Play Book Tag discussion

by Shrabani Basu - 5 stars and <3

If you following my reading you know I have a slight obsession with the women of the SOE. All of my reading to date has been an overall examination of the program and its contribution to the war, particularly its role in preparing for the D-Day invasion. I’ve never done a reading on a specific member of the program. If you are going to read on one particular figure of the extraordinary program Noor Inayat Khan is definitely the one to start with. An Indian princess on her father’s side with an American mother, Noor was born in Moscow and raised in Paris. She was an accomplished musician whose brother studied the violin under Stravinsky and was an author of children’s books. Her stories were broadcast on the Children’s Hour of Radio Paris. She was working on the concept of publishing a children’s newspaper when she was forced to flee with her family to London as Hitler’s army was advancing towards Paris. Her father was a Sufi, a Muslim mystic, who also adhered to the teachings of Gandhi. Noor was raised with a sense of religious tolerance and was a Muslim who fell in love with a Jew. Although raised as a pacifist she came to the conclusion that not actively resisting Hitler was tantamount to an accomplice to murder.

She volunteered for Women’s Auxiliary Air Force where she learned radio transmission. This combined with language skills attracted the attention of the newly created program of training women for espionage behind enemy lines of the SOE. She was detached to the French section, whose main aim was to prepare the ground for the invasion of France. She was attached to the Prosper circuit, who had become one of the largest, busiest, and most hazardous forces around Paris and of the SOE networks. Noor was the first woman operator to be flown into occupied France and of the thirty-nine women sent to France thirteen, including Noor, never returned.

The average survival time for a radio operator in the field was approximately six weeks. Of the more than 200 captured agents of the two sections of the SOE, only twenty-six lived to tell their tale. Within ten day of Noor’s arrival the network had been infiltrated and fallen into complete disarray with sweeping arrests of up to 1500 people. London wanted to extract her but she refused because she was the last radio operator left in Paris. She wanted to remain until a replacement could be sent. London accepted her response as an “offer of sacrifice of a soldier and allowed her to remain.” She eluded capture for three months and continued the dangerous work. She accomplished a great deal including managing to facilitate the escape of thirty Allied airmen shot down in France. A replacement was found and plans were to extract her on October 15, 1943. She was arrested the day before and was eventually executed at Dachau on September 13, 1944 with three other SOE female agents. Her contributions were recognized by both the UK and France, awarded the George Cross from UK and Coix de Guerre from France. She was one of only three women SOE agents to receive the George Cross.

Fantastic book! There is a great deal of debate around whether these women were trained properly, whether they should have been sent behind enemy lines, and what their accomplishments really were. Many books are heavily skewered either in lionizing the women or tampering down their involvement. Basu strikes a very good balance in her work. It is obvious she has a great deal of admiration for Noor, but she doesn’t hesitate to show her mistakes and weaknesses. I have my own biases and feel they were incredibly important and am happy to be in Eisenhower’s camp on this one who credits the women’s activity by shortening the war by six month. I like Ike!