Hidden In Plain Sight: The Women of The SOE

Before there was 007 and James Bond there was the SOE. The Special Operations Executive brought some of the first and finest spies into occupied Germany during the war, hiding them in plain sight. Some of their best and most successful? The women of the SOE, of course! Join us as we unpack the history of the SOE and the women who made it famous. Yes you read that right! While The SOE did make a number of it's female spies well known throughout history, it's their actions during wartime that made the history of The SOE what it is today- unforgettable. The Clubmobile is open and we're serving up a healthy dose of espionage alongside this week's coffee and sinkers! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Hey guys, here come the dollars. They got fresh sinkers, hot coffee, and the sweetest smile. Welcome back to the Club Mobile, everybody.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Hi, everyone.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Thanks for coming back. Thanks for joining us. We're so happy to have you as always. We have a very fun episode that we're going to be diving into today. I'm very excited about this because I feel like there is people know the name, people know the acronym, especially, but there's so much that you can unearth on these women.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

So I'm very excited. We're going to be diving into the special operations executive today, better known by a lot of people as the SOE.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

And very exciting. It is very exciting. And it's it's very exciting and it's it's very dark in a way, I would put put it in that perspective. Dark. It's not um super glamorous work that they did. It's not very um, it was not advertised. So the same way that the you know propaganda was telling people to go out and join the workforce and become a rosy or join the whack and join the waves, nobody was advertising for this. This was not public. This was very underground. This was very um, you know, if you were recruited to join the SOE, it was very word of mouth. You know, you knew somebody who knew somebody who thought you'd be a good spy.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Yes, like a lot of them were originally enlisted in other areas of the army, the women's branches of the Air Force. A lot of them were in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, the WAAF, the WAF. Um, and a lot of them, like you said, it was through word of mouth. It was through brothers that were in the Navy, it was uh cousins that were already in the SOE, and they would mention, oh, my female cousin is fluent in French, or um they would be scouted essentially. Like there is one story that I read while we were researching about a woman who was in the WAF, and she displayed that she was fluent in French, and they ended up picking her, and that was still part of her cover, was that she was still in the WAF. Right. Um so like you said, it wasn't glamorous. These women, while they were undercover, they lived in like old chalets, old cottages, you know, they weren't they weren't in the writs by any means.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

No, it's very much. I mean, to put it in perspective, like picture-wise, it is very much like the character of Sandra in Masters of the Air, where she is part of the SOE, she's undercover, and she can't like when Crosby asks her, Can you tell me where you're stationed? She says, I can't.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

No, she ends up making up a job, saying that she was a punter. Um, and she ends up trying to like away from the actual job. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

That's her job to steer people away from what she actually does.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

Which is what I find what I found so funny. Um, I've been punting many times, and you literally are steering. So she's literally steering. Is it really all in the wrists? It really is all in the wrists, and a lot of the men use their hips too. They kind of like squat into it.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Oh, like a gun, like a gondolier in Venice.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Yeah, yeah, pretty much.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Yeah, those those guys are those guys are strong. I've been on a gondola before. They're very I can't, I don't know how they do it. Four grown adults in your boat, and you have to push them along the canals and like they don't know how they do it.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

I would recommend anyone who's visiting Cambridge in a nice season of the year to go punting. It is so much fun. And the tour around Cambridge, you get to see the university, you get to see the college. Um, it's really beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

But yeah, so we'll have to go punting next time we go back.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Yeah. Because I didn't do it last time.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

It was a little chilly. I didn't I didn't do it last time.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

It's always a little chilly. You just have to England's always a little chilly. England's always a little chilly. Um, but yeah, and then we also have um Eve Mansour from SAS Rogue Heroes, who is kind of an amalgamation of all of these women who is a lot more. She's not technically with the SOE, she's more with the French Resistance. She's sort of an amalgamation of all of these women and what they did just as one character. Because of course, Eve herself was not a real woman. Sophia Butello is not portraying right a, but she is portraying an amalgamation of a bunch of these women.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Very much the way you know Helen and Masters was just an amalgamation of the general, just the general, like you know, a donut dolly.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Tatty was real, Helen was created to become this perfect picturesque dolly. So Hollywood will do that.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

