the Valencay SOE memorial as one of the SOE agents who died liberating France. Violette and Etienne are the most decorated married couple of World War II.
The Poem
The life that I have is all that I have
And the life that I have is yours
The Love that I have of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours
A Sleep I shall have a rest I shall have
And death will be but a pause
For the years I shall have in the long green grass
Are yours and yours and yours"
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter SPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D GySgt Thomas Vick SGT Denny Espinosa SSG Stephen Rogerson SPC Matthew Lamb LTC (Join to see)Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. PO1 William "Chip" Nagel PO2 (Join to see) SSG Franklin Briant SPC Woody Bullard TSgt David L. SMSgt David A Asbury SPC Michael Terrell SFC Chuck Martinez CPT Richard Trione
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LTC Stephen F.
The true story of a British spy's courage
Defiant to the end: The true story of a British spy'scourage in the face of Nazi torture and the firingsquad whose heroics were immortalised in the filmCarve...
The true story of a British spy's courage
Defiant to the end: The true story of a British spy's courage in the face of Nazi torture and the firing squad whose heroics were immortalised in the film Carve Her Name With Pride.The medal ceremony was one of the most unusual over which His Majesty King George VI ever presided. Curtseying before him at Buckingham Palace was a pretty four-year-old.Wearing a puff-sleeved dress, with her hair in ribbons, the little girl looked ready for a birthday party. Yet there Tania Szabo was, being presented to the monarch and having a George Cross for bravery pinned to her chest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K4JmeDNVTE
Images
1. Violette Szabo in floral dress
2. Violette Szabo Fake French ID
3. Etienne and Violette Szabo smiling by home.
Background from {[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/fb-5413075/Who-Violette-Szabo-glamorous-spy-parachuted.html]}
Who was Violette Szabo? The glamorous spy who parachuted into France before being killed by the Nazis
Her fluent French and evident courage made Violette Szabo an ideal candidate for the Special Operations Executive, the daring organisation that conducted top-secret espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance missions in Europe in the war.
Her first mission in April 1944 - two months before D-Day - involved her being parachuted over Cherbourg.
She undertook a highly-dangerous solo mission to assess the fate of an SOE network of agents and gathered information about factories producing war materials for the Germans so the Allies could bomb them.
During her undercover mission she was arrested twice by the Germans but released on both occasions after they believed her cover story.
She was picked up and flown home but not before a daring shopping trip to Paris to buy Tania an expensive dress.
Her second and last operation took place two days after the Normandy landings in June 1944 when she was parachuted into south west France. It is said she kissed the entire crew of the Liberator aircraft before making her exit.
She and local resistance fighter Jacques Dufour hastily drove to the Dordogne to with a band of comrades to sabotage Nazi communication lines but were stopped by a German checkpoint near Limoges.
Their cover blown, the couple made a run for a nearby wheat field, firing at the guards with their Sten guns.
They crawled through the field until Violette was unable to go any further due to exhaustion and an injured ankle. She told Mr Dufour to make his escape.
Mr Dufour later said: 'She insisted she wanted me to try and get away, that there was no point in my staying with her. So I went on while she kept firing.'
Mrs Szabo continued to engage the enemy for nearly half an hour but was captured after running out of ammunition. Hauled up before an SS officer, she was seen to spit in his face by a local witness.
Taken to Limoges, and then to Paris, Mrs Szabo underwent terrible torture prior to being transferred to Ravensbruck concentration camp in northern Germany in August 1944.
She remained defiant throughout her ordeal, discussed escape and, to the consternation of her brutal guards, led fellow prisoners in a rendition of 'The Lambeth Walk' to boost morale - for which she was placed in solitary confinement for a week.
She and agents Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe, also from the SOE, were executed by a shot to the back of their necks between January and February 1945. Their bodies were cremated."
FYI Sgt John H. SGM Bill FrazerCSM (Join to see)SSG Jeffrey LeakeSSG Paul HeadleeSGM Major StroupeCPL Michael PeckSSG Jeff Furgerson]Sgt (Join to see)PO1 Steve Ditto SPC Michael Terrell CPL Douglas ChryslerSP5 Geoffrey Vannerson LTC John Shaw SPC Matthew Lamb SSG Robert WebsterSFC Bernard Walko SSG Michael Noll SSG William Jones Maj Marty Hogan
Defiant to the end: The true story of a British spy's courage in the face of Nazi torture and the firing squad whose heroics were immortalised in the film Carve Her Name With Pride.The medal ceremony was one of the most unusual over which His Majesty King George VI ever presided. Curtseying before him at Buckingham Palace was a pretty four-year-old.Wearing a puff-sleeved dress, with her hair in ribbons, the little girl looked ready for a birthday party. Yet there Tania Szabo was, being presented to the monarch and having a George Cross for bravery pinned to her chest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K4JmeDNVTE
