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A Bloody Dawn. Dan Harvey
Читать онлайн.Название A Bloody Dawn
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781785372438
Автор произведения Dan Harvey
Издательство Ingram
For seven months, Special Operations Executive Agent Maureen Patricia (‘Paddy’) O’Sullivan, codenamed ‘Josette’, had acted as a wireless operator for the French Resistance, along with delivering and collecting messages from colleagues for 50 km around Limoges. From Charleville Road, Rathmines, Dublin, the daughter of journalist John and his wife Adelaide, her efforts helped the réseaux (Resistance) network, codenamed ‘Fireman’, with whom she had been embedded to achieve success. Was it all now to end so suddenly, even hideously? Approaching the checkpoint, Paddy confidently proceeded to engage in animated conversation with a young German soldier who was not slow to request a date. An officer appeared, and after a lengthy conversation he too requested a later rendezvous. As Paddy cycled off, both soldiers believed they had secured a date for the evening, and both were distracted enough that they forgot to look in the basket of her bicycle.
Facing constant exposure to danger or betrayal, plus possible capture and torture, the effective existence of a Special Operations Executive (SOE) operative took a brand of bravery that was a different kind of courage to that faced by the infantryman under fire. It took fibre, nerve, strength, perseverance and an untiring devotion to make a success of the work and stay alive. The intensity of insecurity borne by the individual was not a courage shared by the camaraderie and comradeship of fellow soldiers; it was endured alone, and was all the more noteworthy because of it. Paddy O’Sullivan was to be awarded both the MBE from the British and the Croix de Guerre from the French, and she was richly deserving of both. On another occasion, shortly after D-Day in June 1944, she was stopped at a checkpoint manned by the Vichy paramilitaries (pro-German French collaborators), the Milice (the opposite to the Resistance), who were then – if it can be imagined – even more vicious than the Nazis. One of them rummaged carefully through her purse, coming within millimetres of the secret codes that if found would have condemned her to death.
Taking risks while acting alone was to be the hallmark of SOE agents. Recruited from both military and civilian circles, they necessarily had to have proficiency, indeed fluency, in the language of the country in which they operated. Set up on the instructions of Prime Minister Winston Churchill in July 1940 ‘to set Europe ablaze’, they were led by Major General Colin Gubbins (1942–6) in the organisation’s headquarters in Baker Street, London. Throughout the war F-Section (France) sent nearly 500 (470) agents into the field including thirty-seven female recruits, the only British unit to put women into the front line. Patricia O’Sullivan parachuted behind enemy lines into occupied France at night by the light of the full moon. Twenty-two other parachutes opened along with her, carrying vital weapons and equipment for the Resistance group that she was sent to support.
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