One major contribution by the FANY to the work of the SOE was in Communications, in both Signals and Cipher departments, where they received intensive training on Morse code.

Another major contribution was the FANY agents in the field: they worked mainly in France.

Thirty-nine of the 50 women sent into France were FANYs, of whom 13 were captured and murdered by the Gestapo.

Emma Mackey, dressed in 1940s French civilian costume, reads an extract from an interview with Agent Yvonne Cormeau.

"After my husband was killed in November 1940 I joined up the WAAF and I put my little girl in a school in the country.

"I had declared to them that I spoke German, Spanish and that I was fluent in French. This filtered through the Ministry and suddenly I was being interrogated to see if I was suitable for the SOE, I joined them in 1943.

"After extensive radio operator training I was parachuted into France on the 22nd August, north-east of Bordeaux.

"The reception committee consisted of five men from the resistance. Over the next year I hid in villages with no water, and was shot at by the gestapo, then one day myself and my group leader, codenamed Hilaire had our closest run in.

"We were told that Germans were getting closer to where we were based, that they were coming from the two roads from the east and the west, so we took one due south hoping to escape them; we hadn’t gone 15 Kilometres when we came face to face with one personnel carrier.

"They stopped us and told to get out of the car, then they put us in the ditch, with two soldiers in between us, both had a pistol, one in my back, one in Llias back.

"The soldier in charge was telling somebody on the radio that he had stopped a tobacco inspector and a woman, the woman had a district nurse card on her and what was he to do with them. We waited and waited, my perspiration was coming down, the flies were sticking to it.

"I couldn’t move because if we moved they would’ve shot immediately, therefore we waited. Then the crackle came up again on his radio.

"He told the two soldiers to go away and he told us “get in the car” which we did at once. Then he suddenly asked me what was in the case that had been thrown on the backseat, which of course was my radio set.

"I knelt on the seat and opened it for him, he asked me what it was and I said a German word that meant radio as well as X-ray and due to the fact that I had a district nurse card, he assumed it meant X-ray and let us get out. So we got out very fast, the engine was already running."