Violette Szabo

Violette Reine Elizabeth Szabo, GC (née Bushell; 26 June 1921 – c. 5 February 1945) was a British-French Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent during the Second World War and a posthumous recipient of the George Cross.

On her second mission into occupied France, Szabo was captured by the German army, interrogated, tortured and deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany, where she was executed.

Violette Bushell was born on 26 June 1921 in Paris, France, of parents Charles George Bushell and Reine Blanche Leroy, as the second child of five and the only daughter.

Szabo's father, son of a publican from Hampstead Norreys, was serving as a British Army driver in France during the First World War when he met her mother, a dressmaker originally from Pont-Remy, Somme.

After the war the couple lived in London, where Charles worked as a taxi-driver, car salesman and shopkeeper.

During the early 1930s, as a result of the Great Depression, Bushell and her youngest brother, Dickie, lived with their maternal aunt in Picardy, northern France.

The family was reunited in South London when Violette was 11 years old.

She was an active and lively girl, enjoying gymnastics, long-distance bicycling and ice-skating with four brothers and several male cousins.

Bushell was regarded as a tomboy, especially after being taught to shoot by her father; her shooting was reputedly very accurate.

While Bushell had temporarily lost the ability to speak English in Picardy, she quickly relearned the language while attending school in Brixton.

There she was reportedly popular and regarded as exotic, owing to her ability to speak another language.

Her home life was loving, though she often clashed with her strict father and once ran away to France after an argument.

The family, except her monolingual father, would often converse in French.

At the age of 14, Bushell went to work for a French corsetière in South Kensington and later worked at retailer Woolworths in Oxford Street.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, she was working at Le Bon Marché, a Brixton department store.

In early 1940, Bushell joined the Women's Land Army and was sent to carry out strawberry picking in Fareham, Hampshire, but she soon returned to London to work in an armaments factory in Acton.

She met Étienne Szabo, a decorated non-commissioned officer in the French Foreign Legion of Hungarian descent, at the Bastille Day parade in London in 1940, where Bushell had been sent by her mother, accompanied by her friend Winnie Wilson, to bring home a homesick French soldier for dinner.

They married at Aldershot Register Office in Manor Park on 21 August 1940 after a 42-day romance; Violette was 19, Étienne was 31.

They enjoyed a week's honeymoon before Étienne set off from Liverpool to fight in the abortive Free French attack on Dakar, Senegal.

From there, he went to South Africa before seeing action, again against the Vichy French, in the successful Anglo-Free French campaigns in Eritrea and Syria in 1941.

He returned to the UK for a brief leave later in the year.

After her marriage, Szabo became a switchboard operator for the General Post Office in central London, working throughout the Blitz.

Bored by the job, she enlisted in the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) on 11 September 1941.

After further training in Anglesey, Gunner Szabo and her unit were posted to Frodsham, Cheshire, near Warrington, from December 1941 to February 1942.

Szabo found within weeks that she was pregnant, so she left the ATS to return to London for the birth.

On 8 June 1942, she gave birth to Tania Damaris Desiree Szabo at St Mary's Hospital while Étienne was stationed at Bir Hakeim in North Africa.

Étienne had died on 24 October 1942 from chest wounds received while leading his men in a diversionary attack on Qaret el Himeimat, at the beginning of the Second Battle of El Alamein; he had never seen his daughter.

It was Étienne's death that made Szabo accept an offer to train as a field agent in the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) as her best way of fighting the enemy that killed her husband.

It is unclear how or why Szabo was recruited by F-Section, as her surviving official file is thin, but her fluency in French and her previous service in the ATS probably brought her to the attention of SOE.

She would have been invited to an interview regarding war work with E. Potter, the alias of Selwyn Jepson, a detective novelist and the F-Section recruiter.

Szabo was given security clearance on 1 July 1943 and selected for training as a field agent on 10 July.

She was commissioned as a section leader in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, a civilian service often used by SOE as a cover for female agents.

After an assessment for fluency in French and a series of interviews, Szabo was sent from 7–27 August to STS 4, a training school at Winterfold House, and after a moderately favourable report, to Special Training School 24 of Group A at Arisaig in the Scottish Highlands in September and October.

Szabo received intensive instruction in fieldcraft, night and daylight navigation, weapons and demolition.

Again her reports were mixed, but she passed the course and moved on to Group B.

Szabo took a flat in Notting Hill, which was to be her home until she left for her second mission to France in June 1944.

She was posted to Leicester for initial training before being sent to one of the first mixed anti-aircraft batteries of the 7th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Training Regiment, Royal Artillery in Oswestry, Shropshire for specialised instruction as a predictor and then to the 481st Heavy (Mixed) Anti-Aircraft Battery.

The following day, he took part in a valiant defence against the Afrika Korps, escaping with his battalion from the assault of the 15th Panzer Division on 10 June.

Szabo sent her baby to childminders while she worked at the South Morden aircraft factory, where her father was stationed.

During this period, she was informed of her husband's death in action.