Andrée Borrel

In 1985, SOE agent and painter Brian Stonehouse, who saw Borrel and the three other female SOE agents at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp just before their deaths, painted a poignant watercolour of the four women which now hangs in the Special Forces Club in London.

On 13 May 1944, Borrel along with three other captured female SOE agents, Vera Leigh, Sonia Olschanezky and Diana Rowden, were moved from Fresnes to 84 Avenue Foch along with four other women whose names were Yolande Beekman, Madeleine Damerment, Eliane Plewman and Odette Sansom, all of whom were F Section agents. Later that day they were taken to the railway station, and each handcuffed to a guard upon boarding the train. Sansom, in an interview after the war, said:

Between five and six in the morning on 6 July 1944, not quite two months after their arrival in Karlsruhe prison, Borrel, Leigh, Olschanezky and Rowden were taken to the reception room, given their personal possessions, and escorted by two Gestapo men 100 kilometres south-west by closed truck to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in France, where they arrived around three-thirty in the afternoon. The women's arrival was apparently unexpected as was the order by one of the women's escorts that the four women were to be executed immediately.

Suttill initially did not wish to have Borrel work with him because "as a married man" he "might find the enforced proximity a strain." However, SOE insisted she was the best person to serve as his courier. She became more than that. Suttill's French was not flawless and Borrel accompanied him everywhere on their tour, posing as his sister and doing most of the talking. The two of them had cover stories as salesmen for agricultural products. They had success in finding many recruits for resistance groups and farm fields suitable for clandestine landings of airplanes and drops of containers of arms. Borrel, Suttill, and the radio operator, Gilbert Norman, became an inseparable trio. Borrel and Norman became lovers. They were a pair in contrast. He was handsome, "upper-caste", and rich. She was "shrewd and common". Whilst working in Prosper she took part in a wide range of activities including the creation of circuits in Paris and northern France, sabotage, weapons training, and supervising weapons drops. Suttill was impressed with Borrel's performance. In a note to SOE in March 1943, Suttill wrote:

German suppression of Prosper began in April 1943. On 23 and 24 June 1943, the Sicherheitsdienst, the intelligence agency of the SS based at 84 Avenue Foch in Paris and headed by Major Josef Kieffer, struck at Prosper's leadership. Borrel, Norman, and Suttill were arrested. Hundreds of others, including both French helpers and SOE agents, were also arrested in the ensuing months. Borrel was interrogated, but according to one author exhibited a fearless contempt for her captors, maintaining "a silence so disdainful that the Germans did not attempt to break it." Later transferred to the Fresnes Prison, Borrel smuggled out notes to her mother written on cigarette paper hidden in lingerie she sent her sister for washing. Most messages were to reassure her mother and request items like a notebook and hairpins, ending with many kisses. Borrel's mother and sister lived in Paris.

In September 1942, Borrel was one of the first two female agents of SOE to arrive in France by parachute. Based in Paris, she became a member of the SOE's Prosper network in occupied France where she worked as a courier. Prosper was SOE's largest and most important network in France and Borrel was an important figure in its leadership. She was arrested by the Gestapo in June 1943. She was subsequently executed in July 1944 at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.

At the beginning of August 1941, Borrel and Dufour established the Villa Rene-Therese in Canet-plage, on the Mediterranean coast just outside Perpignan near the Spanish border. This became the Pat Line's last safe house (before the hard and dangerous route over the Pyrénées), an escape network established by Albert Guérisse (supported by MI9), which helped British airmen shot down over France, SOE agents, Jews and others escape German controlled France. The villa proved too small and at the beginning of October they rented the Villa Anita. Toward the end of December the escape network had been compromised by the Germans. Borrel and Dufour found other accommodation to avoid arrest until eventually escaping over the Pyrénées in mid-February to Spain and from there to Portugal, where they flew to England (Dufour on 29 March 1942 and Borrel on 24 April 1942).

