THE FIRST FEMALE COMBAT AGENT OF WW2 #ww2 #history #heroic #shorts
@ghosthunters.gr

THE FIRST FEMALE COMBAT AGENT OF WW2 #ww2 #history #heroic #shorts

12 Views

  • Thanks! Share it with your friends!

    You disliked this video. Thanks for the feedback!

admin
Published
Born to a working-class family on the outskirts of Paris after World War I, Andrée Borrel left school at 14. She had a job at a Paris bakery counter when World War II broke out.
Once the war began, Borrel left Paris and took a crash course in nursing with the Red Cross.
The German military defeated France in June 1940, but many French citizens took up arms in a resistance to Adolf Hitler and his troops. German Federal Archive
After a stint treating people wounded by the German Army, she joined a group of French Resistance operatives organizing and operating one of the country's largest underground escape networks, the Pat O'Leary line. She aided at least 65 Allied evaders (mainly British Royal Air Force airmen shot down over enemy territory) on their journeys out of France to Spain through the Pyrenees.
When the network was compromised, she escaped to Lisbon, Portugal. She then moved to London. In the spring of 1942, the SOE recruited her. She was trained not only to jump behind enemy lines, but also to spy on, sabotage, and kill Axis troops occupying her home country.
Borrel parachuted into France in September of 1942, becoming the first female combat agent to do so. She worked as a courier for the SOE. Moving between Paris and the countryside, she coordinated aerial supply drops and recruited, armed, and trained Resistance members.
The Nazis arrested Borrel in 1943 and sent her to a concentration camp.
Nazis, allegedly leveraging intelligence from double agents (SEE LINK IN VIDEO), arrested Borrel and fellow Physician leaders in June 1943. After being interrogated and imprisoned around Paris, she was transferred to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in July 1944 with three other female SOE agents and executed a month after D-Day.
.Even from prison, she is said to have continued fighting by inserting coded messages about her captors in several letters to her sister. She was 24.
She was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre Medal of the Resistance and the King's Commendation for Brave Conduct.
Sign in or sign up to post comments.
Be the first to comment

Up Next