​​Special Operations Executive Finishing School, Beaulieu​

​​The school was established early in 1941 in response to Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s call to "set Europe ablaze". The agents who completed the final stage of their training here were transported in covered transport to prevent the school from falling into enemy hands if an agent was captured.

​The agents spent varied amounts of time at the school, depending on their needs and final training. Types of training conducted ranged from sabotage and burglary to intelligence gathering and silent killing.

​The SOE used both men and women for espionage, since it was thought that women had a better chance of not being detected once deployed in the field. By the end of the Second World War, about 3,000 agents had completed the training. Some of the agents who were trained at Beaulieu have become famous, and their stories are well-known.

​Answering the call from the Admiralty for civilians to submit postcards of the French cost, French-born Odette Sansom wrote a letter and posted it to the War Office in error. This resulted in her coming to the attention of the SOE in 1942. Odette was deployed in France in late 1942 to make contact with the French Resistance and create safe houses for other agents. In 1943, she was captured by a German ‘Abwehr’ agent posing as a defector. She was imprisoned at Ravensbrück Concentration Camp for the remainder of the war. Odette survived and was awarded the George Cross for her wartime service.

​French-born Violette Szabo joined the Women’s Land Army in early 1940, before returning to London to work in arms factories. It is unclear how she was recruited by the SOE, but in July she was given security clearance before being selected for field training. Violette was deployed in France twice, in April and June 1944. While on her second mission, she was captured at a roadblock near Salon-la-Tour. She was imprisoned in Ravensbrück and executed on 5 February 1945. She was posthumously awarded the George Cross for her wartime service.