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  • Sister Monica Is One of Milwaukee, Wisconsin's Early Pioneers
  • A Love Story for St. Valentine's Day - Marie Antoinette and Count Axel von Fersen
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  • Margaret Fox Kane and her Victorian Love Story
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  • Maria Mitchell, America's First Woman Astronomer Demonstrated Female Scientific Aptitude
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    • Maria Gulovich Joined the Czech Resistance
    • Pirate Fanny Campbell Freed Her Fiance and Fought the British
    • SOE Agent Andree Borrel Lived Several Lifetimes in Her 24 Years
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SOE Agent Andree Borrel Lived Several Lifetimes in Her 24 Years

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On a September night in 1942, two female SOE agents parachuted into occupied France near the Loire River. Andree Borrel’s mission led her to Paris and finally to prison.

Andree Borrel turned twenty-one in November of a disastrous year in French history. On June 22, 1940, following the decisive German victory in the Battle of France, France signed an Armistice with Nazi Germany. The Armistice established a German occupation zone in northern France and left the southern part of the country to the government of Marshal Henri Petain and the Vichy regime.

Andree Borrel Faces Difficult Choices

A month after France signed the Armistice with Germany, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Hugh Dalton, Minister of Economic Warfare, started the Special Operations Executive (SOE) agency with the goal of aiding partisans and resistance fighters in France and other occupied countries. Major Maurice Buckmaster led the F section of the SOE which operated in France, and the majority of women agents served in the French section.

These two events transformed the ordinary lives of Andree Raymonde Borrel and millions of other people into dramas of good and evil,life and death.

Born on November 18, 1919, on the outskirts of Paris, Andree left school at age fourteen to become a dressmaker. In 1933, Andree moved to Paris where she worked in several different shops. Although she worked in traditional female occupations, Andree's sister described her as a tomboy because she enjoyed cycling, hiking, and climbing. When World War II broke out in 1939, Andree and her mother moved to Toulon on the Mediterranean Coast, where she trained with the Red Cross and worked in Beaucaire Hospital, treating wounded French Army soldiers.

Andree and Maurice Operate the PAT Underground

Andree met Maurice Dufour, a resistance fighter, and in July 1941, she helped him organize and operate the first escape network from France. This underground railroad network called the Pat O'Leary or PAT escape line, ran from the Belgian border to the Spanish frontier. From August 1941 to December 1941, Andree Borrel and Maurice Dufour, now lovers, hid allied escapees in a villa at one of the last safe houses before the difficult Pyrenees Mountains crossing. In December 1941, English courier Harold 'Paul' Cole apparently betrayed many of the conductors on the northern PAT lines after he was arrested in Lille.

Ponzan Vidal, a Spanish anarchist, led an escape party over the Pyrenees and Andree and Maurice Dufor made their way to England. Andree arrived in London in April 1942, and on May 15 she joined the British SOE and the French sector recruited Lise de Baissac. M15 whisked Maurice Dufor away to a safe house and he and Andree never saw each other again.

Parachuting Into France

Just before 9 o’clock on the night of September 24, 1942, Pilot Officer R. P. Wilkin flew Whitley bomber Z9428 based near Cambridge on a mission called Operation ARTIST. His mission was to drop Andree Borrel, 23, and Lise de Baissac, 37, near the River Loire in Nazi occupied France. Since Andree jumped out of the bomber ahead of Lise, she was the first female agent of the SEO to be parachuted into Occupied France during World War II.

Andree and Lise safely landed in a meadow surrounded on three sides by oak trees, near the village of Boisrenard, close to the town of Mer. Lise de Baissac, code name Odile, was assigned to the Poitiers area where she accomplished her mission and returned safely to England in August 1943.

Andree, code name Denise, was assigned to be a courier for Francis Suttill's new PROSPER circuit in Paris.

Andree showed Francis Suttill around the city she knew and loved so well, and he soon relized that Andree was tough, self reliant, and absolutely reliable. He told his Special Operations Executive in London that she "has a perfect understanding of security and an imperturbable calmness. Thank you very much for having sent her to me. She is the best of all of us."

