Helen Fry
‘Mission France’: A Conversation on the SOE Agents Behind Enemy Lines in France in WWII
Summary
Helen Fry and Kate Vigurs discuss Kate’s new book, Mission France, which explores the largely unknown stories of 39 female agents who were sent behind enemy lines into France.
Helen Fry
Helen Fry has authored and edited over 25 books covering the social history of the Second World War, including British Intelligence and the secret war, espionage, and spies, as well as MI9 escape and evasion. She is the foremost authority on the “secret listeners” who worked at special eavesdropping sites operated by British Intelligence during WWII. Helen is the official biographer of MI6 spymaster, Colonel Thomas Joseph Kendrick. She has also extensively written about the 10,000 Germans who fought for Britain during WWII. Helen has appeared in a number of documentaries and has provided advisory services for TV and drama. She also appears regularly in media interviews and podcasts. Helen is an ambassador for the National Centre for Military Intelligence (NCMI) and serves as a trustee of both the Friends of the Intelligence Corps Museum and the Medmenham Collection. She works in London.
Dr. Kate Vigurs
Kate Vigurs is a professional freelance historian. Her debut book ‘Mission France: The True History of the Women of SOE (2021) has received critical acclaim and was shortlisted for the Polly Corrigan Prize and the SAHR First book prize in 2022.
Yeah. You had to speak French fluently and like a native, men and women. For some reason they were a bit more lax with the men, ‘cause some of the women arrived and went, oh, I can’t believe that, just stop talking. Just one of them said, could you just pretend you are dumb? It would make life so much easier if you let me do the talking. So they had to speak French fluently, and if they spoke it with an accent, so for example they were French Canadian, they needed a cover story to account for that. But yeah, absolutely.
In an ideal world, and what’s ideal in times of war? But in an ideal world it should have been between six to nine months. Some of them only had six weeks training. Some of them had much longer because they were struggling with it. But yeah, ideally it was six to nine months.
Yes, both of them did. So for England, the highest decoration you could get as a woman was the George Cross. And three agents received the George Cross. Nancy Wake got the George Medal, which is the next one down. And then you’ve got lots of mentions in dispatches, OBEs, MBEs. Pearl, who I’ve mentioned several times, was given what’s called the civil MBE, which is for somebody who’s done a desk job the whole of the war. And she sent it back with a note that said, “I have done nothing civil.” And eventually they changed it to a military one. I think it’s brilliant.