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.