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

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.