During World War II, Selwyn Jepson recruited spies for the British, and made it a point to recruit women. “In my view,” he would later tell the Imperial War Museum, “women were very much better than men for the work. Women, as you must know, have a far greater capacity for cool and lonely courage than men.” No one, perhaps, better encapsulated lonely courage than Violette Szabo, the George Cross recipient and Jepson’s most famous recruit.
Szabo (née Violette Bushell) was born in Paris, daughter of a French dressmaker and an English soldier. When she was 11, she moved London, where her family ultimately settled and where she lived until adulthood. At age 19, while attending a Bastille Day parade, Violette met Etienne Szabo, an officer of the French Foreign Legion. The two fell deeply in love, and the following month, on August 21, 1940, they were married.
The war separated them. Etienne was sent to fight in such places as Senegal, Eritrea, and Syria. Violette, meanwhile, contributed to the war effort by joining the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the voluntary, female branch of the British Army. She trained to work in an anti-aircraft artillery unit, though would have to leave only weeks after arriving at her first posting. She returned to London and gave birth to her and Etienne’s first child.
RECRUITMENT
On October 24, 1942, during the Second Battle of El Alamein, Etienne was killed in action. For his deeds, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre, the French medal of valor. He never met his infant daughter. Violette was devastated—heartbroken and despondent, but also enraged and suddenly determined. As Smithsonian Magazine described it, Violette “seethed in London… yearning for some way to become more actively involved in defeating Nazi Germany.” A chance encounter with a recruiter for the Special Operations Executive provided her with just such an opportunity.
The SOE, sometimes known as “Churchill’s Secret Army,” was the secret spy agency that operated in Britain during World War II. (The United States Office of Strategic Services, forerunner to the CIA and Army Special Forces, was partly modeled on the SOE.) It’s easy to understand why Violette Szabo would be a prime candidate for recruitment. She was a patriot who volunteered for military service early in the war. She was very beautiful. She was fluent in both French and English, and while growing up, her language skills were fortified in a bilingual household. And now she wanted payback from the powers that killed her husband. That last detail would concern Selwyn Jepson, who ultimately approved her admission. He feared she might possess a “suicidal urge.”
Violette’s parents took care of her child while Violette attended the rigorous assessment and selection process for SOE. She was to operate behind enemy lines, and the SOE trained her in everything from marksmanship to cryptography. With months to go before D-Day, she completed parachute training and “finishing school” (where she trained to operate undercover) and received her first assignment. She was to be a courier for Philippe Liewer, an SOE leader who ran a spy network in France. In the French city of Rouen, 80 miles northwest of Paris, Liewer’s deputy had been arrested. Agent Szabo’s mission was to infiltrate Rouen, and determine the state of SOE on the ground.
HER FIRST MISSION
Violette parachuted into France on April 5, 1944, and slipped solo into Rouen. Things were bad, indeed. The Gestapo had broken the resistance network in the city, having arrested nearly 100 men and women. Wanted posters with Liewer’s face were plastered everywhere. She pieced together what had happened to Liewer’s deputy, assessed the condition of SOE, and weeks later exfiltrated to England. As a result of her effectiveness on the ground, she was promoted to ensign in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, which the SOE used as a cover office for female spies.
In June, she volunteered to return to France to disrupt German communications and help rebuild the shattered SOE circuit. Again, she parachuted into the country, and immediately connected with resistance forces on the ground. She was soon ordered to link up with another SOE network to the south. Unbeknownst to her and the agent with whom she was traveling, a German Panzer division stood between them and their objective. They were stopped at a checkpoint, and she and the agent attempted to flee. During the frenzied escape, she was injured—her clothes were “ripped to ribbons” as the official report read, and she was “bleeding from numerous cuts all over her legs.” She ordered her partner to go on without her, and she reportedly used her submachine gun to lay down suppressive fire. (There is some debate about this.) Her actions helped her fellow agent escape. Meanwhile, she was taken prisoner.
CAPTIVITY
Violette was brought to the SS at their headquarters in Paris. According to her George Medal citation, she “was continuously and atrociously tortured, but never by word or deed gave away any of her acquaintances or told the enemy anything of any value.” She was sentenced (ultimately) to Ravensbrück concentration camp. While on the train from France to Germany, she again demonstrated heroism. The train happened to be targeted by Allied air forces, and when the planes opened fire on the railroad cars, the German guards took cover. Violette’s fellow captives, however, were forced to absorb the bullets. In the chaos, Violette and two other captured SOE agents made a dash to steal a container of water, which they then brought to the shackled, injured prisoners before attempting to render aid.
Not long after arriving at Ravensbrück, Violette was transferred temporarily to a camp at Torgau where she attempted to mount an escape. She was then sent to another camp where she was put to hard labor during the brutal winter. She and her two fellow SOE agents were sent back to Ravensbrück, withered and desperate. According to one report, the three “were in rags, their faces black with dirt, and their hair matted. They were starving. They had been tortured in attempts to wrest from them secrets of the invasion but I am certain they gave nothing away.”
On February 5, 1945, Violette and the agents were brought to the crematorium where they were read death sentences. They were forced to their knees. They held hands. They were each shot in the backs of their necks. For her actions and sacrifice, Violette Szabo was posthumously awarded the George Cross, which is granted only for “greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger.”
(More information on Violette Szabo can be found at Smithsonian magazine and historian Nigel Perrin’s SOE profiles database.)
