Thursday, January 23, 2025

Special Operations Executive Agents Memorial & Violette Szabo

Special Operations Executive Agents Memorial

This bronze bust of Violette Szabo, on the Albert Embankment, just yards from the Headquarters of the British Special Intelligence Service (MI6), commemorates the secret agents who led covert operations against the Nazis.

This monument was commissioned by the Public Memorials Appeal.

S. O. E.

The Special Operations Executive was secretly formed for the purpose of recruiting agents, men and women of many nationalities, who would volunteer to continue the fight for freedom, by performing acts of sabotage in countries occupied by the enemy during the Second World War.

This monument is in honour of all the courageous S.O.E. Agents: those who did survive and those who did not survive their perilous missions. Their services were beyond the call of duty. In the pages of history their names are carved with pride.

The Heroes of Telemark.

In 1943 Norwegian resistance commandos sponsored by the S.O.E. raided the enemy occupied Norsk Hydro Plant in the Telemark region of Norway.

This successful raid sabotaged the machinery that was producing heavy water, which is used in the manufacture of the Atomic Bomb.

Thanks to those Norwegian Commandos the enemy's attempt to develop the Atomic Bomb was thwarted.

The Maquis French resistance fighters.

470 S.O.E. agents were sent on sabotage missions to occupied France where they fought with networks of French resistance fighters who played an important part in the liberation of France in 1944.

Special Operations Executive Memorial

Violette Szabo.

Violette Bushell was born in Paris, France, in 1921, before her family moved to England. At the outbreak of World War II, she joined the Women's Land Army and the Auxiliary Territorial Service, where she met Étienne Szabo, a Free French corps soldier. They were married and she bore him a daughter, Tanis, in 1942. That same year Étienne was killed in action at the battle of El-Alamein. 

It was this event that led her to join the Special Operations Executive intelligence agency, which, at the time, had its headquarters on Baker Street.

Special Operations Executive Baker Street

Violette was considered a valuable asset, by the S.O.E., due to her fluency in French and, after undergoing extensive training in how to conduct espionage and reconnaissance missions, explosives, weapons, guerilla warfare and sabotage skills, she entered occupied France, in 1944.

Her first mission was a failure as the Gestapo captured and interrogated a British spy who revealed sensitive information. Violette and her team fled France in an RAF aeroplane, that was nearly shot down twice by German anti-aircraft guns, but successfully made it back to England.

Two months later and Violette was back in France, acting as a liaison with French-resistance partisans and to lead operations to sabotage communication lines, in an effort to delay a German military response to the upcoming D-Day landings. However, the S.O.E. had greatly overestimated the partisans capability, so Violette was ordered south to another resistance unit.

Unfortunately, this other resistance unit were unaware that an SS unit were close by and, as they had a predilection for using vehicles, easily aroused suspicion. 

At a roadblock they realised they were trapped and leapt from the car, fleeing across fields. Violette twisted her ankle and took up protection behind an apple tree, from where she used her submachine gun to pin down the German soldiers while her colleagues escaped. She managed to hold off the Germans for thirty minutes, before she ran out of her ammunition. In that time she killed a Corporal and several soldiers.

Before she could take her cyanide pill she was captured and taken to the SS for interrogation.

Violette Szabo

During her four day interrogation she was subjected to horrific torture and sexual violence before she was sent Ravensbrück concentration camp, by train.

With other resistance fighters Violette made plans to organise an escape from the camp. On February 5, 1945 these plans were discovered, resulting in her being taken to a place of execution, and shot to death. She was 23.

The George Cross was posthumously bestowed on Violette Szabo, by King George VI, on December 17, 1946. 

2 comments:

  1. Read all that and then discovered she was only 23. Such courage and bravery.

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    Replies
    1. They were definitely a different breed of people, back then.

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