Author : Michael Richard Daniell Foot
Publisher : Casemate Publishers
Page : 217 pages
File Size : 15,9 MB
Release : 2008-01-01
Category : History
ISBN : 1844158497
Professor Michael (MRD) Foot, the only person referred to by his real name in a John Le Carré novel, served in Special Forces during the war and has an international reputation as an historian. Here he looks back on his exploits, giving a no-holds-barred account of special operations and his academic career.
Author : M. R. D. Foot
Publisher : Casemate Publishers
Page : 402 pages
File Size : 47,32 MB
Release : 2009-04-29
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1783460725
The historian of the British World War II intelligence organization chronicles his life and service career in this memoir. Michael (M.R.D.) Foot enjoys the rare distinction of being the only person referred to by his real name in a John Le Carré novel. A highly significant tribute to the man entrusted with writing the official record of the Special Operations Executive. He authored first (1966) the History of SOE in France and twenty years later the highly sensitive accounts of SOE operations in Belgium and Holland (which the Germans infiltrated with disastrous results). With his own war service background and academic reputation M.R.D. was an inspired choice for these historic tasks. He was fearless in pursuit of the truth and in thwarting bureaucratic attempts to muzzle him. His war exploits make thrilling reading. His behind-the-lines mission to track down a notorious SD interrogator went badly wrong, and he only just escaped with his life. His career has brought him into close contact with an astonishing cast of characters, and his tongue-in-cheek account of academic life makes lively reading.
Author : Michael Richard Daniell Foot
Publisher :
Page : pages
File Size : 46,32 MB
Release : 2010
Category : Historians
ISBN : 9780753195710
Author : Kate Vigurs
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 45,90 MB
Release : 2021-05-18
Category : History
ISBN : 0300258844
The full story of the thirty-nine female SOE agents who went undercover in France Formed in 1940, Special Operations Executive was to coordinate Resistance work overseas. The organization’s F section sent more than four hundred agents into France, thirty-nine of whom were women. But while some are widely known—Violette Szabo, Odette Sansom, Noor Inayat Khan—others have had their stories largely overlooked. Kate Vigurs interweaves for the first time the stories of all thirty-nine female agents. Tracing their journeys from early recruitment to work undertaken in the field, to evasion from, or capture by, the Gestapo, Vigurs shows just how greatly missions varied. Some agents were more adept at parachuting. Some agents’ missions lasted for years, others’ less than a few hours. Some survived, others were murdered. By placing the women in the context of their work with the SOE and the wider war, this history reveals the true extent of the differences in their abilities and attitudes while underlining how they nonetheless shared a common mission and, ultimately, deserve recognition.
Author :
Publisher : Frontline Books
Page : 180 pages
File Size : 27,51 MB
Release : 2021-08-26
Category : History
ISBN : 1399015052
From a small number of clandestine activities against the German occupation of Denmark in 1940, a sophisticated resistance movement developed which by 1944, with the support of Special Operations Executive, had become a highly effective intelligence gathering and sabotage organisation. Denmark is composed of a mainland and more than 500 islands, a fifth of which are inhabited, and the countryside is devoid of any inaccessible or mountainous region. Together this made communication between resistance cells difficult and meant that there were no natural bases from which guerrilla operations could be mounted. Nevertheless, thanks to supply drops of explosives, weapons and ammunition arranged by SOE, the Danes harassed the Germans and raised the moral of the Danish people in the latter, and most brutal, stages of the war. This largely forgotten story of SOE and its agents in Denmark, the latter facing extremely hazardous conditions, was written immediately after the war by a SOE staff member and read and validated by the Director of SOE, Major General Colin Gubbins. A very large number of documents were burned at SOE’s London headquarters in Baker Street when the organisation was wound down in 1946 making this history of the Danish Section an invaluable and irreplaceable study. SOE in Denmark was written at a time when SOE was still largely unknown to the general public and its operations a closely guarded secret. It was expected that its activities would never be officially acknowledged and the study of its actions in Denmark was compiled with the aim of provide a lasting record of its achievement. Within its pages we read of the dangers the agents faced, the logistical mountains they had to overcome, and the successes achieved in the face of a ruthless enemy. Completed with unique photographs from the Danish archives, SOE in Denmark is an essential addition to the SOE literature.
Author : Pearl Witherington Cornioley
Publisher : Chicago Review Press
Page : 218 pages
File Size : 23,7 MB
Release : 2013-08-01
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN : 1613744900
Pearl Witherington Cornioley, one of the most celebrated female World War II resistance fighters, shares her remarkable story in this firsthand account of her experience as a special agent for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). Told through a series of reminiscences—from a difficult childhood spent in the shadow of World War I and her family's harrowing escape from France as the Germans approached in 1940 to her recruitment and training as a special agent and the logistics of parachuting into a remote rural area of occupied France and hiding in a wheat field from enemy fire—each chapter also includes helpful opening remarks to provide context and background on the SOE and the French Resistance. With an annotated list of key figures, an appendix of original unedited interview extracts—including Pearl's fiancé Henri's story—and fascinating photographs and documents from Pearl's personal collection, this memoir will captivate World War II buffs of any age.
