To ‘set Europe ablaze’ was the remit of a brand-new organisation, rubber stamped by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill himself after the fall of France and the low countries in the summer of 1940.

In spite of the threat that “any active or passive resistance to the German armed forces would incur the most severe of retaliatory measure”, Special Operations Executive (SOE) was set up with the sole aim of sabotage and subversion of the enemy and their war efforts.

SOE set up sections right across Occupied Europe – France, Belgium, Norway, Yugoslavia, Denmark, The Netherlands, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland…even into the Far East. Following an intensive training programme that included silent killing, parachuting and instinctive shooting, men and women were employed by SOE. They operated as weapons experts, saboteurs, wireless operators and couriers, and with a life expectancy of six weeks they harried the enemy through their activities. They blew up train lines and factories, produced false propaganda, underground newspapers and in some instances even assassinated high ranking German officials.

The stakes were high, if caught, resisters were branded as ‘nacht und nebel’ (night and fog) and would simply disappear into the Nazi prison system. Agents were interrogated, tortured, incarcerated and even executed for the work they undertook as Allied Secret agents. They were the bravest of the brave.

Kate Vigurs, Author of Mission France: The True History of the Women of SOE