Borrel had wanted to join the Free French Forces but they were not enthusiastic about French citizens who had worked with the British (who were deeply involved in the escape network Borrel had been working with), and were not interested in Borrel as she refused to divulge information about all her prior activities. Borrel was subsequently approached by the Special Operations Executive and joined it on 15 May 1942.

On the night of 25 September 1942 (the night after their parachute drop was aborted due to the signals in the drop zone being incorrect), Borrel ("Denise") and Lise de Baissac ("Odile") became the first female SOE agents to be parachuted into occupied France, as part of operation "Whitebeam" to set up resistance networks in Paris and Northern France (circuits and sub-circuits). They were flown in from RAF Tempsford. Borrel dropped first, while they both landed in a field near the village of Mer, not far from the river Loire, about 160 km (99 mi) southeast of Paris, and were picked up by members of a local resistance team. Years later de Baissac recalled the experience:

Because of Borrel's familiarity with Paris, it was natural that she be sent there to work as a courier for the new "Prosper" circuit to be led by Francis Suttill (officially named "Physician" but unofficially called "Prosper" after Suttill's codename). In early October 1942, Suttill and Borrel met in a Paris cafe she knew. With information supplied them by Germaine Tambour of the Carte network, Suttill and Borrell embarked on a tour of northern France to begin creating and organizing groups to resist the German occupation. They had early success and on 17/18 November Suttill, Borrel, Yvonne Rudellat, and newly-arrived wireless operator, Gilbert Norman, received near Étrépagny a parachute drop of containers with weapons for the resistance. It was the first of many over the next few months.

The Prosper network grew rapidly, and, in the words of M.R.D. Foot, "its growth made catastrophe certain." The German occupiers were paying attention. In November 1942, a German agent stole a list of the names of more than 200 supporters of the resistance group called the Carte network. Prosper engaged many of the same people on the list in building its resistance networks. The Germans did not take immediate action to suppress the resistors, but bided their time. The rapid growth of Prosper and the large number of people associated with the network, including nearly 30 SOE agents sent from Britain, resulted in loose security. At least 10 SOE agents used the apartment of Geraldine Tambour as a safe house and letter drop, violating SOE doctrine to avoid face-to-face contact among agents. One radio operator, Jack Agazarian, claimed to have transmitted messages for 24 different agents, again violating SOE doctrine. SOE agents in groups frequented restaurants specializing in black market luxuries. Moreover, a double agent, Henri Déricourt, was providing information to the Germans about Prosper.

When World War II broke out Borrel went to work with the Red Cross to volunteer her services. She enrolled in a crash course in nursing that she completed on 20 January 1940, which qualified her to serve as a nurse in the Association des Dames Françaises. First at Hôpital Compliméntaire in Nîmes in early February, though Borrel was sent back 15 days later following a decree that nurses under the age of 21 were not allowed to serve in hospitals. This decree was revoked a few days later and she was sent to the Hôpital de Beaucaire in Beaucaire. One of Borrel's co-workers there was Lieutenant Maurice Dufour, and when the hospital was closed they were both sent to Hôpital Compliméntaire. Towards the end of July that hospital was to be closed and, at the request of Dufour, Borrel was allowed to resign from this quasi-military institution, after which she immediately went to work with Dufour for the Pat Line, an underground organisation which Dufour was involved in.

Her father (Louis) died when she was 11, and to help support her family Borrel left school at 14 to work for a dress designer. When she was 16, her family moved to Paris, where Borrel spent two years as a shop assistant in Boulangerie Pajo, a bakery. After this she worked at the Bazar d'Amsterdam as a shop assistant which allowed her to have Sundays off so she could enjoy her passion for cycling. In October 1939, Borrel's mother (Eugenie) was advised to move to a warmer climate for her health, so took Andrée and her sister to Toulon on the Mediterranean coast where they had family friends.

Andrée Raymonde Borrel (18 November 1919 – 6 July 1944), code named Denise, was a French woman who served in the French Resistance and as an agent for Britain's clandestine Special Operations Executive in World War II. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany. SOE agents allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England.