S.O.E

The SOE was stationed in many different countries e.g. France, Norway, Poland, Britain and Denmark. In France this was divided into two sections, the F section which was under British control, while the RF section was linked with Genaral de Gaulle. M Most of the french the French agents served in the RF. There were also two smaller sections, the EU/P section and the DF section. The EU/P section dealt with Polish people in France, and the DF section was responsible for making escape routes. In 1942 another section called AMF was made to operate in Southern France.

On the 5th of May 1941, Georges Begue became the first SOE agent to be dropped into German occupied France. He then set up radio communications and met the next agents parachuted into France. Between Begue's first drop in May 1941 and August 1944, more than four hundred F section agents were sent to occupied France. RF sent four hundred, AMF sent six hundred and EU/P and DF sent a few doen agents each.

The SOE included lots of women. The F section sent 39 female agents into the field, and 13 of them didn't return. Out of the whole of the SOE in France 91 men and 13 women women died for France's freedom.

To help the allied invasion of France on D Day in June 1944, three-man parties were dropped into different parts of France as part of Operation Jedburgh. A total of a hundred men were  eventually dropped, together with six thousand tons of military stores.

The SOE didn't need to persuade the Polish resistance, because unlike Vichy French the Poles overwhelmingly refused to join up with the Nazis. Early in the war the Poles made the Polish Home Army, led by a secret resistance government known as the 'Polish Secret State'. There were many Polish members of the SOE and a lot of cooperation between the SOE and the Polish resistance.

The SOE assisted the Polish government in preperation with training facilities and support for its six hundred and five special forces operations known as the Cichociemmni, or "The Dark and Silent". Members of the unit, which was based in Audley End House, Essex, were trained very hard before being parachuted into occupied Poland.

Secret Intelligence Service member, Krystyna Skarbek, was a founder member of the SOE and helped get a group of Polish spies into Central Europe. She ran several operations in Poland, Eygypt, Hungary and France, often using the firm anti-Nazi Polish communtity as a secure international network. A Polish agent integral to SOE's Operation, the plan to assinate Hitler.