Images
1. Violette Szabo in floral dress
2. Violette Szabo Fake French ID
3. Etienne and Violette Szabo smiling by home.
Background from {[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/fb-5413075/Who-Violette-Szabo-glamorous-spy-parachuted.html]}
Who was Violette Szabo? The glamorous spy who parachuted into France before being killed by the Nazis
Her fluent French and evident courage made Violette Szabo an ideal candidate for the Special Operations Executive, the daring organisation that conducted top-secret espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance missions in Europe in the war.
Her first mission in April 1944 - two months before D-Day - involved her being parachuted over Cherbourg.
She undertook a highly-dangerous solo mission to assess the fate of an SOE network of agents and gathered information about factories producing war materials for the Germans so the Allies could bomb them.
During her undercover mission she was arrested twice by the Germans but released on both occasions after they believed her cover story.
She was picked up and flown home but not before a daring shopping trip to Paris to buy Tania an expensive dress.
Her second and last operation took place two days after the Normandy landings in June 1944 when she was parachuted into south west France. It is said she kissed the entire crew of the Liberator aircraft before making her exit.
She and local resistance fighter Jacques Dufour hastily drove to the Dordogne to with a band of comrades to sabotage Nazi communication lines but were stopped by a German checkpoint near Limoges.
Their cover blown, the couple made a run for a nearby wheat field, firing at the guards with their Sten guns.
They crawled through the field until Violette was unable to go any further due to exhaustion and an injured ankle. She told Mr Dufour to make his escape.
Mr Dufour later said: 'She insisted she wanted me to try and get away, that there was no point in my staying with her. So I went on while she kept firing.'
Mrs Szabo continued to engage the enemy for nearly half an hour but was captured after running out of ammunition. Hauled up before an SS officer, she was seen to spit in his face by a local witness.
Taken to Limoges, and then to Paris, Mrs Szabo underwent terrible torture prior to being transferred to Ravensbruck concentration camp in northern Germany in August 1944.
She remained defiant throughout her ordeal, discussed escape and, to the consternation of her brutal guards, led fellow prisoners in a rendition of 'The Lambeth Walk' to boost morale - for which she was placed in solitary confinement for a week.
She and agents Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe, also from the SOE, were executed by a shot to the back of their necks between January and February 1945. Their bodies were cremated."
FYI Sgt John H. SGM Bill FrazerCSM (Join to see)SSG Jeffrey LeakeSSG Paul HeadleeSGM Major StroupeCPL Michael PeckSSG Jeff Furgerson]Sgt (Join to see)PO1 Steve Ditto SPC Michael Terrell CPL Douglas ChryslerSP5 Geoffrey Vannerson LTC John Shaw SPC Matthew Lamb SSG Robert WebsterSFC Bernard Walko SSG Michael Noll SSG William Jones Maj Marty Hogan
(7)
(0)
LTC Stephen F.
The story of a British spy's courage in the face of Nazi torture & film Carve Her Name With Pride
Defiant to the end: The true story of a British spy's courage in the face of Nazi torture and
the firing squad whose heroics were immortalised in the film Carve Her Name With Pride
Violette Szabo was only 22-years-old when she was parachuted into France
She was to aid French resistance fighters in sabotaging German operations
But she was captured after fighting off 40 German soldiers with just 90 bullets
Her last days were spent in Ravensbruck concentration camp before execution
Hero's daughter, Tania Szabo, has now written about her mother's courage
The medal ceremony was one of the most unusual over which His Majesty King George VI ever presided. Curtseying before him at Buckingham Palace was a pretty four-year-old.
Wearing a puff-sleeved dress, with her hair in ribbons, the little girl looked ready for a birthday party.
Yet there Tania Szabo was, being presented to the monarch and having a George Cross for bravery pinned to her chest.
The explanation for this extraordinary event 70 years ago was both simple and poignant.'
Images:
1. Tania, Violette’s four-year-old daughter, collected her mother’s George Cross from King George VI in 1946.
2. Violette Szabo smiling
3. Violette Szabo Memorial, London, England
Background from {[https://spartacus-educational.com/SOEszabo.htm /]}
Violette Szabo
Violette Bushell, the daughter of an English father and a French mother, was born in France on 26th June, 1921. She spent her early childhood in Paris where her father drove a taxi. Later the family moved to London and she was educated at a Brixton Secondary School. At the age of fourteen Violette left school and became a hairdresser's assistant. Later she found work as a sales assistant at Woolworths in Oxford Street.
