Herbert, Mary Katherine, 1903-1983

Mary Katherine Herbert was an agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) organization during World War II in France. Herbert was the only known female agent of SOE to have a baby while working in France during the war. Herbert was born in Ireland. At the outbreak of the war, Herbert was working in the British Embassy in Warsaw. She joined the WAAF at RAF Innsworth on 19 September 1941 as a General Duties and Intelligence Clerk. She was released at her own request from the WAAF so she could join the SOE in March 1942.

On 18 February 1944, Herbert was arrested in her apartment in Poitiers. The German Gestapo had found out that Lise de Baissac was an SOE agent and that the apartment had been rented to her. The Germans initially thought that Herbert was de Baissac. The Germans imprisoned Herbert, leaving the baby with her maid; French Social Services put the child in an orphanage. Under interrogation, Herbert kept to her cover story and denied that she knew de Baissac. Her accented French, she said, was because she had lived in Egypt and spoke Arabic. She protested her innocence saying she knew nothing of the woman who had rented the apartment before her, that she had only been there a few weeks, and it was hardly likely that an SOE agent would have just given birth to a baby.

She was released at Easter and she began an long hunt for her child. Herbert finally found her in the convent and persuaded the nuns that she had been arrested unfairly and the child was returned to her.

After the war Herbert bought a small house in Frant, Sussex and gave French lessons for a living. Her daughter Claudine immigrated to the United States and married an airline pilot. Herbert died with her daughter at her side on 23 January 1983 of pneumonia.