And she was responsible for the largest daylight drop of arms at the time in the war. Yvonne had been a wireless operator and she had been active up until, I believe it was till after D-Day. Her married name was Burney after the war. But I was very, very lucky to meet two ladies. Unfortunately, most of the women who had been active in the field during World War Two had passed away. Kate : So I was very lucky to interview two of the women by the time I started my studies and, you know, really being able to go out there and explore things. Can you tell us what it was like interviewing some of these women over 60 years after World War Two? Are there any anecdotes which didn’t make it into the book which you might want to share with us? I think that it was quite a time to be alive and for them to put themselves in danger is pretty spectacular. And to me it was just the fact that there was ordinary people doing extraordinary things. And the reason I wrote about the women while being a woman myself have always been fascinated by women’s history. So I wanted to write about all 39 of them. So they’re known purely because of their association with some of the better known women. And that includes women who maybe their missions weren’t so good, who didn’t last terribly long in the field, or women that have become the footnotes of history. I wanted to make sure that all 39 of them got their moment in the spotlight. And to me, I wanted to write about the rest of them. Some of these women are very, very famous because they received the George Cross after the war, because their stories were made into films, because novels were written. So that was the reason I chose this particular group. And all of their archives are in our UK National Archives and they are in English. And they drew me because a lot of them were dual nationality. France actually had six sections and in one of the other sections RF there were 11 women, but there were 39 in F section. Now it’s the women who went into France as part of F section. I wanted to write about all of the women. If we could shorten that to SOE so everybody knows what we’re talking about. So I wrote about the women of the Special Operations Executive. Kate : Well, firstly, thank you very much for inviting me. My first question about this remarkable book is what drew you to write about the women of the Special Operations Executive? These remarkable women sabotaged German equipment, organized the maquis, relayed vital information to the Allies and even killed enemy combatants. The book is an exciting and scholarly work detailing the 39 women hired by the British Special Operations Executive to perform undercover work in France during World War Two. Today we are discussing her book, Mission France: The True History of the Women of the SOE. Histories Made covers a wide variety of historical periods, and Vigurs interests encompass everything from the Romans to the Cold War, but especially medieval and the world wars. Vigurs also has her own live historical interpretation company Histories Made and regularly produces scripts, films and live performances for organizations such as English Heritage, Royal Armories, National Army Museum, RAF Museum and Imperial War Museums. Vigurs is a tour guide for Anglia Tours, covering the Western Front battlefields, Berlin and Krakow, Auschwitz, and has recently done consultancy work for the Army Museums, Ogilvy Trust and South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum. Vigurs is a professional freelance historian who received her PhD from the University of Leeds. Gary : Today’s special episode is an interview with Dr.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |