Group    From 22/7/1940  To 15/1/1946

Special Operations Executive (SOE)

Categories: Armed Forces, Espionage

Countries: France, Germany

Spies, basically (but see below), working for the UK in WW2. Formed by Churchill and variously known as "Churchill's Secret Army", "The Baker Street Irregulars", the Pythonesque "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare" or the deliberately dull-sounding "Joint Technical Board" or "Inter-Service Research Bureau". 117 SOE agents did not survive their missions to France. There is a plaque outside St Paul’s Church in Knightsbridge which gives the names of the women SOE agents who died in WW2. Culture 24 gives some detail of the SOE activities around Baker Street.

Parachuted into France the women operatives had a life expectancy of only 6 weeks, due, according to current thinking, to the incompetence of the SOE.

The organisation was officially dissolved on 15 January 1946.

2019: Francis Suttill (who interestingly shares a name with a member of the SOE, 1910 – 1945) contacted us via Facebook to question our use of the word 'spy' to describe members of the SOE rather than 'special agent'. From what he writes he knows much more about this subject than we do so we accept his correction.

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This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Special Operations Executive (SOE)

Commemorated ati

Christine Granville

Christine Granville, born Krystyna Skarbek, 1908 - 1952, SOE agent, lived her...

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Free French plaque

Alamy have a photo of the unveiling.

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Leopold Marks

Jewish cryptographer, Leopold (Leo) Samuel Marks, MBE, lived in flat 410 Park...

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Noor Inayat Khan bust

The Guardian reports: "the first stand-alone memorial to an Asian woman in th...

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Noor Inayat Khan - Taviton Street

Noor Inayat Khan, GC, 1914 - 1944, SOE agent, codename 'Madeleine', stayed he...

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Show all 10

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Boy 1st Class Albert Edward Winstone

Boy 1st Class Albert Edward Winstone

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Sir David Bruce

Sir David Bruce

Born Melbourne, Australia but the family returned to Scotland when he was 5 . Pathologist and microbiologist, investigated sleeping sickness.

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1 memorial
ORP Sokół

ORP Sokół

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1 memorial
Flight Sergeant Jack Elwood Evans

Flight Sergeant Jack Elwood Evans

Jack Elwood Evans was born on 7 July 1920 in Akron, Summit County, Ohio, USA, a son of George Elwood Evans (1894-1969) and Ada May Evans née Deffenbaugh (1895-1960). He was an elder brother to Quen...

Person, Armed Forces, USA

War dead, WW2
1 memorial

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This was the world's first underground passenger railway which opened from Paddington to Farringdon via Baker Street Station on 10th January 1863. IanVisits has reproduced an Illustrated London Ne...

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