It was 1914, New Year’s Day, Moscow. No snow had fallen yet, but the winter air was bitterly cold. A baby had just been born, to an American mother and an Indian father. This child was a descendant of Tipu Sultan, the ruler of Mysore in Southern India, who was killed in 1799 fighting against the British East India
Company’s soldiers. This child was an Indian Princess. Her father would whisper to her, “you have the blood of Tipu Sultan in your veins”. This child was Noor Inayat-Khan. She would grow up to be a musician, a writer, a radio operator, and a spy.
During the First World War, Noor and her family lived in London but they soon found themselves moving to the outskirts of Paris in 1920. Their home was filled with music and visitors who practiced the Islamic beliefs of Sufism. Noor became fluent in French. Paris became her home. However, after seven years of relative bliss, Noor’s father died in 1927. Her mother withdrew into a state of depression and grief. The responsibility of looking after her three younger siblings fell on Noor.
Noor had always wanted to be a writer, and in 1939 her children’s book that retold Buddhist stories was published. But in 1939, war was brewing. Noor’s home in Paris would be in the direct line of fire. By 1940, the German Army was sweeping across Western Europe. Noor had been raised a pacifist, but in the face of the German advance, Noor and her brother Goliath agreed that they would contribute to the war
effort. The pair travelled to Blitz-ravaged London, where Goliath joined the Royal Air Force. Women were not permitted to join the RAF, so Noor signed up for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force or WAAF. Here she trained as a radio operator, receiving and sending messages in Morse Code. It wasn’t long before Noor was recruited by the SOE, the Special Operations Executive. This organisation, created by Winston Churchill, was shrouded in secrecy because SOE agents were Britain’s spies.
The SOE recruited Noor as a radio operator to send to Nazi-occupied France. They had only sent men as radio operators before, and the average life expectancy was just six weeks. As an SOE agent, you had no protection. The government couldn’t save you. They couldn’t even acknowledge your existence. If you were caught you would be tortured and then shot. Upon hearing of her assignment, and the dangers it involved, Noor – almost without hesitation – said yes.
Noor then embarked on her training. The SOE had acquisitioned country houses across England, and it was here that the secret agents learned the tools of the trade. From how to pick a lock, to find a trustworthy source, to identifying different German uniforms, to firing a gun. Noor was also given the code name Madeleine.
Under a full moon, on 16th June 1943, Noor was flown into occupied France. She made her way to Paris where she connected with her circuit, a network of SOE agents and trusted individuals. They were working together to sabotage the German forces and were preparing the Resistance army for the day the Allies landed on French soil. Occupied Paris was swarming with informers and Gestapo, but Noor would use her skills as a radio operator to inform London of German activity and help Allied soldiers escape the occupied country.
Within a week, someone had informed on the circuit and every SOE agent in the circuit was arrested – except Noor. Noor went into hiding, and against SOE’s wishes, stayed in Paris. She was the last radio operator left and was doing the work of six operators at once. The radio kits were large and difficult to hide, they had to be lugged around in heavy suitcases. The Germans could also detect their use and vans drove around Paris searching for Allied signals.
On one occasion, a German SS officer spotted Noor attaching the ariel to a tree near her flat. However, Noor convinced him that she was only trying to get a better radio signal so she could listen to music on the wireless – and charmed – the officer helped her to fix the ariel that would relay messages back to London. After four months of excellent work and narrow escapes, London recalled Noor. But before she could leave, Noor was betrayed. A jealous woman in love with an SOE agent, who was instead in love with Noor, informed Noor to the Gestapo. They arrested Noor who was imprisoned in a building in Paris. Here she earnt the nickname the ‘tigress’, as she would bite and fight against her captors. She had the blood of the Tiger of Mysore in her blood after all.
With two other prisoners, it didn’t take long for them to escape. With a screwdriver, they unscrewed a skylight in the attic where they were being held and climbed up onto the roof.
Paris in the darkness stood below them, under the stars. Noor could taste freedom.
But, in an ironic twist of fate, at that moment the RAF launched a bombing attack on Paris. The air raid sirens sounded which put Paris on high alert. Noor was soon caught and became the first woman working for the SOE to be sent to Germany as a prisoner.
SOE agents knew that there would be no escape from a German prison. Noor was kept in shackles and tortured for ten months. She gave nothing, and no one, away despite being betrayed herself. She was then transported to the Dhaka concentration camp. All night she was beaten, after being separated from the other prisoners – probably because of the colour of her skin. It is reported that she screamed Liberté at an SS officer put a gun to her head and fired.
Her body was burnt, and her ashes were dumped outside Dhaka, what we now call the ‘Grave of Thousands Unknown’.
After her death, she was awarded the George Cross by Britain, and the Croix de Guerre by France. In 2012, a memorial was unveiled for her in London.
And her name was inscribed on the stone at the Runnymede Air Forces Memorial, which was completed in 1953. At that time, no one would have known that Noor had been an SOE agent. But she was a valued member of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, where she learned her skills as a radio operator – which in turn would take her to the SOE and Paris. She is remembered there, with over 20,000 other men and women from the air force, who have no known grave.
She is remembered there, no longer unknown.
Written by Hannah McCann, MA Public History, Issue 12 Crime and Punishment, Spring 2023.
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