It absolutely works.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Hollywood will do that. I think it's good that they I think it's good that they do that. I think it's important that sometimes they build space, they build space for these women.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

They should be. I like that they build space for the women, but I also wish that there was more women to portray the real women. Does that make sense? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Rather than one amalgamation, yes, rather than we can't get enough, we can't get enough to do a whole unit. So we're just gonna build space for this one woman and we'll kind of make her a little bit of everybody. I I I do understand where you're going with that. I get that.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Which is still really cool. The fact that there is still, you know, there's still places to learn and there's still, you know, characters to be played and it brought to the forefront in terms of media. But I do wish that I don't know, I kind of wish that producers had endless buckets of money to make sure that every single woman ever gets her story told.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Absolutely. Yeah. Until they do have endless buckets of money, we'll carry on here.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

We'll carry on with that one. Um, but I felt like when we were researching this, I found it all really, really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

It's spy work and it's interesting, and it's very it's almost got this very dark World War II James Bond feel to it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Yeah, a lot of the stories that we're gonna talk about today actually inspired the story of James Bond and the story of uh Miss Moneypenny. So all those spy stories that have become so popular and that we've grown to to know and to love have come from things like this. There was a woman who worked very closely with Churchill, and she essentially co-founded the women's branch of the SOE. And it's been said that she herself inspired the character of Miss Moneypenny. So that I found that really, really cool. That's awesome. I love that. Really cool. So there were 3,000 women in the SOE. That's a lot. It's a lot.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

That's for the time, that's a lot of women.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

That is a lot of women, and a lot of these women were, like we said, were already in the WAF or were scouted or through word of mouth. Um, for terms of secrecy, a lot of them, if they were not enlisted prior to joining the SOE, they were inducted into the first aid nursing yeomanry, F-A-N-Y, so that they could say that they were an army nurse or that they were a first aid worker rather than obviously, you know, letting the cat out of the bag and saying that they were spies.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Right. So these 3,000 women, obviously, this was over time. Um, but the SOE formed in 1940 after France signed an armistice with Germany, and they were created essentially born of Churchill's fear that England would soon fall under the shadow of Nazism. And he pledged the UK support to the resistance.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Yeah, he was terrified. I mean, of course you would be, but he was extremely terrified that you know Britain would be invaded and that um they would turn to the bigger.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

I mean, honestly, you can't blame him. He's watching every other country country around him become property of Germany under German occupation. And I mean you can't help but think we're next.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

Yeah, I mean, in the in the grand scheme of things, literally, if we're going down a list, it's gonna be and of course, of course, Britain was heavily bombed. There was the blitz. The blitz was always on like uh always on like a thread of are we next to be invaded, are we next to be taken over by Britain? Really did hang by a thread for a very long time during a long long time. It really did, and and they were in it from 39 all the way up to the end of the war in 45. So yeah, they were pretty much hanging there for a long, long while. Yeah. These women were charged with setting Europe ablaze upon Churchill's orders, anything and everything to sabotage, to espionage, to anything, anything to get the information that England needed to stay safe. A lot of these women, I do not know how they ended up in on this. I I wouldn't be able to keep a secret because I'm terrible at keeping secrets.

unknown 9:22

I'm not very kidding.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Do being this, I have to be. Um, but I'm not um, I don't think I'd be able to do this.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

There's a lot of things where we you and I question, like, you know, could you have joined the Red Cross? Could you have joined the Wasp? And I think that, or could you have been a rosy? And I think that those are easy to answer, you know, like, yeah, I would have gotten up and done my factory work, I would have joined the Red Cross, I would have, you know, been okay with going over and and working in a club mobile. I and Italians are very good at keeping things to themselves, and even this is difficult. I think my mother would have been good at this. Not so much me. I can keep my mouth shut, but I think my mother would have been very good at this.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

She would have been very good, truly.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

I will have to ask her the next time I speak to her.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Be like, hey, could you have been a spy?

