🇷🇴🇬🇧 WWII uncovered: Legendary Spymaster of the SOE: Vera Atkins.

🇷🇴🇬🇧 WWII uncovered: Legendary Spymaster of the SOE: Vera Atkins.


Born Vera Maria Rosenberg in Bucharest, Romania, Vera went to London with her parents in 1933, where she adopted her mother's last name. 

She studied modern languages at the Sorbonne and went to finishing school at Lausanne.

According to the Imperial War Museum: "At the outbreak of the war, Vera May Atkins joined F Section of Special Operations Executive (SOE) in April 1941, initially as a secretary but was soon promoted to become an Intelligence Officer and Deputy to Colonel Maurice Buckmaster, head of F Section.

"Vera was responsible for overseeing training and ensuring that when her agents arrived in France they had complete false identities and watertight cover stories.

 Every agent was escorted by Atkins herself to the secret airfield where she watched them leave Britain, often for the final time.

Even with such preparation, operations were very dangerous– in an interview with IWM in 1987, Vera said agents were aware of just how risky it was.

‘I think we assessed the chances of coming through at no more than 50% and fortunately, the result was slightly more favourable I think,' she recalled. (IWM)

After the war, Atkins went to Germany to investigate the fate of 118 French Section SOE agents who had been listed as missing in enemy territory. 

Atkins succeeded in every case except one. 

She uncovered the treacherous treatment of the captured agents during interrogation - later being transferred to concentration camps. 

Speaking more than forty years later, Vera said she remembered ‘absolutely every one’ of the agents she worked with.

I could not just abandon their memory,'' she said.

I decided we must find out what happened to each one, and where.

She spent nearly a year questioning officers from concentration camps and poring over records.

I was probably the only person who could do this,'' she said.

You had to know every detail of the agents, names, code names, every hair on their heads, to spot their tracks.''

Vera Atkins later received the Croix de Guerre in 1948 and was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor by the French government in 1995.

Vera passed away on June 24, 2000 at the age of 92. She lies in rest at St Senara Churchyard in Zennor, Cornwall Unitary Authority, Cornwall, England. Lest We Forget.

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