A collection of war medals, including the George Cross, awarded to an Anglo-French World War Two Resistance heroine has sold at auction for £260,000. Violette Szabo’s medals sold within a minute to Lord Ashcroft’s collection and will be on public display at London’s Imperial War Museum.

Tania Damaris Desiree Szabo

In July 1940, she had 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. Four months later Etienne was killed in action in North Africa.

Febr

Thirty-two of them served as agents in the field, seven of whom were captured and executed.

Brookwood Military Cemetery

Born in Paris to an English father, Charles George Bushell, and a French mother, Reine Leroy, Violette moved to 18 Burnley Road with her family in 1935 and attended the London County Council school in Stockwell Road.

Thirty-nine of the 470 SOE agents in France were women, with an additional sixteen deployed to other areas. The Gestapo gave Nancy Grace August Wake the nickname “the white mouse” because of her uncanny ability to evade capture.

Formed in 1940, the Special Operations Executive was an underground army that waged a secret war in enemy-occupied Europe and Asia. Its agents demonstrated incredible courage and resourcefulness in their guerrilla war. By working with resistance forces, they provided a boost to the morale of occupied societies.

Twelve were executed by the Germans, one died when her ship was sunk, two died of disease while imprisoned, and one died of natural causes. Female agents ranged in age from 20 to 53 years….Female SOE F Section agents in France.

Much more than clerks or nurses, they were engaged in every department of the OSS, from running guerilla operations behind enemy lines, to conducting classic espionage, coding and decoding messages, creating propaganda, analyzing incoming messages, and producing intelligence reports that informed policymakers.

Sexpionage is a historically documented phenomenon and even the CIA has previously added Nigel West’s work Historical Dictionary of Sexspionage to its proposed intelligence officer’s bookshelf. Female agents using such tactics are known as sparrows, while male ones are known as ravens.

Americans who spied for foreign countries

• Aldrich Ames.
• David Henry Barnett.
• Kevin Mallory.
• Harold James Nicholson.
• Larry Wu-Tai Chin.
• Sharon M. Scranage.
• William Kampiles.

Louise Jeanne MacLeod

All the sources agree – and, it should be noted, every photograph we have of her confirms – that Mata Hari was a beautiful woman with that “certain something”. With great resourcefulness, she found a way of using her beauty and allure to survive in a world dominated by men.

Margaretha Geertruida Zelle

France

Mata Hari was born Margaretha Gertruida Zelle in the Netherlands but her parents’ divorce and then her mother’s death shattered her childhood and she impulsively married a much older man who took her to the Dutch East Indies — with evidence he gave her syphilis which was incurable then.

Vincennes, France