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Could you have been a spy in World War II? I think she could have. Um because these women essentially, I mean, under Churchill's orders, were on the ground to coordinate, inspire, control, and assist the nationals of the oppressed countries. So in layman's terms, do what you have to do.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Yep. And a lot of them, you know, they obviously they had code names, they had backstories. Oh, yeah. No, from what I can gather, in England, if they were asked what they did, they would say that they were with the F-A-N-Y or they were with the WAF. Right. Um, but those that were fluent in French and got sent to France, which a lot of them did, they were given codenames, they were given backstories. A lot of them were farm workers. A lot of them had, you know, these menial jobs to kind of evade from the fact that they were there in terms of being a spy. They were, of course, they were all so the 39 FEMA SOE agents were trained in England. Most of them were sent to France, and they were usually sent in groups of three. There was an organizer, there was a courier, which was someone that could essentially run back and forth, send messages to, I guess, the other set of three that were close by. They were never together through the daytime, from what I could gather. They would meet very secretly, obviously. And then they would exchange the information that they had found, and then they would send it to headquarters. Yeah. Um, headquarters was at 64 Baker Street in London. And I believe they chose that purely based on the fact that it looked secret enough, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

It secret in the sense secret enough in the sense that you could walk by it and not think anything of it.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Yeah, you would think it's just yeah, it blended in really well. Um they chose that because yeah, it didn't look like a headquarters of anything, it looked like a house that people lived in. Not like walking by Rainbow Corner and seeing GIs and GIs going in and out, and there's women outside, you know, telling them to come in. But they were given this extensive training in England on resisting interrogation, how to evade capture. A lot of the women were captured behind enemy lines. There were seven SOE agents who got sent to Ravensbrook concentration camp. They were captured in France and they were then sent across to Germany, and they were sent to the concentration camp to do hard labour. And I think the biggest kicker in all of it was that they were unprotected by the Geneva Convention because technically they weren't enlisted. Right. So again, women they're getting the shitty end of the stick because of course they were sentenced to hard labour. Uh I believe four or five of them were executed at Ravensbrook. They were tortured. It was horrible, horrible to read about. And you know, to the end, they were still so they never gave anybody up.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

No.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

They were tortured. One of them had her toenails pulled out one by one. Horrific, horrific stuff that these horrible, horrible people did, and they still didn't give anybody up.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

No.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Which I found just oh.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

And I like that, not I like that, but it's very interesting to me that they were giving given these incredible missions. They were trained to execute these missions, but how to evade capture to precedence over the gravity of the mission. Because if you were captured, you couldn't, you know, you couldn't go back and try to complete this again.

SPEAKER_02 14:16

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

So the bulk of their training was how to evade capture, but they did receive a lot of unarmed, like unarmed combat training, and they were trained in espionage and radio operation and Morse code and just basic survival skills.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

I found their like inventions really cool. A lot of them, like I said, a lot of them inspired the James Bond series. There was an exploding pen, there was weapons hidden in everyday objects like umbrellas and pipes, pipe bombs. They carried a cyanide pill with them in their jacket pockets just in case. In some instances, like when we were researching, I read a couple of stories where the female SOE agent was with another male SOE agent, and almost always the male took the pill, he took the cyanide pill because, like, if he was known to the Gestapo, that was that. So he basically he would hang her out to dry, pretty much, yeah, which is so terrible.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

I mean, and you think about like you see things like the Captain America movie, right? You see people like Howard Stark with these wild inventions and things, and people taking a cyanide pill, and you know, he he bites the pill at the beginning of the first movie, right? And he says hell hydra as he dies, and he yeah, and you think, oh my god, that's so far-fetched, right? People like Howard Stark inventions like this, so far-fetched. No, it's not, it's really not, and I think that's as you read into more of this, you're like, No, it's actually very, very on the nose.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

