Nearne, Eileen, 1921-2010
Eileen Mary "Didi" Nearne MBE, Croix de Guerre (15 March 1921[1][2] – 2 September 2010 (date body found)) was a member of the UK's Special Operations Executive (SOE) in France during World War II. Born in 1921 in London In 1923, the family moved to France, where Nearne became fluent in French After the German invasion in 1940, the two young women made their way to London via Barcelona, Madrid, Lisbon, Gibraltar and Glasgow, while the rest of the family remained in Grenoble. On her arrival in England she was offered service in the WAAF working on barrage balloons, but turned this down and was recruited by the SOE. Enrolled into the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry FANY, Nearne worked as a home-based signals operator, receiving secret messages from agents in the field, usually written with invisible ink on the back of typewritten letters. Her sister Jacqueline was sent to France to work as a courier. The sisters were supposed to keep their roles secret from one another, but were unsuccessful. She was flown by a Westland Lysander aircraft to a field near Les Lagnys, Saint-Valentin in Indre, France, in the late hours of 2 March and the early hours of 3 March 1944 with Jean Savy to work as a wireless operator for the Wizard network as part of Operation Mitchel. Savy had returned to London with important information about German V-1 flying bombs, leaving Nearne on her own. Although she did not know it at the time, the same aircraft which took Savy home also carried her sister, Jacqueline, who had just completed 15 months in the field. Nearne then worked for the "Spiritualist" network.
She was arrested on 25 July 1944 after her transmitter was detected. She reportedly managed to convince her captors, under torture, that she had been sending messages for a businessman, unaware that he was British. On 15 August 1944, she was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp where she refused to do prison work. Her head was shaved and she was told she would be shot if she continued to refuse.[10] She was then transferred to a forced-labour camp in Silesia. While in one of these prisons she was reportedly tortured.[11][12]
On 13 April 1945 she escaped with two French girls from a work gang by hiding in the forest, later travelling through Markkleeberg, where they were arrested by the S.S. but released after fooling their captors and reportedly hidden by a priest in Leipzig until the arrival of United States troops.[9] After the war Nearne lived in London with her sister, Jacqueline, where, The New York Times reported, she suffered from "psychological problems brought on by her wartime service".[4] After her sister's death in 1982, she moved to Torquay and lived there quietly. In 1993 she travelled to Ravensbruck with fellow SOE agents, members of the Special Forces Club, the FANY and the WAAF to dedicate a plaque to the four agents executed there in 1945. Nearne talked about her wartime activities on a Timewatch television documentary in 1997, but she wore a wig, and spoke in French under her codename "Rose",[15] and her wartime activities were not generally known.
She died alone from a heart attack in her seaside flat. Her body is thought to have remained undiscovered for some time until found on 2 September 2010; she was 89 years old.[16] It was only when her flat was being searched by council workers to try to establish her next of kin that medals and other papers related to her war service were found.[17]
