Philobiblon

Deserving its own post from the visit to the Brookwood Cemetery was the story of one outstanding women: Violette Szabo, a Second World War British agent and recipient of the George Cross. (Which was received by her four-year-old daughter from the King after the war.) Violette was captured and tortured by the Germans (but didn’t betray her comrades), and finally killed in a concentration camp as Allied troops approached. Consequently there is no grave here, but her name is recorded on the memorial for those without graves, pictured left, under the entry below, for the “Women’s Transport Service”.

Her story was told in the 1958 movie Carve Her Name With Pride, there’s a museum devoted to her in Herefordshire and a walking trail.She had been a hairdresser’s assistant in Woolworths, so the Special Operations Executive had problems taking her seriously when she volunteered for duty in France (being half-French herself) after her husband was killed at El Alamein. Class AND gender issues there.