Violette Szabo

Violette Reine Elizabeth Szabo was born in Paris on June 26, 1921. She had lived in Picardy in northern France for over a decade with her aunt before she reunited with her family in London. She continued to live in England, and, in 1940, joined the Women’s Land Army. While in the Army, Violette met Étienne Szabo, a French officer of Hungarian descent, at the Bastille Day parade in London in 1940. Their 42-day romance culminated in marriage at Aldershot Registry Office. Violette was 19 and Étienne was 31.

While her husband was fighting in South Africa, Violette found work as a switchboard operator, but quickly became bored. In September 1941, she enlisted in the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS). However, this wasn’t to last long. In February 1941, Violette discovered she was pregnant, and returned to London.

After the birth of her child, Violette then went to work at the South Morden aircraft factory. Only there for a short while, she was soon informed of her husband’s death. Distraught at his loss and the fact he had never seen his daughter, Violette decided to accept training as a British Special Operations Executive (SOE) field agent. To her, this was the best way of battling an enemy that had killed her husband.

Special Operations Executive

No one is absolutely certain the reasons how and why Violette was recruited due to very little information remaining in her official file. However, the fact she was fluent in French and was a member of the ATS no doubt made her a candidate for SOE. She would have met with a Mr. E. Potter, the alias of Selwyn Jepson, a detective novelist, who acted as F-Section’s recruiter. Having passed the interview, Violette was given security clearance in July 1943 and later began to train.

To cover her role as an agent, she was commissioned as a Section Leader into the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. Her training took her to several locations, including Group A at Arisaig in the Scottish Highlands. Here Violette was instructed on fieldcraft, night and daylight navigation, weapons and demolitions. She also went on to learn escape and evasion techniques, uniform recognition, communications and cryptography, as well as further training in weaponry. Her final test was a parachute jump. Though the first time, she sprained her ankle, the second time was passed. Then, she was ready for his first mission.

First Mission

During her second attempt at the parachute test, Violette met Philippe Liewer, an organizer for SOE. She also became friends with Bob Maloubier, a weapons instructor, and SOE decided that she would work as a courier under Liewer, who posed as a salesman. Her initial deployment was delayed because several SOE agents had been apprehended, but this gave Violette time to hone her skills.

On April 5, 1944 Violette and Liewer parachuted in German-occupied France, close to Cherbourg. She posed as a commercial secretary named Corinne Reine Leroy, born in Bailleul. Being a resident of Le Havre meant that her travelling into the Restricted Zone of German occupation along the coast was seen as believable.

While in the Restricted Zone, it was her and Liewer’s mission to assess the damage caused by German arrests. Violette then travelled to Rouen and Dieppe alone because Liewer was a wanted man. He and Maloubier both had their names on wanted posters with their code names. Here she was to gather intelligence and reconnaissance. However, she soon discovered that the circuit, containing 120 members, had been exposed irreparably. This forced Violette to return to Paris and report what she had found to Liewer. The discovery of “Salesman” (the operation’s code name), was bad news for the SOE, her reports on the local factories making war materials for the Germans were key in deciding Allied bombing targets.

On May 24, 1944 Violette received a promotion to Ensign in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY).

Second Mission

Violette’s second mission, dubbed “Salesman II”, came only a few weeks later, on the night of the fifth and sixth of June. She and three colleagues parachuted to a field near Sussac, which was on the outskirts of Limoges, on June 8, immediately following D-Day and her daughter’s second birthday. Her objective was to operate in the department of Haute Vienne, where she would pose as Mme Villeret, the young widow of an antiques dealer from Nantes.

When she arrived, it was Violette’s job to coordinate the activities of the local Maquis (rural guerrilla bands of French Resistance fighters), sabotaging communication lines while Germans attempted to contain the Normandy landings. However, when Liewer—her colleague from the previous mission—arrived in Limousin, he found the Maquis to be poorly organized and led.

To better coordinate the resistance, Liewer decided to send Violette as his liaison officer between the better organized and active Maquis of Correze and the Dordogne. The latter was led by Jaques Poirier, who had taken over after the previous leader had been arrested. But due to poor intelligence gathered by the previous Maquis, Liewer did not know that the 2nd SS Panzer Division was slowly encroaching north towards the Normandy battlefields through their area.

Capture

In the morning of June 10, Violette set off on her mission. Liewer preferred that she remain inconspicuous by travelling by bicycle, but she chose, instead, to travel in a Citroen driven by a maquis section leader, Jacques Dufour (‘Anastasie’). This was risky because the Germans had forbidden the use of cars by the French after D-Day. Despite this, she set off, armed with a Sten gun, and, on their journey, they picked up Jean Bariaud, a resistance fighter.

Along their journey they came upon a roadblock outside of Salon-la-Tour. The roadblock had initially been set up to find Sturmbannführer Helmut Kämpfe, a battlefield commander who had been captured by the local resistance. As the car slowed by the roadblock, Bariaud fled and informed “Salesman” of the other capture of the other two.

When the car finally stopped, Violette and Dufour fled the car as the latter began opening fire. A gun battle ensured, with a civilian casualty caused by German forces. Armored cars swarmed the scene, forcing Violette and Dufour to flee, leaping a gate and running across a field towards a stream. From here, the two fled uphill towards a forest, where the former fell awkwardly and twisted her ankle. Violette urged Dufour to leave her behind. He fled, and she dragged herself behind an apple tree, where she provided covering fire for Dufour’s escape.

Violette managed to hold German forces off for around 30 minutes, killing a corporal and wounding several others in the process, until she ran out of ammunition. Then, two officers dragged her from cover and to a nearby railway, where she was questioned by another officer. Her custody was later transferred to Sicherheitsdienst (SD) (SS Security Service) in Limoges, and she was interrogated for four days. Then, she was moved to Fresnes Prison in Paris and brought to Gestapo headquarters at 84 Avenue Foch for interrogation by the Sicherheitsdienst, who knew she worked for the SOE.

Ravensbrück

With Allied forces pushing deeper into France, the Germans decided to send their most valuable prisoners to Germany. On August 8, 1944 Violette was transported, with several other SOE agents, towards Ravensbrück concentration camp. After a harrowing 18-day journey, Violette and another women finally arrived.

Despite all she had endured, she kept spirts at the camp high, and constantly planned to escape. Soon, there was a mutiny at the Torgau sub-camp, where she had and others had been sent to work. There were around 250 prisoners who acted in the mutiny, but it was unsuccessful and they were sent back to Ravensbrück.

In her time at the camp, Violette suffered terrible conditions and malnutrition. On February 5, 1945, she was executed, along with several other members of the SOE. Because German forces regarded her as a franc-tireur (“free shooters”), she was not protected by the Geneva Convention.

Violette was the second woman to be awarded the George Cross, which she received posthumously on December 17, 1946. Her other accolades include: Croix de guerre avec etoile de bronze, by the French government in 1947 and the Médaille de la Résistance in 1973.