Tag: French Resistance

WWII veteran Bill Moore RAF Special Duties Squadron describes a mission to supply the French Resistance

This was later re-enacted in the public information film ‘Now the Truth Can be Told: School for Danger’ with a cast of former SOE agents.

RAF 161 Special Duty Squadron (Lysanders) Occupied France

Timeline documentary interviewing pilots of 161 Squadron including Hugh Verity, members of the French resistance and agents.

Also an excellent interview of a Lancaster wireless operator shot down over Belgium who was rescued and taken to France by the Possum Escape Line (MI9) and later extracted by Hugh Verity flying a Lysander.

Documentary: Nancy Wake: Gestapo’s most wanted (Timeline productions)

Based on my understanding of Nancy Wake this is the best documentary I have seen on her life with the Pat O’Leary escape line, her escape from France and her service with SOE.

Some of her wartime work in France is not covered and there are the following technical inaccuracies during the re-enactment:

During her parachute infiltration she is seen wearing the wrong type of helmet and parachute

The type of wireless shown is not correct

The Gestapo agent Nancy Wake said she would shoot if the Marquis refused to do so was a woman not a male as shown in the film and it was not as straight forward as depicted here.

View Post

Operation Jericho (aka Jail Breakers) February 1944

At the request of the French Resistance on 18 February 1944 British and Canadian Mosquito fighter -bombers with Typhoon fighter escorts were tasked with destroying SS barracks and machine gun positions whilst breaching the wall of Amiens prison to help facilitate the escape of 832 members of the resistance and other political prisoners due to be shot by the SS.

Shortly after the raid the following newsreel called Jail Breakers was shown in cinemas throughout Britain.

Now it can be told: School for Danger (public information film)

The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was an ultra-secret branch of the British military and this public information film released in 1947, one-year after the executive was disbanded, is one of the first public acknowledgements of SOE’s existence during the war.

Every member of the cast were former members of SOE’s French Section, hence the poor acting, and each scene was based on actual events during the war.

Those familiar with this Section will recognise the two main characters: Harry Ree and Jaqueline Nearne whose sister Eileen also served with SOE and escaped from Ravensbruck Concentration camp.

The Mutin- SOE clandestine sea transport.

After being acquired by SOE the ‘Mutin’ (Mutineer) was based in the Helford Estuary in Cornwall. Its paintwork was aged and was disguised as a French tuna fishing vessel and the all British crew dressed as Breton fishermen. Part of her refit was a more powerful diesel engine and a wireless using RAF frequencies to support the illusion that transmissions were not from an ocean vessel and its long aerial was built into the rigging. There is an account from a Quartermaster in the Royal Navy who volunteered for clandestine operations without being told what these operations were. This new volunteer later said, on his arrival at the quay he saw Mutin which had just returned from Brittany after dropping off agents: “I saw heaps of sail on the deck covered in blood. Shipwrights were digging shrapnel from bow to stern and I thought, God what have I let myself in for”?… “I was later told, after dropping off agents Mutin was spotted by a German aircraft and raked by cannon fire during which the engineer was killed.

More details in my forthcoming book SOE in France

Nancy Wake – Special Operations Executive (in this documentary Nancy Wake lives up to her reputation of being straight talking!)

Film documentary telling the story of the Australian who, after engineering the escape of hundreds of allied servicemen from occupied France during the Second World War – and following her own escape and subsequent training as an S.O.E. agent returned to France by parachute to support the resistance.  (Six-part documentary)

SOE – Canadian agents working in occupied France

SOE agents arrive home in December 1944: (front, from left) Lieut. J.E. Fournier, Lieut. P.E. Thibeault, Capt. H.A. Benoit; (rear) Major P.E. Labelle, Capt. L.J. Taschereau, Capt. Guy Artois, Capt. J.P. Archambault.

Documentary about Canadian agents working for SOE in occupied France.

Apart from Canadian’s being trained in England SOE also had a training and selection establishment in Canada and the newly formed American OSS received their initial training at this SOE training camp in Ontario.

A short film by CBC where former agents describe their time at Camp X