![]() ![]() As we follow her through the devastation of postwar Germany, we learn Atkins herself covered her life in mystery so that even her closest family knew almost nothing of her past. But as the woman who carried out this astonishing search appeared quintessentially English, Atkins was nothing of the sort. ![]() When the war ended in 1945, she made it her personal mission to find out what happened to them and the other agents lost behind enemy lines, tracing rigorously their horrific final journeys. Talese/ Doubleday Reviewed by William Grimes In 1941, with its back against the wall. ![]() Twelve of these were women and among Atkins’s most cherished spies. A Life in Secrets Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII By Sarah Helm 493 pages. Throughout the war, Atkins recruited, trained, and mentored the agents for the SOE’s French Section, which sent more than four hundred young men and women into occupied France-at least one hundred of whom never returned and were reported “Missing Presumed Dead” after the war. In A LIFE IN SECRETS Sarah Helm has stripped away Veras many veils and - with unprecedented access to official and private papers, and the cooperation of Veras relatives - vividly reconstructed an extraordinary life. Once rumored to have been the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s Miss Moneypenny, Vera Atkins climbed her way to the top in the Special Operations Executive, or SOE: Britain’s secret service created to help build up, organize, and arm the resistance in the Nazi-occupied countries. ![]()
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