Violette Szabo

Agent of the Special Operations Executive, posthumous holder of the George Cross (17 December 1946) and of the French Croix de Guerre. Born on 26 June 1921 in Paris as Violette Reine Elizabeth Bushell, to an English father and a French mother. She grew up in Brixton, south London, and worked as a shop assistant. In August 1940 she married Étienne Szabó, an officer of the French Foreign Legion serving with the Free French. Their daughter Tania was born in June 1942; Étienne was killed at El Alamein in October of the same year. Her bilingualism and her husband's death brought her to SOE. Her first mission, in April 1944, was to the Rouen area, to assess what remained of the Salesman network after a wave of arrests. She completed it and returned to England. Her second, on the night of 7-8 June 1944, the day after the Normandy landings, was to the Limoges area to help coordinate maquis action against German divisions moving towards the beachhead. On 10 June, near Salon-la-Tour, her car ran into a German post; Szabó returned fire to cover her companion's escape and was captured. She was interrogated at Fresnes and deported to Ravensbrück, where she was executed in early February 1945 together with Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe. She was twenty-three. Her George Cross was received by her four-year-old daughter.