She Landed By Moonlight

Product Description

On the night of the 22 September 1943 Pearl Witherington a twenty-nine-year-old British secretary & agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) was parachuted from a Halifax bomber into Occupied France. Like Sebastian Faulks heroine Charlotte Gray Pearl had a dual mission: in her case to fight for her beloved broken France & to find her lost love. Pearls lover was a Parisian parfumier turned soldier Henri Cornioley who had been taken prisoner while serving in the French Logistics Corps & subsequently escaped from his German POW camp. Agent Pearl Witheringtons wartime record is unique & heroic. As the only woman agent in the history of SOEs in France to have run a network she became a fearless & legendary guerrilla leader organising arming & training 3 800 Resistance fighters. Probably the greatest female organiser of armed maquisards in France the woman whom her young troops called Ma M?re Pearl lit the fires of Resistance in Central France so that Churchills famous order to set Europe ablaze which had brought SOE into being finally came to pass. Pearls story takes us from her harsh impoverished childhood in Paris to the lonely forests & farmhouses of the Loir-et-Cher where she would become a true warrior queen. Shortly before Pearls death in 2008 the Queen presented her with a CBE in Paris. While male agents & Special Force Jedburghs received the DSO or Military Cross an ungrateful country had forgotten Pearl. She had been offered a civilian decoration in 1945 which she refused saying There was nothing civil about what I did. But what pleased her most was to receive her Parachute Wings for which she had waited over 60 years. Two RAF officers travelled to her old peoples home & she was finally able to pin the coveted wings on her lapel. Pearl died in February 2008 aged 93.