Historical setting Overview

The event will be set around the Spring/ Summer of 1944 and Players will be notified of the exact timing along with their character’s details.

SOE was a secret organisation for many reasons. In part, this was because the British government did not want it widely known that they were employing civilians, including women, in missions involving sabotage of enemy infrastructure, materials and even assassination. SOE operated outside of normal military jurisdiction, standard rules of engagement and blurred the protections afforded under the Geneva convention. The SOE way was to fight from the shadows, cause maximum damage and disruption using any possible means and fade away. It was an underhand war; an inglorious and uncelebrated war. The SOE Agents had to come to terms with the fact that they were fighting dirty, using ruthless methods, often with direct repercussions for their actions amongst the civilian occupied populations. They also came to know, at some stage, that their survival rate was 50/50.

We do not aim to overly celebrate or condemn the creation or actions of SOE as an organisation, nor its members. War is never positive, and it is a testimony to how desperate the war had become by 1940 that Churchill felt it necessary to create SOE and other irregular forces. It is easy to forget that no formal military forces had survived to stand against Hitler in Europe at that time and British forces were so reduced after Dunkirk that any sort of traditional military resistance on mainland Europe was impossible. There were small pockets of armed civilian resistance in Poland and elsewhere but essentially Hitler was unopposed. Only the United Kingdom remained at war with the Nazis and the truth was that only the British Navy and the English Channel afforded that luxury. 

Our LARP explores the choices of European emigres and British and commonwealth nationals (and potentially other nationalities) in volunteering to risk their lives, their personal well-being and their moral compass to participate in an unorthodox and dangerous type of warfare. The pressures on these individuals and the emotional and moral challenges must have been intense and very difficult to navigate. Once committed there was no option to leave a mission and no respite. Being a secret organisation, there was also no-one really to talk to about these challenges outside of SOE. It must have been a very lonely existence.

We obviously do not want to in any way diminish the reputations of the real SOE members by our attempts to understand the issues that they faced. We hope that the exercise will be educational and will help to create a greater understanding of the sacrifices and experiences that these brave women and men undertook. We can only marvel at their strength of will and belief in themselves and their cause.

Note on Hitler, the Nazis and Germany:

We want the LARP to be a game welcoming to Players of all nationalities. We are acutely aware that the German Third Reich was the main European antagonist for Britain in WW2. However, history is rarely black and white, and neither did the German people universally support Hitler’s regime, nor did the French and other peoples universally oppose it. In our game, we will reflect this historical fact by referring to the war as the ‘war against Hitler’, or ‘the Nazis’ when speaking about the enemy, and we expect the same of our Players.

Inspirations and Reference

Movies such as:

• A Call to Spy
• Anthropoid
• Odette
• Female Agents
• This Land is Mine
• Operation Mincemeat
• Where Eagles Dare
• Army of Shadows
• The Train

This is a great interview with Sebastian Faulks regarding the film Odette, It is just 21 mins long but gives a great flavour of the type of issues to be covered in this event:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc1gywT1-wQ

Books such as:

• Mission France: The True History of the Women of SOE – Kate Vigurs
• Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan – Shrabani Basu
• The Special Operations Executive 1940-46 – M.R.D.Foot
• Carve her name with Pride – RJ Minney

Please try to avoid reading books that are reprints of manuals and guides that are contemporary to the period. The contents are key source material for the event and will be better as something of a surprise to players.