Author: kerrycp

Watch out for my new release date for my new book – ‘Cherry’s War and The Flying Nightingales’.

The Flying Nightingales were air ambulance medics who flew on military aircraft to evacuate horrifically wounded soldiers after the D-Day landings in Normandy.

Their RAF Dakota aircraft carried military supplies and ammunition so could not display the Red Cross, and often came under fire from the German Luftwaffe.

But the women – many of whom volunteered for the role – were banned from using their parachutes if their planes were shot down, as their orders were to stay with the plane to treat any survivors.

Each plane flew up to 24 wounded soldiers home and would have one Nightingale onboard to treat them.

They played a vital part in keeping thousands of soldiers alive for long enough to receive life-saving operations, and were the first British women to be sent into war zones by the Government.

The ‘Flying Nightingales’ had to cope with treating soldiers suffering from a horrifying array of injuries – missing limbs, faces blown off or burnt away and the grotesque results of operations improvised in the field, amputations, colostomies and facial repairs. When they arrived back at . Burn cases went to Odstock, Salisbury, head injuries to St. Dunstan’s at Radcliffe, spinal injuries and skin grafting to Stoke Mandeville.

Two Flying Nightingales died on active service, and many of the women suffered terribly in the aftermath of their experiences, traumatised by the terrible injuries they had seen. But despite the harrowing experiences they endured, their efforts helped ensure soldiers got the treatment they needed.

Some of the women of SOE during WW2 had fantastic escapes and some of them are featured in this blog. This month my blog is dedicated to one of the heroines of SOE – Eileen ‘Didi’ Nearne, who joined with her sister and brother after they escaped from France during the German occupation. On March 2, 1944, she was flown to Les Lagnys, Saint-Valentine in Indre, France in a Lysander aircraft and dropped behind enemy lines.

Her amazing story of how she survived follows….

Although SOE’s primary function in Europe was sabotage operations, Eileen was detailed to work as a wireless operator for the Wizard Network in Paris. Jean Savy was the leader of the Wizard network and he worked for SOE. As D-Day approached, the network created safe houses for Allied troops and helped finance local resistance movements. Jean thought Didi was too young for such dangerous work, but she refused to be sent home. Her code name was simply “Rose” and her main mission was raising money and keeping open a wireless link to London, headquarters of SOE.

In April, Savy’s network discovered that the Germans were preparing to launch a powerful new weapon against Great Britain: V1 rockets. Savy departed for England to relay this crucial piece of intelligence personally, leaving Eileen behind to continue the wireless work.

For five months she transmitted messages, but her work became increasingly difficult. The Germans were getting better at detecting radio transmissions, and agents were getting caught.

To stay ahead, Eileen regularly changed addresses, always moving after sending a message to London. She was nearly caught on a train when a flirtatious German soldier offered to carry her bag—the very one which contained her transmitter.

On July 21, 1944, Eileen had just sent her 105th message when she heard the wail of sirens outside. She quickly burned her notebook and hid her equipment before the Gestapo broke in. The burning papers were incriminating enough, but then they found her radio.

Eileen claimed she was French and simply sending messages for a businessman. She was taken to the Gestapo headquarters, where she was stripped naked and subjected to beatings and their notorious water torture – the bagnoire. Despite that, she would not divulge any information.
Kofferset 3 MK II portable radio transceiver for the communication between continental resistance movements

The Nazis then sent Eileen to the Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany. They shaved her head, and also threatened to shoot her when she refused to do prison work. Over the next few months, they moved her to different labor camps and tortured her, but she never changed her story.

In April 1945, as Allied forces were drawing near the camp, the inmates were forcibly marched out. Eileen and two French women seized the opportunity to escape, and hid in the forest.

Female prisoners at Ravensbrück

Later they were discovered by a German patrol, but were able to convince the Germans that they were local workers and were released. The women then made their way to Leipzig, where a Catholic priest hid them in a church bell tower until American troops liberated the city on April 15, 1945.

After World War II, Didi was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French government. In 1946 she was appointed an MBE by King George VI for “services in France during the enemy occupation.”

Daily Mail September 21, 2010: ‘Forgotten WWII spy tortured by the Nazis died penniless after her British pension was halted without explanation.’

‘The torture left Didi with a variety of medical problems and in 1946 she was declared 100 per cent disabled as a result of ‘exhaustion neurosis’ by a secret pensions tribunal.

By 1948, Miss Nearne was receiving just £87 and 10 shillings and in 1950 this was cut off entirely when she went to stay in France for a long term visit.

The same year, a psychiatric report found she was suffering headaches, depression, sleeplessness, brought about by her traumatic experiences during the war.

On her return to the UK in 1954, she contacted the Government, giving the name of her doctor and asked for the payments to resume – but the request was refused.

On September 2, 2010, Eileen Nearne was found dead in her small flat aged 89 and officials were unable to find any relatives to pay for the funeral. But examining her belongings in order to identify her next of kin, the police discovered something incredible: Eileen Nearne had been a heroine of the Second World War, a brilliant and courageous spy who had helped to liberate occupied France and had survived incarceration and torture in a Nazi concentration camp.

She was set to be buried by the council in a pauper’s grave, but following a public outcry a funeral director offered to give her a send-off befitting a war hero.

My fictional heroine from She Is Behind Enemy Lines, Emily Boucher, is based on these brave women who were arrested as spies during the German occupation and were routinely tortured.

Nancy Wake was a journalist who joined the French Resistance and later the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II.

After the fall of France to Nazi Germany in 1940, Nancy became a courier for a Resistance network. The Maquis came to symbolize the French Resistance. She and her husband Henri Fiocca, helped Allied airmen evade capture by the Germans and escape to neutral Spain.

In 1943, when the Germans became aware of her, she escaped to Spain and continued on to Britain, where she joined the SOE and was trained in warfare and used her skills more than once to kill the enemy. She was fearless and as the chef de parachutage, was the ideal person to organise thousands of French troops with her no nonsense attitude. SOE began sending in large amounts of arms, equipment, and money. Her duties were organising the money, the men, and with other leaders, trained them to fight the Germans while living and hiding in the mountains with the Maquis before D-Day.

Nancy carried with her a list of the targets the Maquis were to destroy before the invasion of France by the Allies (which would take place on 6 June). The destruction of communication lines and railways by her network and others, led to German army units, such as Panzer divisions, being delayed to get to the front line after D-Day.

This helped the Allies to get a foothold in Normandy. She earned a price on her head of five million francs and a reputation by the Gestapo, who called her The White Mouse, because of her ability to slip away from them.

The bicycle ride

During the flight from the Germans, Rake, the radio operator, had left his radio and codes behind and the SOE team needed to be in contact with London. The nearest SOE radio and operator were in Chateauroux. She borrowed a bicycle and rode it to Chateauroux, found a radio near there, updated London on the situation, requested a new radio be included in the parachute drop for her radio operator, and then cycled back to Saint-Santin to prepare for the parachutage. She travelled 500 kilometres (310 mi) in 72 hours.

My book ‘She Is Behind Enemy Lines’ is inspired by Nancy’s exploits during World War 2. It is dedicated to the women of SOE who fought fearlessly against the Nazi occupation of Europe.