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Author Topic:   Female Agents -- SOE
dwise1
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Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
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Message 1 of 3 (782063)
04-15-2016 6:23 AM


Special Operations Executive (SOE).
British organized. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Operations_Executive. "The organisation directly employed or controlled just over 13,000 people, about 3,200 of whom were women." The women they mainly used as couriers, many of whom gave their lives.
If you have been watching Agent Carter, her first assignment was to the SOE.
One agent, the sole survivor of her pre-D-Day mission, wrote her memoir which formed the core of the movie on Netflix, Female Agents (Les Femmes de L'Ombre -- "Women of the Shadow"). C'est en franais, but watch it nonetheless.

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 Message 2 by Percy, posted 04-15-2016 8:37 AM dwise1 has replied

  
Percy
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Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
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(1)
Message 2 of 3 (782069)
04-15-2016 8:37 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by dwise1
04-15-2016 6:23 AM


Had to look these up. Agent Carter is Marvel's Agent Carter, based on a comic book character. Did you mention it to let people who are already watching it know it's about the SOE, or were you recommending it? As a WWII buff I'd be interested in it if it was historically factual.
Female Agents is indeed available in English subtitles at Netflix. Is it worthwhile as history?
--Percy

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 Message 1 by dwise1, posted 04-15-2016 6:23 AM dwise1 has replied

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 Message 3 by dwise1, posted 04-16-2016 1:51 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 3 of 3 (782099)
04-16-2016 1:51 AM
Reply to: Message 2 by Percy
04-15-2016 8:37 AM


Sorry, that was intended for The Movie Thread where 1.61803 and I have been talking about foreign films on NetFlix. I thought it was going in as a reply there and was caught by surprise when it became its own topic.
I learned of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) by accident while researching into Mark Strong's character in "The Imitation Game", Major General Sir Stewart Graham Menzies, chief of MI6 from 1939 to 1952 (prior to that, I had assumed that MI6 was fictional, so its mention in the movie prompted my research the next day). That article mentioned that he coordinated with SOE (whom he reputedly considered to be amateurs), so I followed that link.
The SOE was involved in undercover operations in occupied Europe. The organisation directly employed or controlled just over 13,000 people, about 3,200 of whom were women. At first the women were used mainly as couriers and radio operators in the UK, but some (55) also operated behind enemy lines mainly as couriers (it was considered easier for them to avoid suspicion) but also as combatants. Of SOE's 55 female agents, thirteen were killed in action or died in Nazi concentration camps.
Female Agents ("Les Femmes de l'ombre") is supposed to have been based on a mission just before D-Day and was inspired by the obituary of Lise Marie Jeanette de Baissac, MBE, whom the movie depicts as being the only surviving member of her team. Her article mentions the movie and describes it as "highly fictionalized". For students of foreign languages, we get a lot of dialogue in French and in German.
In the second season of Marvel's Agent Carter, we see her leaving to join the SOE, but they haven't shown her subsequent transfer to the Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR). We know about her joining the SOE because that was on the envelope she took with her, but according to Wikipedia the existence of the SOE was kept rather secret. Most of the women joining the SOE were officially commissioned in either the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) or the Women's Auxiliary Air Force.

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