The high-risk, adrenaline-fuelled operations dramatised in recent BBC1 mini-series SAS Rogue Heroes left viewers gripped. Not quite as attention-grabbing, but no less fearless (or dangerous), were the activities of another special forces unit, the Special Operations Executive (SOE) – a volunteer force set up in 1940 to wage a secret war.
Famously ordered by Prime Minister Winston Churchill to ‘set Europe ablaze’, this band of brave agents were often dropped by parachute into Nazi-occupied territory, tasked with sabotage, subversion and helping local resistance movements. Many of them were serving soldiers with commando training; others had been drawn from civilian life. In Lonely Courage, a biography of the 39 women who joined, writer Rick Stroud recounts they were trained alongside the men, learning how to blend into the background, operate a radio transmitter – and kill a man with their bare hands.
Although members of the SOE were often dubbed ‘the Baker Street Irregulars’ after their London HQ, a genteel neo-Georgian mansion in Oxfordshire also played a crucial role in their success.
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