Mary Katherine Herbert (also known as Maureen) (1 October 1903 – 23 January 1983), code named Claudine, was an agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) organization during World War II in France. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in countries occupied by the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany. SOE agents allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. Herbert was the only known female agent of SOE to have a baby while working in France during the war. The father was her organiser (leader), Claude de Baissac. The couple later married but never lived together. Early life Herbert was born in Ireland, the daughter of Brigadier General Edmund Herbert. She had a university degree in art and spoke French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Arabic. At the outbreak of the war, Herbert was working in the British Embassy in Warsaw. Later she was a civilian translator in the Air Ministry in London. 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. Herbert was the first WAAF officer to volunteer for the SOE. At 39 years of age, she was older than the average SOE female agent. She was tall and slender with fair hair, very religious, and had the virtue, in the view of SOE, of being inconspicuous. Special Operations Executive Herbert trained as a courier with the second group of SOE women agents, including Odette Sansom, Jacqueline Nearne and Lise de Baissac. Following her training, she travelled by submarine from England to Gibraltar, and then by felucca, landing on the southern coast of France the night of 31 October 1942. She met with other SOE agents in Cannes and then proceeded onward by train to Bordeaux where she met with de Baissac, the leader of the Scientist network of SOE. Scientist was one of SOE's most promising networks, organizing and arming resistance groups and carrying out intelligence operations in a large area of southwestern France. As a courier Herbert traveled widely by bicycle and train, liaising with the different groups of the French Resistance, carrying messages, documents, money, and wireless parts, acting as a post-office box for the members of the network, and seeking out