X-Nico

3 unusual facts about Maurice Buckmaster


Maurice Buckmaster

He wrote two memoirs, Specially Employed (1952) and They Fought Alone (1958), but they are not to be relied upon, and he was interviewed for the 1969 documentary The Sorrow and the Pity.

Buckmaster also continued to transmit to Noor Inayat Khan ('Madelaine'), who had been flown out as an additional wireless operator for the Prosper circuit, for three months after her capture in October 1943, ignoring a clear warning of her arrest and the probable playing back of her radio, sent by Sonya Olschaneszy ('Tania'), a locally recruited SOE agent.

Buckmaster's incompetence was to lead not only to SOE giving the Germans valuable information, but also to the deaths of dozens of agents, including Suttill, Norman, Noor and Sonya, who were all to be murdered in concentration camps.


Carve Her Name with Pride

Colonel Maurice Buckmaster (played by William Mervyn) was head of SOE F Section, and Vera Atkins (played by Avice Landon) was his assistant and the section's intelligence officer, with special responsibility for female agents.


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