27 Facts About Diana Rowden

Diana Hope Rowden served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and was an agent for the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive during World War II.

Diana Rowden was executed at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.

When living in France Mrs Diana Rowden was known to locals, according to her sister, as "the mad Englishwoman".

Diana Rowden was", she thought later, "too mature for us.

Diana Rowden was already adult, and withdrawn from our diversions; none of us, I think, ever knew her.

In 1933, when Diana Rowden was considered sufficiently educated, if not entirely finished, she returned to France with her mother and enrolled at the Sorbonne, and tried her hand at freelance journalism.

Diana Rowden first came to the attention of the Special Operations Executive when Harry Sporborg, a senior SOE staff member, saw her file and requested that she be appointed his secretary, but she had already joined the WAAF and began military training.

Diana Rowden was officially posted to Air Intelligence 10, actually seconded to SOE, on 18 March 1943, and immediately sent off to training.

Diana Rowden's instructor found her "very conscientious" and "a pleasant student to instruct".

Diana Rowden had trouble with technical details and her signalling was described as a grief to herself and others, not worth while persevering with as it only discourages her.

Diana Rowden hates being beaten by any subject, so must have got through a lot of hate down here.

Diana Rowden was bound to the area of the Jura Mountains south-east of Dijon and just west of the Swiss border to work for the organizer of the Acrobat circuit, led by John Renshaw Starr.

Diana Rowden's papers were in her cover name of Juliette Therese Rondeau.

Diana Rowden lived in a small room at the back of the Hotel du Commerce with access to a roof if she had to leave in a hurry without being seen.

Young was a Scotsman who spoke poor French, so Diana Rowden's duties included escorting him around so he would not have to speak French.

Diana Rowden went out at night to meet local members of the resistance in the moonlit fields, setting flares and shining flashlights to guide in the planes with parachute drops of arms, ammunition and explosives.

Barely a month after her arrival, Starr was arrested, betrayed by a double agent who had infiltrated the circuit, so Young and Diana Rowden were on the run.

Diana Rowden briefly sheltered in a little bistro and shop at Epy.

Since her description had likely been distributed, Diana Rowden dyed her hair and changed the way she wore it, got rid of the clothes she had been wearing and borrowed some others.

Diana Rowden dropped the codename Paulette and assumed the name Marcelle.

Diana Rowden helped around the house while the Juif children loved her as she joined in their games and went tobogganing with them down the log slide outside the house, and to Madame Juif she seemed as tough as a man and as tireless as a child.

Diana Rowden liked to say that after the war she would return in her uniform and in a big American car and, instead of the laborious climb to the chateau on foot, they would shoot up the hill like a rocket.

From Lons, Diana Rowden had been taken to Paris the next day and remained at Gestapo headquarters in the Avenue Foch for two weeks and, on 5 December 1943, was placed in a cell in the women's division of Fresnes Prison, the grey fortress-like penitentiary a few miles south of Paris.

Some time between five and six in the morning on 6 July 1944, not quite two months after their arrival in Karlsruhe, Borrel, Leigh, Olschanezky and Diana Rowden were taken to the reception room, given their personal possessions, and handed over to two Gestapo men who then escorted them 100 kilometres south-west by closed truck to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in France, where they arrived around three-thirty in the afternoon.

Diana Rowden exchanged a few words with another of the women, who said she was English before she disappeared into the cellblock building.

Diana Rowden's name is registered with the Scottish National War Memorial in Edinburgh Castle, at the Runnymede Memorial in Surrey, England, on the FANY memorial at St Paul's Knightsbridge, London, on the "Roll of Honour" on the Valencay SOE Memorial in the town of Valencay, in the Indre departement of France, and on the "Roll of Honour" in Limpsfield, Surrey.

Diana Rowden is commemorated on the Tempsford Memorial in the village of Tempsford in the county of Bedfordshire in the East of England and on the town war memorial in Moreton-in-Marsh.