1940
Anglo-French wartime secret agent Violette Szabo with her husband Etienne Szabo.
Tania Szabo proudly wears Violette Szabo's George Cross and Croix de Guerre after a ceremony in London.
Violette Reine Elizabeth Bushell was born in Levallois, Paris on June 26, 1921, to a British father and French mother. Her parents were Charles George Bushell, a taxi-driver, car salesman, and Reine Blanche Leroy, a dressmaker. Her early life was spent on the move between Britain and France, but at the age of eleven, her family settled in Stockwell, south London.
Violette attended school in Brixton, quickly relearning the English she had lost, where she was popular and regarded as exotic, due to her ability to speak fluent French.
By 1939 Violette was working in a department store in Brixton called Le Bon Marche where she sold perfume. In 1940 she joined the land army strawberry picking in the countryside followed by working in an armaments factory in London.
Violette was devastated by her husband's death and soon joined the SOE in order to become a field operative and courier. Violette would be extremely useful to the SOE as she could speak both French and English. Violette subsequently became Section Leader of The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, a title that was created in order to keep her real missions secret and undercover.
Violette took part in strenuous paramilitary training in Scotland where she was instructed in Field Craft, Weapons, Demolition and Night and Day Navigation. Violette then attended training in Hampshire where she learned communications, cryptography, weaponry, uniform recognition and escape and evasion tactics. Finally, Violette learned how to parachute jump out of a plane and passed the second time around as her first attempt resulted in a badly sprained ankle.
Violette's first mission was as a courier to Phillipe Liewer who was head of the SALESMEN circuit in Normandy. The poem "The Life That I Have" was given to Violette as her code poem by Leo Marks Cryptographer at the SOE. This assignment was muted to be extremely dangerous, not something that fazed Violette. She traveled to Rouen alone under a false identity in order that she could investigate the circumstances surrounding the capture of Claude Malraux and an SOE wireless operator the month before.
Violette reported back that over one hundred French Resistance workers had been captured by the Gestapo. Violette returned to Liewer in Paris where she had left him to say that his network was crushed. The couple returned safely to England together.
Violette along with three colleagues volunteered for this mission and were parachuted into Limoges on the 8th June 1944 the day after D Day. The aim of the second mission was to build a new SALESMAN circuit in the Limoges area. Violette was sent by car on June 10th to meet with Jacques Poirier.
The Second SS Panzer Division was moving north towards Violette something she and her colleague were unaware of. The couple came upon a roadblock and tried to turn around but Violette's ankle, the one she injured previously during training, gave way and she urged her companion to go on without her. Violette was subsequently captured, taken to Limoges Prison then on to Paris. Violette was at that time using one of her aliases, Vicky Tailor and she was taken for interrogation at The SS Security Services headquarters on Avenue Foch.
In August of that year Violette, Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe were deported along with thirty-seven others to Saarbrucken Transit Camp located just inside the border of Germany. Their train was bombarded by Allied aircraft and it was during this attack that the three women managed to get water for the other prisoners. Ten days later the three women were taken to Ravensbruck Concentration Camp North Germany where thousands of women died during the war, then on to Torgau.
The women were put to work in Torgau and survived under horrendous conditions albeit they were left in a much-weakened state. Returning to Ravensbruck the women were placed in solitary confinement where they were brutally assaulted. Around February 5th, 1945 Violette Szabo was executed by a shot in the back of her head aged just twenty-three.
Secret agent Violette Szabo was the first British woman to be awarded the George Cross.
A blue plaque was erected at Violette's family home in Burnley Road, Stockwell in 1981, and her name is commemorated on the SOE memorial plaque at Ravensbrück, the Brookwood Memorial in Surrey and the FANY memorial at St Paul's Church, Knightsbridge. In 2009 she was also chosen as the "face" of the SOE memorial, unveiled on London's Albert Embankment. There is a Violette Szabo museum at Wormelow, Herefordshire.
Quotations: "My husband has been killed by the Germans and I'm going to get my own back."
Violette Szabo was a member of British First Aid Nursing Yeomanry and the Special Operations Executive held at Ravensbrück.
Violette was a much-admired member of the SOE known for keeping up the morale of her colleagues as well as her zest for life. Violette was loved by men and women alike not only for her obvious physical beauty but also for her enthusiasm and never give up attitude.
Physical Characteristics: Violette was really beautiful, she was only five feet tall. She had dark-haired and olive-skinned, with that kind of porcelain clarity of face and purity of bone that one finds occasionally in the women of the south-west of France.
Quotes from others about the person
"She speaks French with an English accent. Has no initiative; is completely lost when on her own. " - unknown officer
"This student is temperamentally unsuitable... When operating in the field she might endanger the lives of others." - unknown officer
"Apart from her excellent French her most evident qualification for service in SOE was an exceptional talent for shooting, which caused her to be banned from some of London's West End galleries because she won too many prizes. Nevertheless Selwyn Jepson, to whom she had been recommended, thought she might be a suitable recruit. His principle doubt arose from the readiness with which she volunteered for service. He wondered for a time whether she might belong to a category which he had learnt, with reason, to distrust, that of agents with a suicidal urge." - Patrick Howarth
"When you land, you will be received by a group organized by Clement. I showed her on the large-scale Michelin map the exact area where the drop was to rake place. She carefully memorized the geographical features of the area, tracing the path she would follow through the wood to the side-road which led to the farm cottages where she would spend the rest of the night and the whole of the next day." - Maurice Buckmaster
"We heard the rumble of armoured cars and machine-guns began spraying close to us they could follow our progress by the movement of the wheat. When we weren't more than yards from the edge of the wood Szabo, who had her clothes ripped to ribbons and was bleeding from numerous cuts all over her legs, told me she was unable to go one inch further. She insisted she wanted me to try to get away, that there was no point in my staying with her. So I went on and managed to hide under a haystack." - Jacques Dufour
"I was caught by the Germans for sabotage in Guernsey and imprisoned there at first and then in many other prisons in France and Germany before being sent to Ravensbriick. I spoke several European languages and the staff of the prisons made use of me as an interpreter. At Ravensbriick, I was made a prison policewoman and given the number 39785 and a red armband that indicated my status.
I was handed a heavy leather belt with instructions to beat the women prisoners. It was a hateful task, but in it I saw my only chance to help some of the condemned women.
It was into this camp that three British parachutists were brought. One was Violette Szabo. They were in rags, their faces black with dirt, and their hair matted. They were starving. They had been tortured in attempts to wrest from them secrets of the invasion but I am certain they gave nothing away." - Julie Barry
In July 1940, Violette met Etienne Szabo, an officer in the French Foreign Legion. They were married after just five weeks and Violette gave birth to their daughter Tania on 8 June 1942.
