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| Ambassadors to honor female WWII spy | |
| 2006-12-11 | |
The dangerous woman was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore native working in France for British intelligence, and the limp was the result of an artificial leg. Her left leg had been amputated below the knee about a decade earlier after she stumbled and blasted her foot with a shotgun while hunting in Turkey. | |
| Posted by:.com |
| #2 IIRC Virginia Hall's full story can be found in A Man Called Intrepid. Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2006-12-11 15:51 |
| #1 Another distinguished SOE agent was Noor Inayat Khan, an Indian Princess (born in the Kremlin Palace in Moscow), the great-great-grand-daughter of the legendary muslim king Tipu Sultan (who resisted the British conquest of India). Her mother was American, the niece of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. Her father was a sufi mystic. Given the code name 'Madeleine' she did poorly in one part of her training, a mock interrogation. She found it difficult to lie and was terrified throughout the session. The trainer reported that she lost her voice and 'was trembling and quite blanched' He also made a comment: 'Not overburdened with brains but has worked hard and shown keeness, apart from some dislike of the security side of the course. She has an unstable and temperamental personality and it is very doubtful whether she is really suited to the work in the field.' Betrayed by a member of the resistance, she was held by the Gestapo for over 10 months. Despite brutal torture she didn't reveal a single piece of information, not even her name. She was shot by the SS at Dachau in 1944 along with three other SOE agents - Madeleine Damerment, Elaine Plewman and Yolande Beekman.  |
| Posted by: john 2006-12-11 07:07 |