Author Elizabeth Buchan talks to us about the incredible women agents who went behind WW2 enemy lines

30th July 2018

‘The Life that I Have is All That I Have’ … author Elizabeth Buchan talks to us about the incredible women agents who went behind WW2 enemy lines, brought to life in her novel I Can’t Begin to Tell you.

SOE memorial on London’s South Bank

The Second World War was fought on many fronts, some of which were top secret. This included the Special Operations Executive (SOE) whose agents went into the occupied territories to gather intelligence, commit acts of sabotage and to train a resistance army.

What distinguished SOE from other secret services was its willingness to use women for this kind of work. Many of these remarkable women did not return and what they did resulted in some of the most moving, poignant and inspiring stories of the war.

No white mouse but a lioness

At the outbreak of the war, Australian Nancy Wake was married to a Frenchman and living Marseilles. Immediately, she joined the resistance and was so successful that the infuriated Germans nicknamed her ‘the white mouse’. Mouse-like she was not, being something of a bombshell  – one of her fellow SOE colleagues said she was the sexiest woman he had ever met. Forced to flee France, she left behind her husband who was tortured and shot leaving behind the message: ‘tell Nancy I love her and did not betray her’.

She was recruited into the SOE and, in April 1944, parachuted into the Auvergne where she ended up leading a resistance army. Brave and resourceful, she took a German officer as a lover for operational reasons and was heard to say: ‘of course, I will have to kill him.’ She did indeed betray him which led to him being shot. Her maquisards revered her and, after the war, she was awarded several decorations, including the George medal, dying in 2011 at the age of 98.

If Cuthbert Troublesome, Eliminate Him

A US citizen and a linguist, Virginia Hall lost a leg in a shooting accident and always referred to her wooden prosthesis as ‘Cuthbert’.

Undaunted, she worked for the SOE in Vichy France and was so successful that the Germans put ‘the limping lady’ on their most wanted list. By November 1942, her luck was running out and she signalled to SOE home station that she hoped Cuthbert would not give her trouble escaping. Back came the reply ‘If Cuthbert troublesome, eliminate him’. Later in the war, now working for the American OSS and with a codename of ‘Diane’, she returned to France (legend has it she parachuted back in with her leg in her knapsack) and disguised herself as an elderly milkmaid with grey hair and long skirts.

She organized sabotage, gathered intelligence and trained the underground army so that when D-Day arrived the Resistance was able to sabotage German movements and to hinder the German defence against the allies’ landings. Back in the States, she married a fellow OSS agent and, having worked for the CIA until she retired, died in 1982.

Inverailort Housein the Scottish Highlands used for training SOE agents and commandos

The Life That I Have…

As a bilingual war widow and new mother, Violette Szabo’s patriotism, and her grief and anger at the death of her French husband, drove her to join the SOE where she was adored for her bravery and her gaiety. Many also reckoned that, among the bunch of good-looking women agents, she was perhaps the most beautiful.  Leo Marks, SOE’s legendary codemaster, fell under her spell and gave Violette his poem ‘The Life that I Have’ (which he had written in memory of his own fiancée) to use for her codes.

Monica de Wichfeld who worked for the SOE in Denmark

She was parachuted into the highly dangerous Rouen area in April 1944 and, having made her reconnaissance, she got herself to Paris where she coolly shopped for clothes and perfume. Early into her second mission in August 1944, and hobbled by an injured ankle, she was captured by a Panzer division and repeatedly interrogated and, later, transported to Germany. On the train, which was being bombed by the allies, she managed to crawl to the lavatories to bring water to desperately thirsty male prisoners. In Ravensbruck where conditions were brutal a fellow prisoner said of her: ‘she always had such strength and never complained’. Another recalls her ‘talking incessantly about “my baby, my baby”. In February 1945, aged twenty-three, she was executed with two other SOE girls. Violette was awarded a posthumous George Cross and her biography, Carve Her Name with Pride, was made into a successful film.

The SOE memorial in Vallençay, France

‘I am willing to pay the price…’

British-born Monica de Wichfeld was married to a Danish landowner with three children when the Nazi’s invaded in 1940. Many Danes were prepared to put up with the occupiers, Monica was not. After she met a Danish SOE agent, she worked with him to build up a resistance network. More than once, the elegant Monica rowed secretly across her husband’s lake late at night with parachuted-in guns.

When the order came in September 1943 to round up the Jews, Monica was forbidden by her leaders for safety reasons to help to smuggle them out of Denmark. She ignored their commands and helped many to escape. Greatly at risk, she was urged to flee Denmark but she declared: ‘I am willing to pay the price’. Betrayed by a colleague, she was arrested in January 1944 and sentenced to death.

However, so strongly was Monica identified with a resurgent Danish patriotism that the Nazis were afraid to carry out the sentence. Instead, she was transported to a prison camp in the Reich where she died of pneumonia in February 1945. Her daughter, Varinka, also worked for the SOE but it appears her sons did not – an intriguing and potentially explosive and divisive family situation which I explore in my novel I Can’t Begin to Tell You.

What amazing women, and it’s wonderful their story is resurrected! 

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