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Eileen Nearne
Eileen Mary "Didi" Nearne MBE, Croix de Guerre (15 March 1921Obituary in ''The Times'' 15 September 2010 – 2 September 2010 (date body found)) was a member of the UK's Special Operations Executive (SOE) in France during World War II. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in countries occupied by Nazi Germany and other Axis powers. SOE agents allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. Nearne served as a radio operator under the codename "Rose." (French Resistance operative Andrée Peel was also known as ''Agent Rose''.) She was captured by the Germans and imprisoned in Ravensbrück concentration camp, but survived the war. Early life and career Born in 1921 in London to an English father, John Nearne, and Spanish mother, Marie de Plazoala, she was the youngest of four children. Her elder sister, Jacqueline Nearne, and one of her two brothers, Francis, would also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major settlement for two millennia. The City of London, its ancient core and financial centre, was founded by the Romans as '' Londinium'' and retains its medieval boundaries.See also: Independent city § National capitals The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has for centuries hosted the national government and parliament. Since the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the metropolis around this core, historically split between the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent, and Hertfordshire, which largely comprises Greater London, governed by the Greater London Authority.The Greater London Authority consists of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. The London Mayor is distinguished fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrée Peel
Andrée Peel (3 February 1905 – 5 March 2010) was a member of the French Resistance during the Second World War who worked against the German occupation of France. She was known as Agent Rose, a code name shared with Eileen Nearne. Early life Peel was born as Andrée Marthe Virot in February 1905. Little is known about her childhood. When World War II broke out, she was running a beauty salon in the Breton port of Brest, France. World War II After the German invasion, she joined the resistance and was involved in distributing secret newspapers, but was later appointed head of an under-section of the resistance. She and her team used torches to guide allied planes to improvised landing strips, and helped airmen who had landed in France to escape onto submarines and gunboats, saving the lives of more than one hundred soldiers and airmen, and aided more than 20,000 people. She was arrested in Paris in 1944 and sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. She was later transferr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organisation. On 20 April 1934, oversight of the Gestapo passed to the head of the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS), Heinrich Himmler, who was also appointed Chief of German Police by Hitler in 1936. Instead of being exclusively a Prussian state agency, the Gestapo became a national one as a sub-office of the (SiPo; Security Police). From 27 September 1939, it was administered by the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). It became known as (Dept) 4 of the RSHA and was considered a sister organisation to the (SD; Security Service). During World War II, the Gestapo played a key role in the Holocaust. After the war ended, the Gestapo was declared a criminal organisation by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at the Nuremberg trials. History After Adol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, gastronomy, and science. For its leading role in the arts and sciences, as well as its very early system of street lighting, in the 19th century it became known as "the City of Light". Like London, prior to the Second World War, it was also sometimes called the capital of the world. The City of Paris is the centre of the Île-de-France region, or Paris Region, with an estimated population of 12,262,544 in 2019, or about 19% of the population of France, making the region France's primate city. The Paris Region had a GDP of €739 billion ($743 billion) in 2019, which is the highest in Europe. According to the Economist Intelli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Water Torture
Water torture encompasses a variety of techniques using water to inflict physical or psychological harm on a victim as a form of torture or execution. Forced ingestion In this form of water torture, water is forced down the throat and into the stomach. It was used as a legal torture and execution method by the courts in France in the 17th and 18th centuries. At the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century it was used against Filipinos by American Forces during the Philippine–American War and was employed against British Commonwealth, American and Chinese prisoners during World War II by the Japanese. The Human Rights Watch organization reports that in the 2000s, security forces in Uganda sometimes forced a detainee to lie face up under an open water spigot. Water intoxication can result from drinking too much water. This has caused some fatalities over the years in fraternities in North America during initiation week. For example, a person was hazed to death by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
V-1 Flying Bomb
