16 Mar Carve Her Name With Pride
Carve Her Name With Price, WWII Movie starring Virginia McKenna
(1958) A beautiful English shop girl with a small daughter joins British intelligence after her husband is killed in North Africa. Because her mother is French, she speaks the language fluently, thus the perfect candidate to work with the French Resistance.
Violette Szabo is the name of this real-life British agent, the revered heroine of World War II espionage and resistance. Captured by the Germans in June of 1944, the following year, at the age of 23, Szabo was executed at Ravensbrück Concentration Camp.
Carve Her Name With Pride is a British film based on a book of the same name by R.J. Minney. I’m not sure what inspired him to write this book. I did read that he was editor of The War Weekly, published in Britain from October 1939 to August 1941.
Although in the beginning it was difficult for me to understand what the actors were saying, (yes, I know it’s English) once we got to France it didn’t matter. I could follow the action. Virginia McKenna, best known for her role as her friend conservationist Joy Adamson in the film Born Free, played the role of Violette. By the end of the movie, I was all wrapped up in it even though I knew how it was going to end.
There is an Office of Strategic Services connection. Violette Szabo was flown into France by members of the Carpetbaggers, the volunteer air arm of the OSS, organized in late 1943 to drop “spies and supplies” behind enemy lines.
In 1947 Szabo’s daughter, Tania, went to Buckingham Palace where King George VI presented her with the George Cross in honor of her mother’s service. Tania has also written a book about her mother; now it seems out of print.
A biography, Violette Szabo, by historian Susan Ottaway was published in 2002. A memorial unveiled in 2009 to honor those who served in the SOE is a sculpture of this courageous young woman.
Carve Her Name With Pride at amazon.com
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