Like Vera, Noor Inayat Khan, the part-American daughter of an Indian Sufi mystic, who wrote children’s stories and had escaped from Paris to England with her family in 1940, was by the end of 1942 eager to get back to England, her adopted country, and be of real use. Against her mother’s wishes, she had joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), having changed her name to Nora and given her religion as Church of England to avoid awkwardness. Influenced by her brother Vilayat, who had joined the RAF, she repeatedly applied for a commission within the WAAF and by October 1942 came to the attention of SOE because of her interesting linguistic qualifications and was called for an interview in November.
Linguistic abilities were key, and Noreen Riols, born in Malta to English parents, was another young woman recruited to F Section in 1943 when she was still a teenager. She believes she was picked simply because she had attended the French Lycée in London. Like many of the women recruited, she was also very pretty. She recounted the story of one courier, Maureen O’Sullivan, always known as Paddy, who was cycling around Paris with a transmitter strapped to the back of her bicycle when she had to stop at a level crossing. To her horror a car full of Gestapo officers drew up alongside. One of them wound down the window and asked her what she had in her suitcase. ‘She knew that if she hesitated or appeared flustered she was lost so she gave a big smile … and said “I’ve got a radio transmitter and I’m going to contact London and tell them all about you” … the officer smiled back and said “You’re far too pretty to risk your neck with such stupidities” and drove off.’
But it wasn’t always that easy, nor was the training given to these keen young women always as rigorous as it might have been in view of the need to get agents into Paris as quickly as possible. From the start there were political tensions in London as the other intelligence services, chiefly SIS (the Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6), clashed with SOE and its often unorthodox methods; there was also rivalry with the Gaullist organizations in London. Language and appearance were crucial to recruitment, while character and private life were merely taken into consideration. Noor, or Nora as she was now known, was accepted after just one interview, deemed to be ‘sure and confident’, according to Selwyn Jepson, chief recruitment officer. She joined officially on 8 February 1943 aged twenty-nine, was also enrolled as a FANY and commissioned. Her training, which included fitness instruction and handling explosives, now started in earnest. However, she was not as supple and sporty as Vera and was, it was noted, ‘unsuitable for jumping’ and ‘pretty scared of weapons’. No one doubted her courage, but her examiners stated that she made ‘stupid mistakes, always volunteered far more information when questioned’ and ‘must learn to be more discreet’. There were clearly doubts about Noor’s suitability and readiness. Some thought her too emotional, exotic and dreamy and felt that she might therefore be a security risk, but others considered that as she was an excellent radio operator she would be useful. According to her final report: ‘she has an unstable and temperamental personality and it is very doubtful whether she is really suited to work in this field’. But Maurice Buckmaster, the Old Etonian F Section head, who was under enormous pressure to provide trained operators, not only believed she could cope but, alongside a comment that she was ‘not overburdened with brains,’ scribbled: ‘we don’t want them overburdened with brains.’ Whether Noor would have been retained for further assessments, had the shortage of radio operators not been so acute, is impossible to say.
When other women agents training with Noor expressed their doubts, Buckmaster’s deputy, the Sorbonne-educated, elegantly mysterious Vera Atkins, stepped in. She took Noor to lunch at a quiet restaurant and told her about the misgivings, insisting that if she stepped back now nobody would know or consider it shameful. But Noor was firm and maintained that nothing worried her other than concern for her mother.