Waterstones A Life In Secrets
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Price: £12.99
Brand: Waterstones
Description: During World War Two the Special Operation Executive's French Section sent more than 400 agents into Occupied France -- at least 100 never returned and were reported 'Missing Believed Dead' after the war. Twelve of these were women who died in German concentration camps -- some were tortured, some were shot, and some died in the gas chambers. Vera Atkins had helped prepare these women for their missions, and when the war was over she went out to Germany to find out what happened to them and the other agents lost behind enemy lines. But while the woman who carried out this extraordinary mission appeared quintessentially English, she was nothing of the sort. Vera Atkins, who never married, covered her life in mystery so that even her closest family knew almost nothing of her past. In A LIFE IN SECRETS Sarah Helm has stripped away Vera's many veils and -- with unprecedented access to official and private papers, and the cooperation of Vera's relatives -- vividly reconstructed an extraordinary life. Waterstones A Life In Secrets - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: Waterstones
Product ID: 9780349119366
Delivery cost: 2.99
ISBN: 9780349119366
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Author: Farah Mendlesohn
Rating: 5
Review: I started the new Basu biography of Noor Inayat Khan and quickly realised I first needed to learn about Vera Atkins. Atkins may be the most complex personality I’ve ever read about: a woman made of secrets. Helm does a fantastic job of teasing out what can be known and what may never be known. She manages uncertainty and moral discomfort better than any biographer I’ve previously read. Note: I’m not squeamish but it’s taken me a month to read this book because some of the descriptions of what happened to SOE operatives are horrific (at the level of lynchings in the USA). Be prepared.
Author: DvoraT
Rating: 3
Review: Sarah Helm did a fine job of following Vera's trail, but she did it with a bias. Maybe she is one of those writers who becomes so enmeshed in their subject's life that they can no longer see or cope with any doubts. In the case of Vera Atkins, the seeds for doubt happened fairly early in the book and had me wondering all through it, what is wrong with Helm? Somewhere not too far into the book Helm tells of some wireless transmissions received in London from one of their French operators. The message did not include the agent's secret sign. You only have to read one book on secret agents and wireless transmissions to know that the most important thing they are reminded of before being sent out is that the secret sign is crucial. If it is missing or altered, London will know that the agent is captured. This is crucial for the agent and for London. For the agent because headquarters is warned that there is a serious problem and can possibly do something to help (as unlikely as that would have been). London because they know their network has been as least partially breached and they must take that into consideration before any more actions and before sending in any more agents. So what did the head of the French section of SOE do upon receiving that message? Buckmaster wrote back admonishing the agent for forgetting to include his secret sign and told him to be more careful the next time. Even I would have known better than to do that. Although no one in London knew it at the time, that caused serious problems for the agent who of course was in German hands. You can imagine how he might have been treated when the Germans saw that response from London telling them the agent was playing them a trick; I don't need to tell you. So, Buckmaster, the head of the French Section of SOE was an idiot? Atkins witnessed the message and the response but did nothing. Other messages followed from the same agent and were treated as bona fide. Other dubious messages from other agents in France were also received and were also treated as bona fide. The British lost one whole network and various other agents to the Germans -- to their prisons, concentration camps, and execution squads -- because of London's ongoing ignoring of what should have been an obvious problem of a takeover of their agents by the Germans. Not only were agents arrested who were already in France, but SOE continued sending in more and more, for about two years. All of them were captured. Vera nerver raised her voice. Helm says she was probably protecting Buckmaster or possibly herself because of her dicey legal status in Britain. SOE had a hard time getting off the ground and then continually felt threatened by other War Office agencies for a variety of reasons. They were deathly afraid of any of those agencies or the government finding out about any error they might have made. This was, supposedly the reason why they covered up the complete takeover by the Germans of the Dutch network, a story told by Leo Marks in his book Between Silk and Cyanide. I don't remember Marks saying much or anything at all about the obvious problem with French messaging, but maybe I've forgotten. In any event, what happened was the same with the Dutch and Marks talks at length about that. Marks found the flaws in the incoming messages and tried to raise the alarm, but was beaten down and shut up by his superiors who were afraid of having their shop closed down if anyone found out. Our heroine went to Germany after the war to find out what had happened to her "missing girls." I think she went to find out and to cover up as much as possible the fact that SOE knowingly sent most of those brave young women to their gruesome deaths. You can see that in the story as Helms tells it, even if she can't see it herself.