Betrayal, Night and Fog, and Natzweiler-Struthof

Despite her youth, Andree became second in command of the network in 1943. On June 24, 1943, Andree Borrel and PROSPER radio operator Gilbert Norman were arested in Paris and Francis Suttill in Normandy. Henri Dericourt, code name Gilbert, their French air movements officer, allegedly was a double agent and betrayed them.

In May 1944, the Nazis transferred Andree from the notorious Fresnes prison near Paris where she had spent a year to the civilian women's prison at Karlsruhle, Germany.On July 6, 1944, the Nazis transported SOE agents Vera Leigh, Sonya Olschanezky, Diana Rowden, and Andree Borrel to the concentration camp at Natzweiler-Struthof, the only extermination camp in France. Like so many other captured agents, the four women were classified under the "Nacht and Nable", night and fog, directive which meant that they were to disappear without a trace.

Pat O'Leary and SOE agent Brian Stonehouse who were inmates of Natzweiler-Struthof witnessed the arrival of the four women who were paraded through the camp. That night Dr. Heinrich Plaza and Dr. Werner Rohde administered supposedly lethal injections of phenol to the four SOE agents and their bodies were cremated in the camp oven.

Fighting Bravely to the Last

Witnesses later testified that Andrée was still conscious as she was dragged to the ovens to be cremated. Fighting to the last, she scratched her executioner’s face. Andree Borrel was 24 years old.

The French government awarded Andree Borrel the Croix de Guerre to recognize her heroic sacrifice for her country. In 1975, a plague was placed in the Natzweiler-Struthof crematorim to honor the memory of the four British SOE agents. In 1985, Brian Stonehouse painted a poignant picture of the four executed agents which hangs in the Special Forces Club in London, England.

References

France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944, Julian Jackson, Oxford University Press, 2001.

The French Resistance, 1940-1944, Raymond Aubrac, Hazan, November 1997.

We Landed by Moonlight: Secret RAF Landings in France, 1940-1944. Hugh Verity, Crecy Publishing, 1998.

A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents, Sarah Helm, Abacus, 2006.

 


