FANY Agents

Daughters of Yael by Martin Sugarman

Introduction

Denise Block

Lise de Baissac

Violette Szabo

Nancy Wake

Part of the National Grid for Learning

SOE Emblem

The FANY Agents — Violette Szabo - Page 2

My thanks to Nick Fox for providing me with the images and captions on this page.

Click the images to view a larger version

	1. "Carrefour (crossroads) Violette Szabo" just at the north end of the hamlet of Le Clos. The stele was unveiled a couple of years ago in the presence of Violette's daughter. Violette's DZ, where she dropped during the night 6/7 June 1944, is off to the left of the picture.

	2. The inscription on the stele.

	3. The grocer's shop at the Sussac, a few kilometres north of the DZ, where Violette and the other members of her team were sheltered by the local resistance.

	4. The junction at Salon La Tour where the SS had a set up a roadblock. The village is off to the right; Violette and her colleague Jacques Dufour (Anastasie) were approaching from the direction of bottom right of the picture.

	5. The road on which Violette and Anastasie encountered the SS. The roadblock was at the junction in the distance in the photo. Anastasie halted the car on the right where the gravel is. Both dismounted and engaged the SS who returned fire. Violette and Anastasie then ran off through a farm (on the left of the picture) in order to escape.

	6. Anastasie and Violette ran across this field from the farm. The new metal gate marks the location where the SS set up a HMG in 1944 to fire at the evaders. In 1944 this was all a corn field, with Violette and Anastasie zig-zagging, down into the slight dip then climbing up the other side. At about where, in the middle distance, the low trees now grow (a new pine plantation) , Violette made her stand by an apple tree. Anastasie made good his escape towards the top right of the photo, along the main rail line (which runs in an embankment left to right behind the skyline).

	7. Having been detained by the SS, Violette was brought from the field (off to the left of the photo) to this bridge where she reportedly spat in the face of an SS officer who had congratulated her on her actions. From here she was taken to Limoges for interogation by the Gestapo. In 1944, a pile of logs stood about where the signpost is, under which Anastasie had been hidden by a local family.