It's very real, and reading through all of this, it kind of got like too real because you think obviously you've read it before in spy like fictional spy series, and you've seen it in movies. People actually lived this and they completed these missions, and they had these really cool weapons with them, like knife umbrellas and guns, gun umbrellas, and all these really cool things, and um, it's it's kind of hard to believe. It feels far-fetched when you read into it, you're like, What the hell? Right, how did they even make that in the 40s? What were they doing? That's what I would like to to know is how did they make these weapons? Yeah, how did they how did they invent that? Who thought I know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna stick to the phone.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Yeah, but then God forbid you open the wrong end of the pen.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Yeah, if you open the wrong bloody pen, you've had it. Upon research, there wasn't any, you know. Usually when we were into the Red Cross or the ATA or the WASP, there was like certain training requirements. Like you had to have X amount of flying hours, you had to have had a job, you had to be within an A, yeah, within a right age group. Of course. It seems that in this instance, it was you didn't have to be enlisted, obviously. You could just be scouted. They didn't have like set physical fitness, they didn't have like set PT. Right. They were trained in things like climbing and silent killing methods and knife fighting, and they did all this in the Scottish Highlands. You know that you know that scene in in Rogue Heroes in season two, where I believe it's episode three or four, where they've gone into this room and they're just from behind killing all these Germans as they eat. Yes, yeah, it's essentially these women were trained in that. They were trained to like the silence of like, oh, he doesn't know I'm here. That's what they were trained in. Yeah. Um and unarmed combat. They used a method called the Sykes Fairbairn method, which I didn't look into yet. I'm gonna be honest with you and everyone else that I did not look into what that meant. Um, but if anyone does know and can explain it, that would also be great. Um knife fighting as well. So that sounds fun.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

That's always very interesting to me, because like there's just something very like badass about like a woman just kind of like chucking a knife and like getting somebody in the neck.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Sorry, this is real graphic, but there's something really badass about that. I feel like, yeah, all these women were that's a great adjective for them. They were badass. They were badass, yeah. And the fact that they lived through all of this is is crazy. During the war, attitudes towards women were very backwards, but in the SOE, they were said to be very far ahead.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

I feel like they had to be because SOE understood that nobody would suspect a woman.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Yeah, and I think they used that to their advantage.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Really, what it was, they used that to their advantage. Nobody would suspect a woman, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Yeah, no one's gonna suspect a woman, no one's gonna suspect a woman with a wooden leg, a farmer with a wooden leg. Virginia Hall. Virginia Hall.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Yeah, she had, I mean, she actually did have a wooden leg, if I'm she did, she did, and she we read up on her briefly in Our Mother's War. Once again, Our Mother's War.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Thank you, Emily Ellen. Thank you, Emily. Giving us all the stuff that we did.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

Um, but we did read up on her uh briefly, she's discussed in Our Mother's War, and I definitely want to, she's somebody with a story that I want to dive fully into and take the time to give her her, give her her her moment. Um but no, she really she played her wooden leg to her advantage and made herself. This is where the disguise portion of the training comes in. Yeah, made herself look like an old woman. She really like shrouded herself. You guys can't see this, but like as I say shrouded herself, like I'm punching myself over. But she did she shrouded herself in old vagabond-looking clothes and would wear, like, you know, she pulled a scarf over her head and made herself look smaller and elderly, and nobody suspected her. She was just an old farmer woman, and nobody suspected her. And when the war was over, she just the farmer woman was gone, she picked up and she left, and that was that. And that was just how it was. When the job was done, there was no trace of these women anymore. They left, they were gone. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

I find their story so cool, and I really would love it if we, you know, did a whole episode on her.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

I really want to do an episode of the seven women that were captured in Center Ravensbrook, because that absolutely there is, and there's one more woman I want to talk about too when we get to this point, Agent Zoe. Oh, I haven't heard about her. She was a Polish freedom fighter. Oh, she was, she was part of the SOE.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

Yeah, yeah. It wasn't just it wasn't just British women, it was women from all over Europe, but they just happened to be attached to the first time.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

