The Princess Spy

Noor Inayat Khan

Alias Nora Baker, and codenamed Madeleine, was a beautiful and talented princess. 

Before the war, she had bagged a degree in Child Psychology, had written a lot of poetry, as well as many children's stories. 

Her stories appeared in Paris newspapers and on French radio. 

By the time she was twenty five years old, her book, Twenty Jataka Tales, had been published in France, Britain and the United States. 

Noor was also an accomplished musician. 

Her greatest love was music and she was said to have played the harp beautifully.

WW2 began the same year her book was published, and during 1940, Germany invaded France. 

Noor and her family became refugees and just managed to get on the last boat leaving the French coast for Britain.

She joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and trained to become a wireless operator.

Her excellent radio skills and fluent French brought her to the attention of SOE (The Special Operations Executive) and they came calling to recruit her.

Unknown to the SOE at that time was the fact that the individual Henri Dericourt, who met her plane when it landed in France, was a double agent who worked for both the British and the Germans.

Within days of her arrival, all the British agents that worked for the Prosper network she was assigned to work with, had been arrested by the Germans. 

All of them, except Noor.

Because of this development, SOE ordered her to return to England but Noor refused, insisting that she would rebuild the network on her own.

She stayed at her post, and probably because SOE didn't insist hard enough, she ended up doing the work of six radio operators while the Germans hunted for her.

Her transmissions became the only link between the agents around the Paris area and London. Her work had become crucial to the war effort, as she helped airmen to escape and also in facilitating important deliveries to come in.

She moved constantly and evaded arrest many times, until...

The sister of the leader of one of the cells she worked with betrayed and informed on her. For money.

After her capture, the Germans asked her to send a message to London, a standard ploy that gives the erroneous impression that she was still operating successfully behind the line.

Princess Noor obliged, but deliberately omitted her "Bluff Security Check" which should have alerted London that she was in the hands of the enemy. 

Amazingly, SOE for some reason missed this clue. 

And so, when the Germans got control of her radio and used their own wireless operators to send messages to London, SOE sent in more agents. 

Predictably, all of them got captured because the Germans were waiting for them.

Promised inducements at first by the Germans if she would cooperate, Princess Noor refused to talk. 

They tried other tactics that had successfully been used on other captured agents, and still they got nothing out of her.

Exasperated and frustrated by her strong will, she was sent off to prison in Germany to receive the harshest treatment possible. 

Kept under inhumane conditions and beaten every day, she remained resolute and unswerving.

Finally, she was shipped to the Dachau concentration camp in Dachau to be tortured and executed.

The final word out of her mouth before she was shot in the back of the head was Liberty!

She died because she believed that all people must be free.

Read More Here...Overlooked No More: Noor Inayat Khan, Indian Princess and British Spy

Noor Inayat Khan was recently suggested to be the new face of the £50 note. 

This created further awareness of her war time efforts. 

The Bank of England however decided that the subject would be a scientist.

In France, a primary school in Suresness has been named after her.


"Without sacrifice there is no resurrection.
Nothing grows and blooms save by giving.
All you try to save in yourself wastes and perishes."
~ Andre Gide (The Fruits of the Earth)

Peace

The Laziest Writer

On The Planet

Is sitting up in his bed. His mind is in a turmoil, whirring in a hundred different directions all at once. He wants to start writing again... what can he post today that will bring some satisfaction that he is at least beginning to write again?

Maybe he'll write about the twat that loves to post crap on Twitter. It's an obvious truth that he doesn't like twats who post crap on Twitter.com. He suddenly gets a flash from the past. It's funny how the mind works that he can remember a time period thirty years before with absolute clarity. A time when things were so real while at the same time, things weren't exactly what they seemed. Hindsight isn't twenty twenty, hindsight is a bitch!

He needs an angle to be able to tell just one story from those days. In years, it was such a long time ago but in his head, those things seem like it was just yesterday. Should he do a first person narrative? Goodness No! It wouldn't work, the reader wouldn't understand. Who would understand those days anyway? Idea dismissed.

His mind returns, this time to another twit on twitter. The writer is most definitely stumped.

His mind cruises into auto roam and random musings. Why do the spoils always end up with the wrongest, dumbest and least qualified? What is it about losers who see themselves as winners who consequently end up dumbing the rest of us down? Why do we the public, the media and good old nice uncle Joe end up holding these characters in such high esteem? Twits buying from twats that end up dazzling the rest of us with other people's money.

Time to forget about the collective delusion and concentrate on some real shit. There are a diverse range of subjects and topics he could actually write about. He's sure that there are at least five good books he could churn out within a relatively short time frame. Who needs research? Decades of living on the edge trumps any research he could do.

He really believes in the book project, but what he needs right now is stronger than the urge to write. He knows deep down that once he starts, he cannot stop until it's finished. That's a problem because he happens to be the laziest writer on the planet.

So his mind wanders back to the twat on twitter: The least serious leading a society of serious minded people. God help us all. 

Reflecting on current trends, he might just find a serious topic to think about, reflect on and possibly write a post on. But what are the chances that that too hasn't been covered by someone else. Not much can be expected from a lazy writer anyway. He's off the hook.

His mind strays back to the twat that tweets non-stop on Twitter.