SOE F Section timeline

The SOE F Section timeline lists the significant events in the history of Section F of the Special Operations Executive. The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a clandestine organization of the United Kingdom during World War II. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in countries occupied by the Axis powers. SOE agents allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. Section F was responsible for many of SOE's activities in France which was occupied by Nazi Germany.

SOE F Section sent about 470 agents to France from 1941 to 1944, of whom about 40 were women. The Valençay SOE Memorial lists 91 men and 13 women agents who were killed, executed, or died in concentration camps during the war. SOE agents in France were organized into networks which usually consisted of an organiser (the leader), a courier, and a wireless operator.

1940

:19 June
::British Prime Minister Winston Churchill wrote a memorandum proposing to create an organization "to coordinate all action by way of subversion and sabotage against the enemy overseas. The army of Nazi Germany was in the process of occupying many countries of Europe, including France which would initially be divided into the Occupied Zone and the unoccupied or "Free Zone." (Vichy France)

:22 July
::The Special Operations Executive was created with Hugh Dalton, the Minister of Economic Warfare, appointed at its head. Dalton said that Churchill told him to "set Europe ablaze."

1941

April 1941

:April
::Vera Atkins joined SOE and was appointed the intelligence officer for Section F. Romanian born, she became "the most powerful personality in SOE."

May 1941

:May
:: Giliana Balmaceda was the first female SOE agent to be sent to occupied France. A citizen of Chile, she traveled legally to Vichy France and collected documents such as ration and identification cards that could be forged by the SOE for its undercover agents in France. First published in 1966.
:5 May
::Wireless operator Georges Bégué was the first male SOE F section agent in France and the first to arrive by parachute. He landed in Indre Department. He set up radio communications and met agents who followed him.

June 1941

:13 June
::The first airdrop of weapons to the French Resistance took place, arranged by Georges Bégue and Pierre de Vomécourt. Two CLE Canisters were parachuted onto the estate of Philippe de Vomécourt near Limoges. The Vomécourt brothers created the first two SOE networks (or reseau) in France, named Autogiro and Ventriloquist.

August 1941

:23 August
::American Virginia Hall departed England for Vichy France as a SOE agent. Her cover was as a correspondent for The New York Post. The United States was not yet at war with Germany and Americans could travel to and from France. Hall was the first female SOE agent to live and work in France for an extended period of time.

September 1941

:September
::Maurice Buckmaster was appointed the leader of SOE F Section. At this time the SOE headquarters staff of Section F consisted of eight people which would be increased to 24 during the next year. Nicolas Bodington became Buckmaster's deputy.

:4 September
::The first clandestine landing of a Westland Lysander airplane in support of SOE took place on a farm field in Indre Department. The Lysander transported agents and reports back and forth from England to France and vice versa. Sixty-three Lysander flights would land in France during the war, transporting 102 agents into France and evacuating 129. Some agents arrived or departed by Lockheed Hudson airplane. Most arrived by parachute.

:6/7 September
::SOE agents Benjamin Cowburn, Michael Trotobas, Victor Gerson, George Langelaan, Jean du Puy, and André Bloch parachuted into France at night near Châteauroux. They were met by Bégué, Max Hymans, and a local farmer, Octave Chanteraine. Cowburn, Trotobas, and Gerson would become important SOE agents.

:19/20 September
::SOE agent Francis Basin arrived in France by clandestine boat and set up operations in Cannes on the French Riviera. He came into contact with an organization called Carte headed by an artist named André Girard who claimed to have organized a large group of resisters to German control. Basin's reports on Carte gave SOE hope that it could be used as the spearhead of a large resistance movement to the Germans.

October 1941

:20 October
::In what was called the "mousetrap," Vichy Police learned of a Marseilles safehouse called the Villa des Bois and arrested about 10 SOE agents who visited the Villa.

:24 October
::As part of the "mousetrap," Georges Bégué was arrested in Marseilles and in an unrelated action, a routine document check, Michael Trotabas was arrested in Chateauroux. The arrests left Virginia Hall in Lyon as nearly the only SOE agent remaining at large in Vichy France and she had no wireless operator for communication with SOE headquarters.

November 1941

:17 November
::In Paris Nazi spy catcher Sergeant Hugo Bleicher led German police in arresting members of a Franco-Polish resistance group, Interallié. Among those arrested was Mathilde Carré, nicknamed "the Cat." In exchange for money and freedom, Carré agreed to work for Bleicher and helped him arrest additional members of the group. Interallié was destroyed.

December 1941

:26 December
::His wireless operator having been arrested, Pierre de Vomécourt had no means of communicating with SOE headquarters in London. In Paris he was introduced to Mathilde Carré who, unknown to him, had become a double agent, working for the Germans. She told him she had access to a wireless. The wireless was controlled by the Germans and they began transmitting, receiving, and reading Vomécourt's messages.

1942

January 1942

:9/10 January
::Peter Churchill landed by submarine at Miramar on the French Riviera, to evaluate the Carte network. Carte's leader, André Girard, claimed that his organization could, with SOE help, undertake sabotage and guerilla warfare and eventually field an army of 300,000 men to resist German control of France. Assistance to Carte became F Section's top priority in 1942.

February 1942

:26/27 February
::Pierre de Vomécourt and Mathilde Carré departed France by Royal Navy motor torpedo boat to return to England. De Vomécourt had realized she was a German agent and persuaded her to go to England with him. She gained the approval of her German handlers for the trip, because she would learn much about SOE and report to them upon her return to France. Instead, Carré was imprisoned in England for the remainder of the war.

April 1942

:25 April
::Pierre de Vomécourt was arrested by Hugo Bleicher in Paris. He had been parachuted back into France on 1 April. Vomécourt persuaded the Germans to treat him and his followers as prisoners of war, rather than spies, and he spent the rest of the war imprisoned in Colditz Castle. His arrest, and the destruction of his Autogiro network, left SOE without any working networks in France, although Virginia Hall remained active in Lyon.

July 1942

:1/2 July
::English painter Brian Stonehouse, a wireless operator, parachuted into occupied France near the city of Tours, Indre-et-Loire