During the Second World War Violette met Etienne Szabo, an officer in the Free French Army. The couple decided to get married (21st August 1940) when they discovered that Etienne was about to be sent to fight in North Africa.
Soon after giving birth to a daughter, Tania Szabo, Violette heard that her husband had been killed at El Alamein. She now developed a strong desire to get involved in the war effort and eventually joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE). She told a fellow recruit: "My husband has been killed by the Germans and I'm going to get my own back."
At first SOE officers had doubts about whether Violette should be sent to France. One officer wrote: "She speaks French with an English accent. Has no initiative; is completely lost when on her own. Another officer argued: "This student is temperamentally unsuitable... When operating in the field she might endanger the lives of others."
Colonel Maurice Buckmaster, head of SOE's French operations, overruled these objections and after completing her training Violette was parachuted into France where she had the task of obtaining information about the resistance possibilities in the Rouen area. Despite being arrested by the French police she completed her mission successfully and after being in occupied territory for six weeks she returned to England.
Violette returned to France in June 1944 but while with Jacques Dufour, a member of the French Resistance, was ambushed by a German patrol. By providing covering fire Szabo enabled Dufour to escape. Szabo was captured and taken to Limoges and then to Paris. After being tortured by the Gestapo she was sent to Ravensbruck Concentration Camp in Germany.
Some time in the spring of 1945, with Allied troops closing in on Nazi Germany, Violette Szabo was executed. She was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre and the George Cross. Her story is told in the book and film entitled Carve Her Name With Pride.
Primary Sources
(1) Captain Selwyn Jepson was SOE's senior recruiting officer. He was interviewed by the Imperial War Museum for its Sound Archive.
I was responsible for recruiting women for the work, in the face of a good deal of opposition, I may say, from the powers that be. In my view, women were very much better than men for the work. Women, as you must know, have a far greater capacity for cool and lonely courage than men. Men usually want a mate with them. Men don't work alone, their lives tend to be always in company with other men. There was opposition from most quarters until it went up to Churchill, whom I had met before the war. He growled at me, "What are you doing?" I told him and he said, "I see you are using women to do this," and I said, "Yes, don't you think it is a very sensible thing to do?" and he said, "Yes, good luck to you'" That was my authority!
(2) Patrick Howarth was a member of the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War. He wrote about Violette Szabo in his book Undercover: The Men and Women of the Special Operations Executive (1980)
Apart from her excellent French her most evident qualification for service in SOE was an exceptional talent for shooting, which caused her to be banned from some of London's West End galleries because she won too many prizes. Nevertheless Selwyn Jepson, to whom she had been recommended, thought she might be a suitable recruit. His principle doubt arose from the readiness with which she volunteered for service. He wondered for a time whether she might belong to a category which he had learnt, with reason, to distrust, that of agents with a suicidal urge.
(3) SOE report on Violette Szabo (1943)
I seriously wonder whether this student is suitable. She speaks French with an English accent. Has no initiative; is completely lost when on her own.
(4) Maurice Buckmaster was the officer at the Special Operations Executive who gave her the instructions for her second mission to France.
Violette got up rather nervously as I went into the room. She was really beautiful, dark-haired and olive-skinned, with that kind of porcelain clarity of face and purity of bone that one finds occasionally in the women of the south-west of France.
"When you land, you will be received by a group organized by Clement. I showed her on the large-scale Michelin map the exact area where the drop was to rake place. She carefully memorized the geographical features of the area, tracing the path she would follow through the wood to the side-road which led to the farm cottages where she would spend the rest of the night and the whole of the next day.
(5) Jacques Dufour, French Resistance leader, report to SOE (1944)
We heard the rumble of armoured cars and machine-guns began spraying close to us they could follow our progress by the movement of the wheat. When we weren't more than yards from the edge of the wood Szabo, who had her clothes ripped to ribbons and was bleeding from numerous cuts all over her legs, told me she was unable to go one inch further. She insisted she wanted me to try to get away, that there was no point in my staying with her. So I went on and managed to hide under a haystack.
(6) Julie Barry, News of the World (31st March, 1946)
I was caught by the Germans for sabotage in Guernsey and imprisoned there at first and then in many other prisons in France and Germany before being sent to Ravensbriick. I spoke several European languages and the staff of the prisons made use of me as an interpreter. At Ravensbriick, I was made a prison policewoman and given the number 39785 and a red armband that indicated my status.
