On the night of the 22 September 1943 Pearl
Witherington, a twenty-nine-year-old British secretary
and agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), was
parachuted from a Halifax bomber into Occupied France.
Like Sebastian Faulks' heroine, Charlotte Gray, Pearl
had a dual mission: in her case, to fight for her
beloved, broken France and to find her lost love.
Pearl's lover was a Parisian parfumier turned soldier,
Henri Cornioley, who had been taken prisoner while
serving in the French Logistics Corps and subsequently
escaped from his German POW camp. Agent Pearl
Witherington's wartime record is unique and heroic. As
the only woman agent in the history of SOEs in France to
have run a network, she became a fearless and legendary
guerrilla leader organising, arming and training 3,800
Resistance fighters. Probably the greatest female
organiser of armed maquisards in France, the woman whom
her young troops called 'Ma Mère', Pearl lit the fires
of Resistance in Central France so that Churchill's
famous order to 'set Europe ablaze', which had brought
SOE into being, finally came to pass. Pearl's story
takes us from her harsh, impoverished childhood in
Paris, to the lonely forests and farmhouses of the
Loir-et-Cher where she would become a true 'warrior
queen'. Shortly before Pearl's death in 2008, the
Queen presented her with a CBE in Paris. While male
agents and Special Force Jedburghs received the DSO or
Military Cross, an ungrateful country had forgotten
Pearl. She had been offered a civilian decoration in
1945 which she refused, saying 'There was nothing civil
about what I did.' But what pleased her most was to
receive her Parachute Wings, for which she had waited
over 60 years. Two RAF officers travelled to her old
people's home and she was finally able to pin the
coveted wings on her lapel. Pearl died in February 2008
aged 93.
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