So her name was Elzabeta Zwatka, and she was known by her nom de guerre. Zo. And she was a Polish freedom fighter during World War II for the SOA. And she was a university professor. Oh wow, and she was a brigad general of the Polish Land. Forces. Amazing. And she was the second woman ever to hold this rank. Jeez. And that's really cool. She served as a courier for the Polish Home Army, carrying letters and other documents from Nazi occupied Poland to the Polish government in exile in London and back. So her regular route ran from Warsaw through Berlin and Sweden to London. And she was responsible for organizing routes for other couriers of the Home Army. Wow. Yeah, I would love to do an episode on the only, I say she only just died. She only just died in 2009. So I mean, to us, we think of 2009, we're like, oh my god, it's almost 20 years ago. Yeah, but in in the scheme of that the grand scheme of things, she was 99 years old.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

She was almost she almost made it to 100. Her birthday, she was born on the 19th of March 1909. She died on January 10th, 2009. So she almost made it to 100. I absolutely want to get into her at some point. Absolutely. That just reading that alone, right? Getting into that little bit, I'm like, you read things like that and you go, my god. They did all this. You get sucked in. You really do. Like you get sucked in, you're like, holy shit.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

Like, how did they how did they manage? How did they constantly on the run? Obviously, you're far away from home. No GPS. No GPS. No GPS. No cell phone.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

You had to memorize the route. You couldn't get caught with a map. Really was a case of using a compass or like using the stars.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Using your wits.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Using your wit, right? Like keep your head about you.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

I just don't. I couldn't I couldn't do it. This is one of the things that this is one of them that I don't think I could have done. I could not have done this. Because my brain throw me back in the truck.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

I'll serve coffee. Throw me back in the truck. I'll serve coffee and donuts. It's fine. It's fine. I'm good. I'm good in the truck. I'm good in the truck.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

My brain doesn't work like this. No. So this is all amazing to me.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

My brain doesn't function in that critical way. I can't function in that critical way. And it's a product of the time we we live in and how when we were born and how we are raised.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

But I and I mean, look, I could dive into and get my hands dirty with a lot of things. This is just not one of them. It's not my specialty. It's not my specialty.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

No, I just couldn't. I don't think I could manage it.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

It's like when I say don't ask me to do it, it's like when I say don't ask me to do math when I'm not at work because I do math all day at work.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

Yeah, I mean, I I'm just not very good at that anyway. No, I'm also not very good at math. A lot of it sounds really cool because it does. They were given, they were given training on weapons, unarmed combat, how to use explosives, how to destroy infrastructure. Like some of them were tasked with destroying silent killing is very interesting to me. Yeah. Silent killing. How to destroy infrastructure, like railway.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

The way I just said that, the silent killing is very interesting to me. I swear I'm not. I don't have, I could never.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

I'm not silent. I'll trip over.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

That too.

SPEAKER_00 25:21

I'd go ass over tit.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

You're not silent at all. Neither am I.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

I'd go ass. I'd go ass over tit.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

I'd be ass over tea kettle. Forget it.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

But it is very interesting to me that they literally took these women and were like, we're gonna teach you how to kill people quietly.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

Yeah, and then we're also gonna teach you how to use explosives and destroy bridges in railways so that the Nazis cannot use them and they cannot cross any borders. We're gonna trap them.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

It's gonna be you that's you that's gonna do it. Forget the army, forget the you know, forget the marine. You're gonna do this.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Yep. They were also trained in Morse code as well. They were trained on how to read Morse code. That's not surprising to me. I think it's so, so cool. Um, one of the ones that I found to be it blew my mind was interrogation resistance, which means that in training they were also interrogated and possibly tortured to simulate a real life situation that could have.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

I don't think the torture was as extensive. Like I don't think that the SOE was pulling their fingernails out. Pulling fingernails and toenails out. The fact that you had to be trained to resist interrogation means that you were trained in some like they they put you through your paces.

