Women of the War: Noor Inayat Khan

In honor of the second book in my Evelyne Redfern mystery series, Betrayal at Blackthorn Park, coming out on October 1, I’m publishing a series of articles focusing on some of the incredible women of the British espionage effort during World War II.

On paper, Noor Inayat Khan should have been one of the most unlikely spies of World War II. However, an inherent steeliness in her personality led her to defy her superiors and continue working as the sole Allied wireless radio operator in Paris at the height of the war. Now she is celebrated as one of the most well-known female Special Operations Executive (SOE) operators thanks to her incredible self-sacrifice and her dangerous work.

Born on New Year’s Day in 1914, Khan was the eldest daughter of Hazrat Inayat Khan and Amina Sharada Begum (originally known as Ora Ray Baker). As well as being a musician, Hazrat Inayat Khan was a Sufi leader and founder of the Inayati Order. For at time, the family was based in Moscow, where Hazrat performed, before moving to Britain and then to France.

Hon. Assistant Section Officer Noor Inayat Khan (code name Madeleine), 1943

Although Khan grew up as a pacifist much like her father, when Germany began to invade its neighbors, Khan felt compelled to act. She enrolling as a trainee Red Cross nurse in France. However, when Germany invaded that country in the spring of 1940, she and her family only narrowly escaped by boarding one of the last boats to evacuate British citizens.

In Britain, Khan enlisted in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAFs). She was not British, and she told her recruitment officers that when the war ended she would campaign for Indian independence. However, she was accepted into the service and selected to train as a wireless operator. Then, in October 1942, she was recruited by the SOE, likely for her radio skills and her fluency in English, French, Spanish, and German.

While Khan excelled at all aspects of radio operation, there were concerns about how well she would hold up in the field. Her superiors believed she was too “childlike” to be an agent, and she frightened easily. One of her officers recalled her reaction when she was put through the paces in a mock interrogation:

She was so overwhelmed, nearly lost her voice. As it went on she became practically inaudible. Sometimes there was only a whisper. When she came out afterwards, she was trembling and quite blanched.

However, after completing her training in 1943, the 29-year-old Khan was given the code name Madeleine and parachuted to Occupied Paris where wireless operators were desperately needed. On the ground, she became the first female wireless operator stationed in France.

She initially made contact with PROSPER, a network set up to bring British arms into France to support the French Resistance. However, ten days after Khan arrived, a double agent betrayed PROSPER and almost all of the high-level members of the network were arrested. The SOE encouraged Khan to return to Britain, but she refused, continuing to broadcast. Soon she became the only active wireless operator providing an intelligence link between Paris and Britain.

Khan was constantly in danger when she operating in Paris. Because the Germans were aware that there was an active wireless operator working for the Allies, she spent her life on the run. This meant zipping around on a bicycle, hanging her conspicuous aerial wherever it might be reasonably hidden, transmitting her information, and quickly breaking her radio down before the Gestapo could track her signal and capture her. She broadcast information about drops of arms and money, as well as the status of the resistance networks. She is also believed to have been “instrumental in facilitating the escape of 30 Allied airmen shot down in FRANCE,” according to a posthumous commendation.

Khan’s bravery was unquestionable. Wireless radios were large and bulky, and not discreet even when broken down into their component parts. One story goes that she was riding the Metro in Paris when she was stopped by two German officers who wanted a look at her case. She told them that her radio was a film projector, and even opened it up to let them see. Amazingly, they didn’t recognize the radio in front of them or that the woman they were speaking to was Agent Madeleine.

Ultimately, Khan was betrayed by another woman who sold Khan’s address to the Germans. On October 13, 1943, she was arrested at her apartment by the Gestapo. Not only did they find her transmitter, but they also found a school copybook in which she’d meticulously recorded all of her transmissions and security checks. This was directly against SOE orders, although there is some dispute about whether she misunderstood the SOE instruction, “Be very careful in the filing of your messages” to mean recording them down rather than transmitting, or “filing” them. Either way, the German’s would go on to use her notebook to transmit messages as her until early 1944 when the SOE realized that something was amiss.

Khan tried multiple times to escape from her prison in Paris but each time was captured and returned to her cell. Eventually she was taken to Pforzheim, a German prison, where she was badly mistreated and spent most of her days heavily shackled.

On September 11, 1944, she and three other female prisoners were sent to Dauchau. Two days later, Khan and the other women were executed. Her last reported word was, “Liberte.”

No one knew what happened to the operative known as Madeleine until after the war when Vera Atkins, who had worked with Khan in the SOE, went searching for the agents who had gone missing in the war. Atkins realized that Khan had been mistakenly identified as a woman who had actually been killed at Natzweiler. Atkins was able to learn the truth of Khan’s death and inform the War Office which, in turn, told her family.

Khan was posthumously honored with an MBE, the British George Cross, and the French Croix de Guerre with gold star. Although her months operating in France were short, the information she was able to broadcast was considered invaluable during a time of extreme danger. Her incredible bravery and dedication to the cause is as remarkable as her death was tragic.

Today she is remembered with a memorial bust of Khan—the first dedicated to an Asian woman—stands in Gordon Square in the Bloomsbury neighborhood of in London, as well as a number of plaques and other commemoration across Britain.