Violette Szabo has to be one of the bravest women in British history. Violette was recruited by the Special Operations Executive during World War II, was parachuted into France, captured, tortured and executed by the Germans in aged twenty three. Here we take a look at this amazing young woman in more detail. In fact such was her accomplishments and unflinching heroism during World War II that she regularly features at number one on top ten lists of most iconic and heroic women in English history, ref www.
Her father Charles was English while her mother Reine was French. Violette had four brothers and the earliest part of her childhood was spent with her aunt in Picardy as her parents moved to London because of The Depression. Finally when Violette was eleven years old her family were reunited in Stockwell South London, while they ultimately settled at 18 Burnley Road where Violette is commemorated with a blue plaque.
Violette was somewhat a Tom Boy probably due to the fact that she spent much of her time with her four brothers and cousins who were also boys. The competition to be as athletic as the males in the family must have been tremendous and Violette excelled at athletics, gymnastics, cycling and even shooting as her father taught her how to fire a gun! Violettes petite stature, she was only five feet tall, did not hinder her at all as she was said to be as strong as the next man!
School days were spent in Brixton and Violette was a popular student who was much admired as she not only spoke English but French fluently. Violette left school at the age of fourteen and worked for a French corsetiere in Kensington, while later moving to a somewhat less exotic sounding Woolworths store located in Oxford Street in London.
Violette had a happy childhood and although doted on by her father who spoke only English and would sometimes feel left out of conversations was head strong and would often have raging rows with him with one row resulting in her making her way back to France alone.
By Violette was working in a department store in Brixton called Le Bon Marche where she sold perfume. In she joined the womens land army strawberry picking in the countryside followed by working in an armaments factory in London.
In her French mother asked her to go out and find a French soldier who would come and spend Bastille Day with the family. It was while searching for a suitable candidate that Violette met Etienne Szabo her future husband.
Etienne was a French officer who was also cut from the same type of cloth as Violette. Etienne won many honours including. I thought it was important for younger generations to remember her story again. Violette Szabo was just 23 when, in June , she was caught behind enemy lines, viciously tortured and finally shot in the back of the head. Though she was tiny, she was also a free spirit who would think nothing of defending her friends against bullies at school.
I have always tried to live by that. Young Violette had two particular skills that would prove helpful to those French Resistance units fighting Nazi tyranny, she was fluent in French and was a crack shot with a rifle.
This would shock my grandmother but Violette thought it was great fun. It was the desire to avenge the death of her husband, French Legionnaire Etienne Szabo, that stirred her into taking part in the dangerous missions. The couple had married after a whirlwind romance of just six weeks, then he was sent to fight in North Africa for the Free French Army. She was not so fortunate on her final mission, however, which took place just a few days after the Normandy landings.
Her job was to relay instructions from London to the French Resistance. She was sent to a group in Correze in south-west France. Despite the fact she wore an aluminium false leg - which she nicknamed "Cuthbert" - Miss Hall was to become a dynamic agent. The German secret police, the Gestapo, made the capture of what it called the "Limping Lady" a priority but it never caught up with her. But he was delayed by a check of identity papers by the local gendarmerie and was running very late.
Jumping off his bicycle and through the nearest gate, he laid the [reception] lights out quickly - on the wrong field. He organised resistance groups and, in early October, the Germans withdrew from the island. He led local resistance groups in ambushes of German forces.
They were then joined by a team of French SAS who helped in the area's liberation. His investigations centred on a number of concentration camps, including Flossenburg in Bavaria.
SOE agent Jack Agazarian and leading members of the German resistance to the Nazis - including Wilhelm Canaris, the head of German military intelligence - had been executed there only weeks earlier.
He was transported home to Britain but died in hospital at Lichfield on 7 August, , four years and a day after his first heroic mission to France. Was the crash a deliberate attempt to silence an investigation which would have fed information into the prosecution file for the Nuremburg trials? It is possible. Any evidence appears to have been lost in the chaos of post-war Germany.
It lies in the shade of a tree in a quiet corner of Cathays Cemetery. A peaceful, unassuming resting place seems a fitting spot for a man whose most heroic deeds were carried out in the shadows of the secret war against Hitler.
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