X-Nico

9 unusual facts about Special Operations Executive


Armistice of Cassibile

To ease communication between the Allies and the Italian Government, a captured British SOE agent, Dick Mallaby was released from Verona prison and secretly moved to the Quirinale.

Dudley Maurice Newitt

During the Second World War he was scientific director of Special Operations Executive responsible for the development of technology for sabotage and espionage.

First Aid Nursing Yeomanry

A small part of FANY - highly secret at the time and later famous - served as a parent unit for many women who undertook espionage work for the Special Operations Executive.

Flemming Muus

In 1942, he was recruited in England by the Special Operations Executive and sent to Denmark in March 1943 as their chief agent.

Jane Horney

In Sweden Horney had connections with Allied intelligence people, like the Special Operations Executive's Head of Danish cases, Ronald Turnbull.

Marius Fiil

He and his wife Gudrun created Hvidstengruppen (the Hvidsten Group), a resistance cell which helped the British Special Operations Executive to parachute weapons and supplies into Denmark.

Parham Airfield Museum

The ‘Auxunits’ were one of Britain’s nine secret services of World War II, alongside better known clandestine organisations such as the Security Service (MI5), the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), and the Special Operations Executive.

Stuguflåt Bridge

In January 1945, Joachim Rønneberg and SOE agents (Operation Fieldfare) tried to damage the bridge in order to halt the movement by German occupant forces on Rauma Line.

Valençay

On 6 May 1941, Georges Bégué, the first SOE agent from England, was parachuted into a field near Valençay.


Alan Herries Wilson

During the Second World War he worked on radio communications problems for the SOE, and was later attached to the British Tube Alloys project to develop the atomic bomb.

Brickendon

The former manor house at Brickendonbury was used as a spy training centre during World War II as Station XVII of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and is now home to the Tan Abdul Razak Research Centre of the Malaysian Rubber Board.

Carve Her Name with Pride

Vera Atkins, Odette Sansom and Leslie Fernandez, one of Szabo's SOE instructors and a field agent himself, were advisors on the film.

The poem, 'The Life That I Have', also known as 'Yours', recited to Violette by her husband Etienne, was once believed to have been written especially for the film, but was in fact the actual code poem given to her in March 1944 by the SOE cryptographer Leo Marks, and written by him on Christmas Eve 1943 in memory of his girlfriend, Ruth, who had recently died in a car crash.

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.

Claude de Baissac

Claude Denis Boucherville de Baissac, DSO and bar, CdeG, known as Claude de Baissac or by his codename David (born 28 February 1907, Curepipe, Mauritius - died 22 December 1974) was a Mauritian of French descent who became an agent in the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

Corps Léger d'Intervention

While the commandos trained in Jijel, Commandant de Crevècoeur arrived at Meerut, North West India on November 10, 1943 to introduce the CLI to British Special Operations Executive (SOE) Force 136's Colin Hercules Mackenzie.

Female Agents

She is recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a secret spy and sabotage service initiated by Winston Churchill.

Haviva Reik

Haviva Reik (alternately Haviva Reick, Havivah Reich, or Chaviva Reich) (1914–1944) was one of 32 or 33 Palestinian Jewish parachutists sent by the Jewish Agency and Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE) on military missions in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Heigham Holmes

It has been suggested that Heigham Holmes was used by the Special Operations Executive as a secret airfield between 1940 to 1944, with Lysander aircraft operating from the airfield to ferry agents to occupied Europe.

Hornet Flight

Follett's website states that his inspiration for the story came from Leo Marks, a former Special Operations Executive employee, who wrote a brief account in his book, Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's Story 1941-1945 about two young Danes who found a derelict de Havilland Hornet Moth biplane, repaired it, and flew it to Britain.

Joachim Rønneberg

In April 2013, Rønneberg was presented with a Union Jack during a ceremony at the Special Operations Executive (SOE) monument in London to mark 70 years since the successful Gunnerside mission.

Malcolm Munthe

Later recruited to the Special Operations Executive, he worked behind enemy lines in occupied Scandinavia - both in Norway and Sweden - as a spy and saboteur, famously blowing up a Nazi munitions train some 70 miles from his own family home in Leksand, Dalarna.

Near East Broadcasting Station

It was under the full control of the British Special Operations Executive and initially concerned itself with broadcasting to the Balkans.

Ralph Vibert

During the War he served as a cypher instructor with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Beaulieu, New Forest before being promoted to Chief instructor of Force 136, the Asian outpost of the SOE in India.

The Eagle Has Flown

Brigadier Dougal Munro and Captain Jack Carter (recurring characters in several novels by Higgins) of Special Operations Executive, arrange for Steiner to be relocated to a special prison in a priory in Wapping, and make sure, via double agents at the Spanish Embassies in London and Berlin, that German intelligence find out about it.

William Robert Renshaw

Among other children and grandchildren he had two grandsons worthy of note, namely George and John Starr, both of whom were members of the Special Operations Executive organisation


see also

Byck

Muriel Byck, female Special Operations Executive agent during World War II

Frederick Bradnum

After joining the Army, he served in France (1939), Narvik (1940), Crete (1941), and Saint-Nazaire raid (1942), before transferring into administration with the Special Operations Executive.

George Starr

George Reginald Starr (1904–1980), British mining engineer and member the Special Operations Executive

George Wilkinson

George Alfred "Teddy" Wilkinson, part of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and on the roll of honour at the Valençay SOE Memorial

Tadeusz Chciuk-Celt

He also completed parachute training at RAF Ringway, Manchester England (This base was used for Men and women agents of the Special Operations Executive as well as all (60,000) allied paratroopers trained in Europe during WW2).