![]() ![]() Having worked for the US State Department in Italy and Turkey, where she lost a leg in a shooting accident, Hall signed up as ambulance driver for the French Army in early 1940. And one of its first, and best, agents was Virginia Hall. Its modus operandi was, as Sonia Purnell reminds us, inspired by the Irish forces during the War of Independence, which showed that “regular troops could be defeated by a hostile population whose will had been stiffened by a few resolute gunmen”. The SOE was founded in July 1940 with the purpose of setting occupied “Europe ablaze” with acts of sabotage and espionage. Over seventy years later, the exploits of the SOE and their Resistance comrades retain their romantic power over the imagination. “You’ll forget how cold you were – except to bring warmer clothes next time you’ll forget all the frights you had, and you’ll only remember the excitement.” “When you get home, it’ll look different from a distance,” she teasingly told Churchill. The other was Virginia Hall, a thirty five year old American woman who had been in France since the previous summer.Īs they waited for the coast to clear, Hall offered the new arrival some advice. One was 32-year-old Peter Churchill, a relative newcomer to the field. ![]() One evening in 1942, two agents working for Britain’s Special Operations Executive, or SOE, were hiding in a Marseilles safehouse. ![]()
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