5/5 stars
Recommended for people who like: history, nonfiction, WWII, SOE, spies, biographies
Helm’s book dives into the secrets and truths of Vera Atkins and the SOE’s F-Section. She notes the difficulty in finding information on the subject when Vera was such a closed book and often only kept information in her head, rather than on paper. I enjoyed following the trail of Vera and various F-Section agents as Helm described her research and the struggle to find living, reliable eyewitnesses 60+ years after the end of WWII. While the information about Helm’s research could very easily have been disruptive to the flow of the story, I enjoyed reading about the interviews she conducted and the files, letters, and photographs she found from one source or another. These chapters also lent themselves to the cyclical nature of Vera’s overall story–many of the things in her child- and young adulthood circled back around during or after WWII, and many of the things that she did during or shortly after WWII came back around later in life.
Vera’s life during WWII is almost entirely focused on the F-Section, as one would expect. Getting to ‘know’ the inner-workings of SOE during that time was interesting. Though this novel is about Vera, I enjoyed Helm’s focus on some of the SOE agents parachuted into France. I think the biography would’ve been much drier had she omitted agents like Violette Szabo, Henri Déricourt, and Nora Inayat Khan. The training, parachuting, and operating of these agents in France, and the subsequent search for those who went missing, is an integral part of Vera’s story, and it is one that requires the occasional divergence from Vera herself in order to tell the story of those missing agents. I also think that, as Helm hypothesizes, that the knowledge of what happened to agents Vera sent out formed the basis for her reactions and personality for the rest of Vera’s life.
As thoroughly as I enjoyed reading about F-Section, I must say I am appalled at how badly SOE was played by the Nazis. While I understand the ‘fog of war’ excuse that multiple interviewees, and even Helm herself, suggested, I still cannot understand how someone in the intelligence community could read a muddled or insecure/improperly secured wireless transmission and just accept it as ‘business as usual.’ That being said, I do not then believe the conspiracy theories that arose after the war. Helm spent time delving into both explanations, the ‘fog of war’ and the conspiracy theories, and went with the former to explain SOE’s blunders. She also noted that many of the people working SOE, particularly F-Section, were not necessarily trained for this type of work, which is a more acceptable excuse for the mistakes made than ‘these people in intelligence got muddled because War.’
Vera’s life immediately following the war takes up most of the book and once more focuses heavily on F-Section’s agents. Many of F-Sections agents, particularly the women, didn’t come back after the end of the war, and it was Vera who campaigned for them to be searched for. She ends up traveling to France and Germany researching the missing agents to determine what, exactly, happened as the spy networks collapsed and agents went missing. Helm describes Vera’s journey as one of determination and controlled reactions. This part is also where Helm firsts brings up the idea that Vera detested being wrong and would take great lengths to prevent herself from being seen as having done or said something wrong. This is also where the audience is shown Vera’s more ruthless, cold side. Both of these come back to bite Vera later in life, as the secrecy and cover-ups of the SOE led to conspiracy theories about SOE and even Vera herself–one person who knew her before SOE suggested she might be a Nazi spy, and multiple people from wondered if she was a spy for the USSR.
Helm offers a good overview of SOE operations in both England and France, SOE’s reactions after the war to missing agents, and how the Gestapo, SS, and concentration camp systems handled captured agents, particularly if they were women. Vera’s life is very much a mystery, but one that Helm was able to trace across countries, times, and people, finding pieces of evidence here and there that could point to who Vera really was. The addition of ‘agent stories’ helped round the book out, providing readers with the same knowledge Vera had about them before, during, and after the agents went to France. I liked the book and thought it was a well-rounded account of Vera’s life that included both bright moments and dim ones, and gave attention to both her admirers and her critics.
- Goodreads rating – 4.08
- REVIEW – Ellie J