I was handed a heavy leather belt with instructions to beat the women prisoners. It was a hateful task, but in it I saw my only chance to help some of the condemned women.
It was into this camp that three British parachutists were brought. One was Violette Szabo. They were in rags, their faces black with dirt, and their hair matted. They were starving. They had been tortured in attempts to wrest from them secrets of the invasion but I am certain they gave nothing away.
(7) Leo Marks wrote a poem about a girlfriend, Ruth Hambo, who was killed in an air crash in Canada. Marks later gave the poem as a ciphar to Violette Szabo.
The life that I have is all that I have
And the life that I have is yours
The love that I have of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.
A sleep I shall have, a rest I shall have
And death will be but a pause
For the years I shall have in the long green grass
Are yours and yours and yours.
(8) Violette Szabo's citation for the George Cross (1945)
Violette Szabo was continuously and atrociously tortured, but never by word or deed gave away any of her acquaintances or told the enemy anything of any value."
FYI LTC John Shaw SPC Diana D. LTC Hillary Luton
1SG Steven ImermanSSG Pete FishGySgt Gary CordeiroPO1 H Gene LawrenceSPC Chris Bayner-CwikSgt Jim BelanusSGM Bill FrazerMSG Tom EarleySSgt Marian MitchellSGT Michael HearnPO2 Frederick DunnSP5 Dennis LobergerCPO John BjorgeSGT Randell RoseSSG Jimmy CernichSGT Denny EspinosaMSG Fred Bucci
Defiant to the end: The true story of a British spy's courage in the face of Nazi torture and
the firing squad whose heroics were immortalised in the film Carve Her Name With Pride
Violette Szabo was only 22-years-old when she was parachuted into France
She was to aid French resistance fighters in sabotaging German operations
But she was captured after fighting off 40 German soldiers with just 90 bullets
Her last days were spent in Ravensbruck concentration camp before execution
Hero's daughter, Tania Szabo, has now written about her mother's courage
The medal ceremony was one of the most unusual over which His Majesty King George VI ever presided. Curtseying before him at Buckingham Palace was a pretty four-year-old.
Wearing a puff-sleeved dress, with her hair in ribbons, the little girl looked ready for a birthday party.
Yet there Tania Szabo was, being presented to the monarch and having a George Cross for bravery pinned to her chest.
The explanation for this extraordinary event 70 years ago was both simple and poignant.'
Images:
1. Tania, Violette’s four-year-old daughter, collected her mother’s George Cross from King George VI in 1946.
2. Violette Szabo smiling
3. Violette Szabo Memorial, London, England
Background from {[https://spartacus-educational.com/SOEszabo.htm /]}
Violette Szabo
Violette Bushell, the daughter of an English father and a French mother, was born in France on 26th June, 1921. She spent her early childhood in Paris where her father drove a taxi. Later the family moved to London and she was educated at a Brixton Secondary School. At the age of fourteen Violette left school and became a hairdresser's assistant. Later she found work as a sales assistant at Woolworths in Oxford Street.
During the Second World War Violette met Etienne Szabo, an officer in the Free French Army. The couple decided to get married (21st August 1940) when they discovered that Etienne was about to be sent to fight in North Africa.
Soon after giving birth to a daughter, Tania Szabo, Violette heard that her husband had been killed at El Alamein. She now developed a strong desire to get involved in the war effort and eventually joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE). She told a fellow recruit: "My husband has been killed by the Germans and I'm going to get my own back."
At first SOE officers had doubts about whether Violette should be sent to France. One officer wrote: "She speaks French with an English accent. Has no initiative; is completely lost when on her own. Another officer argued: "This student is temperamentally unsuitable... When operating in the field she might endanger the lives of others."
Colonel Maurice Buckmaster, head of SOE's French operations, overruled these objections and after completing her training Violette was parachuted into France where she had the task of obtaining information about the resistance possibilities in the Rouen area. Despite being arrested by the French police she completed her mission successfully and after being in occupied territory for six weeks she returned to England.
Violette returned to France in June 1944 but while with Jacques Dufour, a member of the French Resistance, was ambushed by a German patrol. By providing covering fire Szabo enabled Dufour to escape. Szabo was captured and taken to Limoges and then to Paris. After being tortured by the Gestapo she was sent to Ravensbruck Concentration Camp in Germany.
Some time in the spring of 1945, with Allied troops closing in on Nazi Germany, Violette Szabo was executed. She was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre and the George Cross. Her story is told in the book and film entitled Carve Her Name With Pride.