SPEAKER_00 26:41

And then it made me feel even like I felt bad for them in that sense anyway, but it made me feel even worse for them because while they're in training, they're being heavily traumatized.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

And then expected to they're going into Nazi Europe, Nazi France, occupied France, and then they are captured, and then they are interrogated for real. Right. It just sort of added to the oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

You're being interrogated in training, and you have to remember to trust this person because they are your, you know, your boss, your employer, these are the people you trust, but at the same time, it's like, oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

Yeah, how are you supposed to?

SPEAKER_01 27:18

I uh it How am I supposed to trust you?

SPEAKER_00 27:21

Yeah, like all of this just completely blew my mind. I don't know how they I've said this like three times now. I do not know how they did it. I do not know how. And I don't also don't understand how they were told about doing this, and they were like, Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:39

Like in a day, hey, we think you'd be really great at this, this, and this. Sure, sign me up. Yeah, I would be like, nah, sorry. I'd be like, Do you need a secretary?

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Yeah, do you need someone to type stuff?

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Because I'm a typist, do you need somebody in the typing pool?

SPEAKER_00 27:55

Because while yes, I could be fluent in French. Um, I'm not gonna use that.

SPEAKER_01 28:02

Right. I might be fluent in French, but why don't you bring me the bring me the secret messages and let me decode them here?

SPEAKER_00 28:08

I will read them and I will translate them and I will hand them back and then I'll go home. Thank you. I just I couldn't I don't think I again I don't I could not do this. Couldn't have done it. They were also they were also trained in espionage, like disguise, like we're already spoken about, surveillance, breaking and entering, which I found again very interesting. The fact that they were trained on how to break into places. Yeah. Um, again, how cool is that?

SPEAKER_01 28:33

No crowbars, no notes, just picking a lock.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

Picking a lock, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Those those hair pins, those hair pins came in in very handy. Very handy.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

Yeah. These women did all of this really amazing, cool stuff, and they were disguised for so many years. And like you said, once the job was done, they essentially disappeared. Yeah. The SOE was dissolved and disbanded in January of 1946. So I've I found that quite quick. I mean, obviously, it had to be done very much.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

I feel like it had to be quick because things like the SOE, I feel like documents and things with the SOE destroyed. They must have just been either destroyed or locked away as quickly as possible.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Uh they were locked away, and the only reason that we know about them is because in the 1990s, I think the time limit had come about.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

Yeah, there's always a time limit on documents from the war.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

And so the UK government released these documents. So a lot of these women did not get their flowers medals anymore. Until the 90s. Until the yeah, until the 90s. And obviously, by this point, a lot of them have aged, obviously. Passed away, passed away, but they dissolved and disbanded in January of 46. Many of the male agents, specifically the male agents, were transferred to the newly formed MI6. Some then transferred to London's financial district, which I found quite odd. That's a career change. And others just returned to their peacetime occupations. But again, a lot of these would have been male agents. Yeah, female agents were obviously expected to either A disappear or B go home and become a housewife. Right. And how do you become a housewife and live a life of normalcy?

SPEAKER_01 30:31

And not be able to ever tell your husband about this.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

You can't tell anyone. Like you were under sworn secrecy that obviously this whole time.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

You either tell him you were in the WAF or you were in the F-A-N-Y, you're not telling the truth, which is the whole point of being in the SOE. Like you're you're you're not you're not telling the truth.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

You had to be a really good secret keeper.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

You did. You had to be a good secret keeper.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

And it was only because of the declassification of these documents in the 90s that permitted the agents to then come out and say, I did this and receive award for their accomplishments and things like that, which I find so incredibly sad. Because at least if you were in the WAF, you could say, I was in the WAF. If you were in the ATA, you could then tell your future spouse, I flew planes.

SPEAKER_01 31:22

Right.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

With this, you couldn't say anything. You couldn't tell anybody anything.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Like you lived a double life your entire life.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

And then you, yeah, you have to carry on living this double life because until four fifty years later you aren't allowed to say anything.

SPEAKER_01 31:40

And then imagine, like in the instance where she like the woman herself has passed, and her family just finds this out, and it's like, holy shit. And I know a lot of people, a lot of families find out that their mother served well after later on. But I feel like finding out your mother was in the whack versus finding out your mother was a spy in France is a lot different.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

Must be so jarring.

