[The following is in regards to Princess Noor Inayat Khan, and takes place during World War II.]
The daughter of an Indian father and American mother, Noor was a descendent of Indian Tipu Sultan, the eighteenth-century “Tiger of Mysore” who held off the British East India Company with the first military rockets ever used. Though gentle – before World War II, she was a harpist, a children’s book writer, and a Muslim Sufi pacifist – she clearly inherited some of Tipu’s martial strength.
In 1940, Noor joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and trained to be a wireless operator. Two years later, Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) deployed her to Nazi-occupied France as a wireless operator, armed only with a false passport and a pistol, codenamed “Madeleine.” At 29 years old, she was the first female wireless operator in occupied France. By the summer of 1943, as the Gestapo ferreted out cell after cell, she was doing the work of six operators and virtually running Resistance communications.
Noor was betrayed by a contact and, after three months on the run, was caught by the Gestapo. She fought like a tiger and tried to escape, climbing out a bathroom window, but she was caught. Regarded by the Germans as uncooperative and dangerous, she spent 10 months in solitary confinement in chains, beaten, starved, tortured, and condemned to “Nacht und Nebel” (Night and Fog), the code reserved for people who were to be disappeared. But she never talked. Noor was executed by the Nazis on September 13, 1944, at Dachau prison camp, shot through the back of the head. Her last word was “Liberté.”
Noor was posthumously awarded Britain’s George Cross, making her one of only three women from the SOE to receive the honor, and France’s Croix de-Guerre for her bravery. It took a years-long campaign and the concerted effort of many people, but in 2012, Princess Anne unveiled a bronze bust of the spy princess that now graces a London park.
Source:
McRobbie, Linda Rodriguez. “Famous Last Words.” Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories From History-- Without the Fairy-Tale Endings. MJF Books, 2013. 284-85. Print.
Further Reading:
Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan, GC, aka Nora Inayat-Khan
Tipu Sultan (born Sultan Fateh Ali Sahab Tipu)
Anne, Princess Royal, KG, KT, GCVO, QSO, CD
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The first rocket use is inaccurate. The Chinese used rockets against the Mongols