Author : Ernest van Maurik
Publisher : Pen and Sword
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 42,38 MB
Release : 2018-05-30
Category : History
ISBN : 1526734176
Ernest Van Maurik, known to all simply as Van, joined the illustrious Artists Rifles regiment in the Territorial Army in 1936, but when war broke out he was commissioned into the Wiltshire Regiment. In the summer of 1940 the regiment was posted at Folkestone to defend the South Coast in the event of an invasion, during which time he undertook a course at Hythe Small Arms School and found himself involved with the SOE, the Special Operations Executive.This led to him to Scotland, first to the Commando Training School at Lochailort and then to Arisaig, where he became responsible for helping organise resistance to the Nazi regime in occupied countries. This involved the training of prospective agents in small arms, demolition and other special forces activities. At this time, he helped train a number of Czech soldiers who went on to participate in Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of SS-Obergruppenfhrer Reinhard Heydrich in Prague.Van was then transferred to the SOEs headquarters in Baker Street, London. There he was to work for notable figures such as Maurice Buckmaster and General Colin Gubbins. He also got to know a number of individuals who were to become famous agents, people such as Peter Churchill, Odette and Yeo-Thomas (The White Rabbit). His main work was to get agents both in and out of Occupied France but then it was his turn to go into the field.Van was initially sent to Malta to help with the dropping of agents into Yugoslavia. His next mission was to Switzerland via Occupied France to assist SOE agents in France and also deal with couriers from F Section SOE who used Switzerland as a channel for communicating with London.After many adventures, Van reached Switzerland where he carried out his task until the end of the war in Europe. He then was involved in assisting the investigation into the fate of the many SOE agents who had been captured by the Germans and were still missing.
Author : Nigel Perrin
Publisher : Pen and Sword
Page : 367 pages
File Size : 11,70 MB
Release : 2014-12-19
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1844684547
A biography of a British World War II secret agent who escaped the Buchenwald concentration camp. One of the most determined and courageous secret agents of the Second World War, Harry Peulevé joined the BEF in 1940 before volunteering for F Section of the Special Operations Executive. On his first mission to occupied France to set up the SCIENTIST circuit, he broke his leg on landing and, after numerous close calls, made a heroic crossing of the Pyrenees on sticks in December, 1942. Imprisoned, he escaped and eventually returned to England in May, 1943. He formed a close friendship with Violette Szabo before setting out to train a Maquis group in central France. Despite the Gestapo’s repeated attempts to catch him, he built a secret army of several thousand resistance fighters. Eventually betrayed and captured, he was tortured at Avenue Foch but never broken. By coincidence, he and Violette met while in captivity before Harry was sent to Buchenwald where he not only avoided execution but also managed to escape, reaching American lines in April, 1945. Sadly, Peulevé never fully recovered from his wartime traumas, but nothing can detract from his outstanding courage and contribution.
Author : Noreen Riols
Publisher : Pan Macmillan
Page : 317 pages
File Size : 18,3 MB
Release : 2013-08-29
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 023077170X
‘My mother thought I was working for the Ministry of Ag. and Fish.’ So begins Noreen Riols’ compelling memoir of her time as a member of Churchill’s ‘secret army’, the Special Operations Executive. It was 1943, just before her eighteenth birthday, Noreen received her call-up papers, and was faced with either working in a munitions factory or joining the Wrens. A typically fashion-conscious young woman, even in wartime, Noreen opted for the Wrens - they had better hats. But when one of her interviewers realized she spoke fluent French, she was directed to a government building on Baker Street. It was SOE headquarters, where she was immediately recruited into F-Section, led by Colonel Maurice Buckmaster. From then until the end of the war, Noreen worked with Buckmaster and her fellow operatives to support the French Resistance fighting for the Allied cause. Sworn to secrecy, Noreen told no one that she spent her days meeting agents returning from behind enemy lines, acting as a decoy, passing on messages in tea rooms and picking up codes in crossword puzzles. Vivid, witty, insightful and often moving, this is the story of one young woman’s secret war, offering readers an authentic and compelling insight into what really went on in Churchill’s ‘secret army’ from one of its last surviving members.
Author : William Stevenson
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 476 pages
File Size : 39,5 MB
Release : 2011-10-11
Category : History
ISBN : 1628721863
The New York Times Bestseller by the Author of A Man Called Intrepid Ideal for fans of Nancy Wake, Virginia Hall, The Last Goodnight by Howard Blum, The Woman Who Smashed Codes, The Wolves at the Door by Judith Pearson, and similar works Shares the story of Vera Atkins, legendary spy and holder of the Legion of Honor Written by William Stevenson, the only person whom she trusted to write her biography She was stunning. She was ruthless. She was brilliant and had a will of iron. Born Vera Maria Rosenberg in Bucharest, she became Vera Atkins. William Stphenson, the spymaster who would later be known as “Intrepid”, recruited her when she was twenty-three. Vera spent most of the 1930s running too many dangerous espionage missions to count. When war was declared in 1939, her many skills made her one of the leaders of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a covert intelligence agency formed by, and reporting to, Winston Churchill. She trained and recruited hundreds of agents, including dozens of women. Their job was to seamlessly penetrate deep behind the enemy lines. As General Dwight D. Eisenhower said, the fantastic exploits and extraordinary courage of the SOE agents and the French Resistance fighters “shortened the war by many months.”They are celebrated, as they should be. But Vera Atkins’s central role has been hidden until after she died; William Stevenson promised to wait and publish her story posthumously. Now, Vera Atkins can be celebrated and known for the hero she was: the woman whose beauty, intelligence, and unwavering dedication proved key in turning the tide of World War II.