Primary Sources
(1) Captain Selwyn Jepson was SOE's senior recruiting officer. He was interviewed by the Imperial War Museum for its Sound Archive.
I was responsible for recruiting women for the work, in the face of a good deal of opposition, I may say, from the powers that be. In my view, women were very much better than men for the work. Women, as you must know, have a far greater capacity for cool and lonely courage than men. Men usually want a mate with them. Men don't work alone, their lives tend to be always in company with other men. There was opposition from most quarters until it went up to Churchill, whom I had met before the war. He growled at me, "What are you doing?" I told him and he said, "I see you are using women to do this," and I said, "Yes, don't you think it is a very sensible thing to do?" and he said, "Yes, good luck to you'" That was my authority!
(2) Patrick Howarth was a member of the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War. He wrote about Violette Szabo in his book Undercover: The Men and Women of the Special Operations Executive (1980)
Apart from her excellent French her most evident qualification for service in SOE was an exceptional talent for shooting, which caused her to be banned from some of London's West End galleries because she won too many prizes. Nevertheless Selwyn Jepson, to whom she had been recommended, thought she might be a suitable recruit. His principle doubt arose from the readiness with which she volunteered for service. He wondered for a time whether she might belong to a category which he had learnt, with reason, to distrust, that of agents with a suicidal urge.
(3) SOE report on Violette Szabo (1943)
I seriously wonder whether this student is suitable. She speaks French with an English accent. Has no initiative; is completely lost when on her own.
(4) Maurice Buckmaster was the officer at the Special Operations Executive who gave her the instructions for her second mission to France.
Violette got up rather nervously as I went into the room. She was really beautiful, dark-haired and olive-skinned, with that kind of porcelain clarity of face and purity of bone that one finds occasionally in the women of the south-west of France.
"When you land, you will be received by a group organized by Clement. I showed her on the large-scale Michelin map the exact area where the drop was to rake place. She carefully memorized the geographical features of the area, tracing the path she would follow through the wood to the side-road which led to the farm cottages where she would spend the rest of the night and the whole of the next day.
(5) Jacques Dufour, French Resistance leader, report to SOE (1944)
We heard the rumble of armoured cars and machine-guns began spraying close to us they could follow our progress by the movement of the wheat. When we weren't more than yards from the edge of the wood Szabo, who had her clothes ripped to ribbons and was bleeding from numerous cuts all over her legs, told me she was unable to go one inch further. She insisted she wanted me to try to get away, that there was no point in my staying with her. So I went on and managed to hide under a haystack.
(6) Julie Barry, News of the World (31st March, 1946)
I was caught by the Germans for sabotage in Guernsey and imprisoned there at first and then in many other prisons in France and Germany before being sent to Ravensbriick. I spoke several European languages and the staff of the prisons made use of me as an interpreter. At Ravensbriick, I was made a prison policewoman and given the number 39785 and a red armband that indicated my status.
I was handed a heavy leather belt with instructions to beat the women prisoners. It was a hateful task, but in it I saw my only chance to help some of the condemned women.
It was into this camp that three British parachutists were brought. One was Violette Szabo. They were in rags, their faces black with dirt, and their hair matted. They were starving. They had been tortured in attempts to wrest from them secrets of the invasion but I am certain they gave nothing away.
(7) Leo Marks wrote a poem about a girlfriend, Ruth Hambo, who was killed in an air crash in Canada. Marks later gave the poem as a ciphar to Violette Szabo.
The life that I have is all that I have
And the life that I have is yours
The love that I have of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.
A sleep I shall have, a rest I shall have
And death will be but a pause
For the years I shall have in the long green grass
Are yours and yours and yours.
(8) Violette Szabo's citation for the George Cross (1945)
Violette Szabo was continuously and atrociously tortured, but never by word or deed gave away any of her acquaintances or told the enemy anything of any value."
FYI LTC John Shaw SPC Diana D. LTC Hillary Luton
1SG Steven ImermanSSG Pete FishGySgt Gary CordeiroPO1 H Gene LawrenceSPC Chris Bayner-CwikSgt Jim BelanusSGM Bill FrazerMSG Tom EarleySSgt Marian MitchellSGT Michael HearnPO2 Frederick DunnSP5 Dennis LobergerCPO John BjorgeSGT Randell RoseSSG Jimmy CernichSGT Denny EspinosaMSG Fred Bucci
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I watched a History channel episode about her. Very dedicated, focused, and heroic woman.
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