Noor Inayat Khan, Story of a Lady Spy

Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan GC MBE (January 1, 1914 - September 13, 1944), usually known as Noor Inayat Khan, was a Special Operations Executive agent in World War II. Noor was born in Moscow, Russia, of a Muslim Indian father (Hazrat Inayat Khan) and an American mother (Ora Meena Ray Baker Noor), was a Sufi Muslim Princess (she was a descendant of Tipu Sultan, the ruler of Mysore). She was the eldest of four children. Moving to France shortly after her birth, in the wake of the First World War the family left for London in 1914, and returned to their Paris home only in 1920. The quiet and dreamy Noor studied music under the famous Nadia Boulanger, and was also very fond of writing poetry and children's stories. She became a regular contributer in children's magazines and published the book 'Twenty Jataka Tales'. The family left Paris again only in 1940, after the outbreak of war.

In London, Noor Inayat Khan joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) as a wireless operator. She was recruited by Captain Selwyn Jepson at Room 238 The War Office, Hotel Victoria, Northumberland Avenue, London, SW1 to join F Section of the Special Operations Executive and in early February 1943 she was posted to the Air Ministry, Directorate of Air Intelligence, seconded to First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY), and sent to Wanborough Manor, near Guildford in Surrey[1], from there to various other SOE schools for training, including STS 5 Winterfold, STS 36 Boarmans and STS 52 Thame Park. Despite not completing her training and the mixed opinions about the suitability of her temperament for the task, her fluency in French and competency in wireless operation made her the strongest candidate in response to the urgent Parisian request for further help.

16/17 June 1943, cryptonymed 'Madeleine'/W/T operator 'Nurse' she was flown to landing ground B/20A 'Indigestion' on a night landing double Lysander operation, code named Teacher/Nurse/Chaplain/Monk. She traveled to Paris and together with two other women (Diana Rowden, code named Paulette/Chaplain, and Cicely Lefort, code named Alice/Teacher) joined the Physician network led by Francis Suttill code named Prosper. Over the next month and a half, a number of Physician network radio operators were arrested by the Sicherheitsdienst, but in spite of the dangers, Noor chose to remain and continue transmitting as the last essential link between London and Paris. Owing to betrayals alleged to both Henry Déricourt and Renée Garry, in October 1943 the SD finally arrested Inayat Khan and interrogated her at the SD Headquarters in Paris.

She was not tortured but her interrogation lasted over a month. During that time, she attempted escape twice. Although Inayat Khan would not reveal any information about her activities under interrogation, the SD did find her notebooks which apparently contained all the messages that she had sent and received as an SOE operative. They were therefore easily able to read all this and subsequently imitated her in communication with London, who failed to investigate properly anomalies in the transmissions on her radio plans 'Nurse' subsequently 'Nurse Red' which indicated they were operating under enemy control. This link enabled the Germans to seize at their parachute landing three more agents sent to France.

The princess was taken to Germany and imprisoned at Pforzheim in solitary confinement (she was classified as a 'highly dangerous prisoner'). Inayat Khan continued to refuse to give any information on her work or her fellow operatives. "In ten months of brutal interrogation she didn't give the gestapo a single piece of information; they didn't even discover her name."
On 11 September 1944, Noor Inayat Khan, along with three other SOE agents, Yolande Beekman, Eliane Plewman and Madeleine Damerment, were moved to the Dachau Concentration Camp. In the early hours of the morning, 13 September 1944, the other three women were lined up and forced to kneel, after which each was executed by a single shot to the head. Noor remained shackled in chains and was subjected to bloody torture. She was shot at dawn by the sadistic SS guard Wilhelm Ruppert. Her last word was "Liberté"

Noor Inayat Khan was posthumously awarded a British mention in dispatches, a French Croix de Guerre with Gold Star. Khan was the third of three World War II FANY members to be awarded the George Cross, Britain's highest award for gallantry not on the battle field.


Footnotes

1. The FANY Agents — Noor Inayat Khan
2. Radio 4 Woman's Hour -The life of Noor Inayat Khan, Spy Princess
3. Basu, Shrabani. Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan", Sutton Publishing, 2006, pg xx-xxi.
4. a b Hamilton, Alan Exotic British spy who defied Gestapo brutality to the end in The Times May 13, 2006 page 26
5. Helm, Sarah. The Gestapo Killer Who Lived Twice. The Sunday Times Magazine, August 7 2005, page 9
6. Shrabani Basu Noor Anayat Khan: The princess who became a spy The Independent 20 February 2006


Works dealing with her story•

Jean Overton Fuller " Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan: Madeleine", 1988. Biography.
• Shauna Singh Baldwin "The Tiger Claw", 2004. A novel based loosely on her life.
• Laurent Joffrin "La princesse oubliée",2004. A novel in French based on her life.
• Shrabani Basu "Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan",Sutton Publishing, 2006, ISBN 0750939656. The most complete biography[6]