Reviews

A Cool and Lonely Courage: The Untold Story of Sister Spies in Occupied France by Susan Ottaway

author_d_r_oestreicher's review against another edition

5.0

World War II opened doors for women. Rosie the Riveter and other stories of women on the home front have been embraced by popular culture, but women were also on the front lines. This book is the story of two sisters, Eileen and Jacqueline Nearne, who were in advance of the front lines, as British spies in occupied France where they supported the French resistance. The were armed, in leadership positions, and even captured and tortured. The only difference between them and the male spies, is that after the war was over, they were not recognized and supported like the men. This was the 1940s and 1950s, did you expect otherwise?

For more: http://1book42day.blogspot.com/2015/04/a-cool-and-lonely-courage-by-susan.html

bet27's review against another edition

4.0

The book opens with one of the sisters as an elderly woman--unknown, forgotten, overlooked--and goes on to tell the extraordinary lives the two sisters led during WWII and what happened after because of their harrowing experiences. While the writing itself may not be memorable, the story of the two sisters kept me interested throughout. It was sad to see how the women who served could as easily be denigrated or overlooked as praised. Yet even the female SOE officers who "merely" suffered in silence when imprisoned showed incredible courage and strength, whether anyone lauded them or not. You can actually see the older sister in the film "Now It Can Be Told" about SOEs that was released in 1947 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlZ15_KoKQc).

liralen's review against another edition

3.0

Fascinating and sad look at two sisters who joined the Resistance, one after another, working in Nazi-occupied France. More than that, though, I found this valuable for the—very valid—criticism of some of the errors that the higher-ups made, some of which had devastating consequences.

Norman, an excellent wireless operator who rarely sent a message with any errors, transmitted one in which one of his checks was missing. Because it was so unlike him to do this, Leo Marks was convinced that he had done so to inform London of his arrest; this, after all, was what the checks were for. Others in London were also convinced that he was no longer free and was sending the messages under duress. But Buckmaster, ignoring the obvious proof of his arrest, immediately sent off a reply, reprimanding him for his serious breach of security and warning him not to do it again. This reply told the Germans that Norman had lied to them about the way he transmitted to London and sealed the wireless operator’s fate. Gilbert Norman was taken to Mauthausen concentration camp, where he was hanged in September 1944. (93)

Can you imagine? You've been trained to do just this—to leave out one of your security checks if caught and forced to transmit messages anyway (I'm not sure what these checks were exactly, but basically imagine two-factor authentication in the pre-Internet age)—and instead of trusting your previous work as an agent, your superiors effectively sign your death warrant.

Or this, less overt but also telling:

By the latter part of July 1944 she [Didi/Eileen] had sent a total of 105 messages and had been working for four months, more than two months longer than what was statistically believed to be the maximum time a wireless operator could operate safely. (119)

This one is a bit more complicated: two months is in some ways such a short time, and I can understand why it would be difficult to rotate agents in and out with such frequency. But to keep agents in the field so long suggests that, in wartime, they were in some ways treated as disposable—not just 'stay in longer than is safe' but 'stay in until you're caught, and maybe tortured, and maybe killed'. It speaks to the incredible bravery of the people doing the work, of course, but it's also terribly sad.

Being a part of the SOE had changed the lives of Didi and Jacqueline forever. While women were cautioned to tread carefully when broaching the subject of what their menfolk had been through during the war, there was little thought for what the women who had served in the military or other related services might have seen or done, largely because women were never frontline military troops; although their input in the conflict was invaluable, freeing as it did the men for the actual fighting, there were relatively few who saw the real horror of war at first hand during their wartime careers. The female SOE agents were different. Almost without exception they had seen that horror and, having done so, would never be the same again. (236)

And this sort of says it all, doesn't it? Whatever work women did was 'women's work' and thus mattered less—in terms of recognition, in terms of compensation, in terms of pensions—even when it was every bit as important or dangerous, or more important or dangerous, than what some of the men were doing.

shoshin's review against another edition

dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

4.5

cayleereads's review against another edition

5.0

It was such an amazing story of heroism and bravery.

justabean_reads's review

adventurous dark informative medium-paced

3.0

Pop history about a pair of French-British sisters who worked for the SOE during WWII. The prose was pretty basic, and I'd be interested in a paper copy to see what the citations were like, but I found the story itself very engaging. There were a lot of details about the daily life and challenges of the agents, how the cells were put together, and the many and varied cock ups of the command structure. (Though the author tended to get sidetracked by minutia, like the names of the RAF pilots on every single flight.) There was a little "she must have felt" style narration, but it wasn't too bad.

Later sections of the book got pretty grim with torture and concentration camps.

I'm interested on different takes on the SOE, but haven't really made a project of it. I get the feeling that opinions on several key figures are divided, to say the least.