SPEAKER_01 32:07

My mother was in the Red Cross. My mother was in the whack. You know, my mother was a wasp.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:12

My mother was a spy in France. And she never told me she never told anybody because she wasn't allowed. Not because she wasn't proud of it, because she wasn't allowed.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

They must have been so proud of what they did and and the way that they went about it, only for then to not be rewarded like a lot of other women were. Yeah. And I'm not, I'm not saying in any way that a lot of women were rewarded and you know, cheered on right from the end of the war because they were not. They weren't expected, they're expected to be married and have children and carry on with life as normal. Yeah. But in this instance, they were not they weren't the SOE wasn't even known until these documents were declassified by the government in the 90s. And that's something else I really like to dive into in a later episode, the declassification. Absolutely. Keeping it a secret for that long. And there's there were so few women that were still living around the time that this happened. And then imagine being that old and being like, family, please gather. Let me tell you about how I silently killed a man with my umbrella. And they would think, Wow, okay, grandma, let's get you to bed. It's true though. Makes me feel so bad for them because I bet that they were like, Oh yeah. Sure. Sure. I feel really sad for them because they realized it happened. But it was such this is such an interesting story to get into, and I would love to do more on them because I like how we do like a basic information episode. Absolutely. And then we dive into the individuals. So while we have mentioned a few individuals today, we are saving the rest for later because there's so many amazing stories that deserve attention.

SPEAKER_01 34:17

The seven women of Ravensbrook is its own. That's its own dark.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

I said this to you right before we did this. Was that if we did all of it at one point, it would be like two and a half hours long.

SPEAKER_01 34:31

It would be. We like to keep you coming back for more.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

Exactly. We don't want to do it all at once.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

So the hook here is come back for another episode on the women of the SO8. Um, but it's true. There would be, I don't think we would be able to do it all at once without giving them the attention they deserve. Yeah. Not so much that people wouldn't stick around for two hours and we wouldn't be able to sit through doing this for two hours. We've come very close on a lot of occasions to sitting here for two hours and recording with ourselves or a guest where you know it's like, oh my god, we're pushing two hours. Get the hook. But we have to sometimes, but it's not a case of that. This is a case of these women deserve their own moment. And they deserve their story told as thoroughly as possible. So yeah. We will be coming back to the seven women of Reagan's Brook.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

Especially because these women were not noticed until 45-50 years after the fact. So I think if anything, they absolutely deserve the time and attention that we can give individually. But this was so fun to dive into. This was a lot of fun to dive into.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

It's very the spy ring is very interesting. Yeah, it's very, very interesting. I know that there's you know double agents and spies and stuff still out there, and it's a lot um easier to cover it all up now, and you know, but then again, it's also a lot harder because the internet and paper trail and all that burner phones and whatever burner phones and all that, and you know, everybody watches Law and Order these days, like you know, everybody's an investigator in their own right. But yeah, it's you know, these women did a lot for very little recognition, which seems to be, which seems to be the running theme, the concurrent theme with any woman or women's group that we dive into. They do a lot for very little.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

Yep, and then they're not even noticed for it. Or they're not around to be noticed for it. They're not around to be noticed for it. Yeah. But no, we absolutely will come back to this. And I'm I'm really glad that again everyone, everyone joined us.

SPEAKER_01 37:10

I had a lot of fun talking about these women. I had a lot of fun getting into the the the ins and outs of the SOE and kind of wetting our basically just wetting our feet with it a bit and introducing it to our listeners in a more broad spectrum.

SPEAKER_00 37:26

Because there is so much of it to go through that I feel like this was the perfect way to just to start it off. Absolutely. And there will there will be more because all of it is so incredibly interesting. Oh yeah. Really, really interesting. So yeah. Thank you again, everyone, for saying and for joining. We'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_01 37:48

See you soon.

SPEAKER_00 37:50

Bye.