Record-keeping at the SOE was not always organized, and a lack of primary sources and evidence from the time has made it difficult for historians to gain a full picture of the group’s activities. Scholars have noted an enduring public fascination with the SOE and its women spies since the war, and that in some cases, myth and fact have blurred together to create inaccurate representations of the past. Each agent was given a codename or an alias, and trained in specialist skills including wireless operation (as Khan did), how to maintain a cover story and how to burgle and pick locks. Because it was crucial that they evade suspicion, F Section recruited agents who could speak French and blend into French life. The SOE, housed on Baker Street in central London-and sometimes referred to as “The Baker Street Irregulars,” “Churchill’s Secret Army” and the “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare”-had deployed 39 women to Occupied France by the time of the D-Day invasions on June 6, 1944.
In the field, women could go unnoticed as couriers delivering vital messages, with one SOE dispatch from Holland noting that in 1944, women were rarely stopped and searched at checkpoints. Women were thought to be more inconspicuous as spies, and capitalized on this perception during the war, carrying out tasks and missions that men were unable to do. The SOE itself focused on guerrilla warfare outside the ordinary theaters of conflict. Intelligence agencies realized fairly early on the important part women could play in wartime spying, in what had been traditionally considered the domain of men. The role of women as spies during World War II The new film A Call to Spy, produced, written by and starring Sarah Megan Thomas as Hall and directed by Lydia Dean Pilcher, takes inspiration from the heroic stories of these two spies who made history, and the woman at the center of their secret operations. Both women worked with Vera Atkins, the intelligence officer for F Section at the SOE, which was responsible for the recruitment and deployment of agents into France. Dozens of women were recruited by the SOE and deployed as spies, including American agent Virginia Hall and Indian-British radio operator Noor Inayat Khan.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously ordered the SOE’s agents to “set Europe ablaze” through espionage, sabotage and building a resistance network in occupied Europe. Established in June 1940 in London, the SOE was a volunteer force set up to wage a secret war behind enemy lines.
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