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All of the material on this website is copyrighted.  You are free to link to any of the articles and to download any of the PDF books to read and use as long as you credit me as the author.       kathywarnes@gmail.com
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  • Home
  • Women's Rooms
    • Womens Rooms-Anne
    • Womens Rooms-Abigail
    • The Dead Baby in a Blue Blanket: The
    • Rena Rides the Raindrops
  • Women at Work-Blog
  • E Books and Print Books for Sale
  • Women of Historical Complexion
  • Rachel and Elizabeth Knaggs
  • Elizabeth Stiles, President Lincoln's Spy
  • Loyalist Lucy Flucker Meets Patriot Henry Knox at a Boston Parade
  • Queen Maria Amelia, the Last Queen of Portugal, Stood Her Ground
  • The Lady and the Patriot: Theodosia Burr Alston's Fateful Voyage
  • Margaret Agnew Blennerhassett - More Character Than Riches
  • Florence Nightingale- Nurse, Feminist, Statistician, Author
  • Mary Todd Lincoln Considered April Her "Season of Sadness"
  • Mrs. Santa Claus - A Strong and Supportive Woman for All Seasons
  • Elizabeth Turner McCormick, Woman Voyager
  • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Fought for Human Rights
  • Mary Fields, Stage Coach Mail Driver, Sharp Shooter, Faithful Friend
  • Lucy Parsons, "More Dangerous Than A Thousand Rioters"
  • Lydia Maria Francis Child Travels 'Over the River and Through the Wood'
  • Anti-Suffragists Believed Women Didn't Need the Right to Vote
  • Finland's Alexandra Gripenberg Sought Universal Women's Rights
  • From Frances Slocum to Little Bear Woman and Back Again
  • Madame Elisabeth Thible is the First Woman to Ride in a Free Floating Balloon
  • Veronica Kerler Frank Pined for Germany, But Made Milwaukee Her Home
  • Mary Humphreys Stamps, Undefeated Rebel with An Educational Cause
  • Sister Monica Is One of Milwaukee, Wisconsin's Early Pioneers
  • A Love Story for St. Valentine's Day - Marie Antoinette and Count Axel von Fersen
  • Three Wisconsin Women of the Waves
  • Margaret Fox Kane and her Victorian Love Story
  • Francoise Marie Jacquelin, Lioness of La Tour, Lioness of Acadia, Woman in Her Own Right
  • Mary Breckinridge, Circuit Riding Nurse and Founder of the Frontier Nursing Service
  • Women Bicyclists Break Their Glass Cages and Ride into Liberation
  • Maria Mitchell, America's First Woman Astronomer Demonstrated Female Scientific Aptitude
  • Queen Alexandra of Great Britain-Queen Victoria's Daughter-in-Law, Bertie's Patient Wife, and Her Own Person!
  • Chicagoan Kate Kellogg Meets a Ghost on a Train
  • Isobel Lillian Steele Went to a Party and Ended Up in a Nazi Jail
  • Madam Sophie Blanchard - "Official Aeronaut of the Restoration"
  • Women of Their Time and Place
    • Nadine Turchin Fights Alongside Her Husband in the Civil War
    • War Stories Along Lake Erie: Ordinary Women Experience the War of 1812
    • Katie Walker Tends Robbins Reef Light Near the Statue of Liberty
    • Maria Gulovich Joined the Czech Resistance
    • Pirate Fanny Campbell Freed Her Fiance and Fought the British
    • SOE Agent Andree Borrel Lived Several Lifetimes in Her 24 Years
    • Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt and the First Mississippi River Steamboat
    • Sophie Kwiatkowski Served as a New Guinea Nurse in World War II
    • Clara Zetkin Spoke Against Hitler in the German Reichstag
    • Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, Female Fuhrer, Breathed Her Nazi Beliefs
    • Nancy Leo , the Only Woman Buried in Luxembourg American Cemetery
    • Dickey Chapelle, Journalist and War Correspondent
    • Lucena Brockway Adapts to Life in the Keweenaw Copper Mining Country of Lake Superior
    • Does Mary Surrat's Ghost Haunt the Senate Chambers Seeking Justice?
    • The Ghostly Cyclist in Brooklyn's Prospect Park
  • Women of Contemporary 20th and 21st Century Complexion
    • Clara Ward Chimay, Gilded Age Princess
    • Ruth Becker's Faith Helps Her Survive the Titanic and Beyond
    • Mildred Beltmann , Wartime Wife
    • The Courage of their Cultural Convictions - Women Missionaries in China
    • Light and Radiance - Laurence Owen and Her Sabena Fellow Travelers
    • Edna St. Vincent Millay, Passionate Poet, Candle-Lit Feminist
    • Fascinating Footnote: The Goose Down Divorce
    • Olive Higgins Prouty Juggles to Balance Home and Career
    • Mother and Daughter Journalists Agnes Meyer and Katharine Graham Shaped Journalism
    • Rose Friedman and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
    • Katharine Meyer Graham Leaves Her Mark on the Washington Post
    • Ida M. Tarbell, "Bachelor Soul," Transitional Woman, or Both?
    • Nurse Edith Cavell, the Courage to Die for Her Country
    • Sigrid Schultz Outsmarted Hermann Goering
    • Martha Dickie Sharp Saves Jewish Refugees from the Nazi Death Machine
    • Virginia Graham Pioneered in Early Television and Survived Cancer
    • Rose Conway, President Harry Truman's Secret Weapon
    • Nancy Green, Talented Entrepreneur, Transitional Symbol
    • "Surrender on Demand:" The Friendship of Mary Jayne Gold and Miriam Ebel
    • Julia K. Tibbitts - Closet Environmentalist
    • Lee Lawrence Ansberry Reconquers the World and Reshapes Her Life
  • Christmas Cheer