Noor Inayat Khan

Noor Inayat Khan was one of the most romantic of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents and one whose suitability to be sent into the field has often been questioned.

Noor was the eldest of four children. Her father Hazrat Inayat Khan came from a princely Muslim Indian family (he was a great-grandson of Tipu Sultan, the famous eighteenth century ruler of Mysore) and lived in Europe as a musician and a teacher of Sufism; her mother Ora Meena Ray Baker Noor was an American from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who had met Inayat Khan during his travels in the United States.

Inayat Khan, Noor's father, took his family to pre-revolutionary Russia, where they were taken up by members of the Imperial Court and where a daughter was born in the Kremlin on New Year's Day, 1914.

She was given the name Noor, meaning 'light of womanhood', and would be known by her father's name, the patronymic Inayat, and the title Khan, an honorific denoting aristocratic birth.

When Noor was 13 her father died, leaving her, as the oldest child, the mainstay of her grieving mother and younger siblings. On leaving school Noor studied music for six years, composing for the harp and piano, and little by little becoming more European and less oriental in her habits and dress. She moved about more independently than the veiled women of the tradition out of which she had come. She wore make-up that made her skin lighter.

She took a degree at the Sorbonne in child psychology, studied several modern languages, travelled on the Continent with her brother Vilayat, and began a career as a freelance writer. She became a frequent contributor of articles and stories to newspapers and magazines and her children's fairy tales were broadcast by Radiodiffusion Francaise. A book of her stories was published in England in 1939 and she was about to bring out a childrens newspaper in Paris when war broke out.

In the early months of the war Noor and her sister took a Red Cross nursing course, intending to join the war against the Nazis in the only way that seemed practical. With the Germans approaching Paris, the family joined the exodus from the city. They made their way to Bordeaux and, because Vilayat had been born in England, they managed to get on the last boat evacuating British subjects.
Although Noor Inayat Khan was deeply influenced by the pacifist teachings of her father, she decided to help defeat Nazi tyranny. So on 19 November 1940 she joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), to be trained as a wireless operator. Two years later she was recruited to join F (France) Section of the Special Operations Executive and in early February 1943 she was posted to the Air Ministry, Directorate of Air Intelligence, seconded to First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY), and sent to Wanborough Manor, near Guildford in Surrey[2], from there to various other SOE schools for training, including STS 5 Winterfold, STS 36 Boarmans and STS 52 Thame Park. Despite not completing her training and the mixed opinions about the suitability of her temperament for the task, her fluency in French and competency in wireless operation made her the strongest candidate in response to the urgent Parisian request for further help.
On 16/17 June 1943, cryptonymed 'Madeleine'/W/T operator 'Nurse', Assistant Section Officer Inayat Khan was flown to landing ground B/20A 'Indigestion' in Northern France on a night landing double Lysander operation, code named Teacher/Nurse/Chaplain/Monk. She traveled to Paris, and together with two other women (Diana Rowden, code named Paulette/Chaplain, and Cecily Lefort, code named Alice/Teacher) joined the Physician network led by Francis Suttill, code named Prosper. Over the next month and a half, all other Physician network radio operators were arrested by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), but in spite of the danger and rejecting an offer to return to Britain, Noor chose to remain and continue transmitting as the last essential link between London and Paris. Moving from place to place, she tried to escape capture while maintaining wireless communication with London. "She refused to abandon what had become the most important and dangerous post in France and did excellent work." It is mainly attributed to her efforts that the Physician network could be reconstructed.

Finally Inayat Khan was betrayed to the Germans, either by Henri Dericourt or by Renée Gary. Dericourt (code name Gilbert) was a SOE officer and former French Air Force pilot who has been suspected of working as a double agent for the German Abwehr. Renée Garry was the sister of Emile Garry, Inayat Khans organizer in the Physician network. Allegedly she was paid 1,000 Francs, but acted mainly out of jealousy because she had lost the affection of SOE agent France Antelme to Noor. On or around 1 October 1943 Inayat Khan was arrested and interrogated at the SD Headquarters at 84 Avenue Foch in Paris. There is no evidence of her being tortured, but her interrogation lasted over a month. During that time, she attempted escape twice. Hans Kieffer, the former head of Gestapo in Paris, testified after the war that she didn't give the Gestapo a single piece of information, but lied consistently. Although Inayat Khan did not talk about her activities under interrogation, the SD found her notebooks, in which she had kept, contrary to security regulations, copies of all the messages she had sent as an SOE operative. Although she refused to reveal any secret codes, the Germans gained enough information from it to continue sending false messages imitating her. As London failed to investigate properly anomalies in the transmissions which should have indicated they were sent under enemy control, three more agents sent to France were captured by the Germans at their parachute landing, among them Madeleine Damerment, who was later executed together with Noor Inayat Khan.

After refusing to sign a declaration not to make further flight attempts, Inayat Khan was taken to Germany on 27 November 1943 "for safe custody" and imprisoned at Pforzheim in solitary confinement as a so-called Nacht und Nebel-prisoner, i.e. without any contact with the outside world and in complete secrecy. She was classified as 'highly dangerous' and shackled in chains most of the time. As the prison director testified after the war, Inayat Khan remained uncooperative and continued to refuse to give any information on her work or her fellow operatives.

On 11 September 1944, Noor Inayat Khan and three other SOE agents from Karlsruhe prison, Yolande Beekman, Eliane Plewman and Madeleine Damerment, were moved to the Dachau Concentration Camp. In the early hours of the morning, 13 September 1944, the four women were executed by a shot to the head. An anonymous Dutch prisoner emerging in 1958 contended that Noor Inayat Khan was cruelly beaten by the sadistic SS guard Wilhelm Ruppert before being shot. Her last word was "Liberté".

Noor Inayat Khan was posthumously awarded a British mention in dispatches and a French Croix de Guerre with Gold Star. Khan was the third of three World War II FANY members to be awarded the George Cross, Britain's highest award for gallantry not on the battle field.

(Pictures Courtesy : www.bbc.co.uk)