The V-1 flying bomb (german: Vergeltungswaffe 1 "Vengeance Weapon 1") was an early cruise missile. Its official Ministry of Aviation (Nazi Germany), Reich Aviation Ministry () designation was Fi 103. It was also known to the Allies as the buzz bomb or doodlebug and in Germany as (cherry stone) or (maybug). The V-1 was the first of the (V-weapons) deployed for the terror bombing of London. It was developed at Peenemünde Army Research Center in 1939 by the at the beginning of the Second World War, and during initial development was known by the codename "Cherry Stone". Because of its limited range, the thousands of V-1 missiles launched into England were fired from V-1 flying bomb facilities, launch facilities along the French (Pas-de-Calais) and Dutch coasts. The Wehrmacht first launched the V-1s against London on 13 June 1944, one week after (and prompted by) the successful Operation Overlord, Allied landings in France. At peak, more than one hundred V-1s a day were fire ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Savy
Jean Savy (4 December 1906 – 17 June 1993) was a French citizen and a commander in the French army. Early life Jean Millet was born in Sarcelles, Seine-et-Oise, France on 4 December 1906. He attended l'Ecole des Science Politique in Paris and read Law. After completing his studies, he practiced Law. Special Operations Executive Millet was interviewed by Colonel Buckmaster and was recruited by the Special Operations Executive. Jean Millet was given his pseudonym Jean Savy. The Wizard Network The main brief by the SOE was to form an organisation for the furnishing of safe houses for the reception of teams of British officers after D-Day. Savy worked undercover as a solicitor in Paris and rented an office from a Monsieur Gieules (aka "Marcellin"). The Gestapo was aware of this. One night in a brave act of courage, Gieules raced from his office to the Métro station where Jean Savy was about to descend and informed him that the Gestapo was waiting for him. On the 19/20 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indre
Indre (; oc, Endre) is a landlocked department in central France named after the river Indre. The inhabitants of the department are known as the ''Indriens'' (masculine; ) and ''Indriennes'' (feminine; ). Indre is part of the current administrative region of Centre-Val de Loire and is bordered by the departments of Indre-et-Loire to the west, Loir-et-Cher to the north, Cher to the east, Creuse, and Haute-Vienne to the south, and Vienne to the southwest. The préfecture (capital) is Châteauroux and there are three subpréfectures at Le Blanc, La Châtre and Issoudun. It had a population of 219,316 in 2019.Populations légales 2019: 36 Indre INSEE Scobedos. History Indre is one of the original 83 departments created during the |
Saint-Valentin
Saint-Valentin () is a commune in the Indre department in central France. Population See also *Communes of the Indre department The following is a list of the 241 communes of the Indre department of France. The communes cooperate in the following intercommunalities (as of 2020):Communes of Indre {{Indre-geo-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Westland Lysander
The Westland Lysander is a British army co-operation and liaison aircraft produced by Westland Aircraft that was used immediately before and during the Second World War. After becoming obsolete in the army co-operation role, the aircraft's short-field performance enabled clandestine missions using small, improvised airstrips behind enemy lines to place or recover agents, particularly in occupied France with the help of the French Resistance. Royal Air Force army co-operation aircraft were named after mythical or historical military leaders; in this case the Spartan admiral Lysander was chosen. Design and development In 1934 the Air Ministry issued Specification A.39/34 for an army co-operation aircraft to replace the Hawker Hector. Initially Hawker Aircraft, Avro and Bristol were invited to submit designs, but after some debate within the Ministry, a submission from Westland was invited as well. The Westland design, internally designated P. 8, was the work of Arthur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Invisible Ink
Invisible ink, also known as security ink or sympathetic ink, is a substance used for writing, which is invisible either on application or soon thereafter, and can later be made visible by some means, such as heat or ultraviolet light. Invisible ink is one form of steganography. History One of the earliest writers to mention an invisible ink is Aeneas Tacticus, in the 4th century BC. He mentions it in discussing how to survive under siege but does not indicate the type of ink to be used. This was part of his list of the 20 different methods of secret communications in a book called ''On the Defense of Fortifications''. One of the techniques that involved steganography involved puncturing a tiny hole above or below letters in a document to spell out a secret message. This did not include an invisible ink but the Germans improved on the method during World War I and World War II. They used invisible ink and microdots instead of pinpricks. Philo of Byzantium may be the first writer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barrage Balloons
A barrage balloon is a large uncrewed tethered balloon used to defend ground targets against aircraft attack, by raising aloft steel cables which pose a severe collision risk to aircraft, making the attacker's approach more difficult. Early barrage balloons were often spherical. The design of the kite balloon, having a shape and cable bridling which stabilises the balloon and reduces drag, meant that it could be operated at higher wind speeds than a spherical balloon. Some examples carried small explosive charges that would be pulled up against the aircraft to ensure its destruction. Barrage balloons are not practical against very high-altitude flying aircraft, due to the weight of the long cable required. First World War France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom used barrage balloons in the First World War. While the French and German forces had developed kite balloons, early British barrages balloons were spherical. Sometimes, especially around London, several balloons wer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
