Yvonne Cormeau, born Beatrice Yvonne Biesterfeld, code name Annette, was an agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine organisation, the Special Operations Executive, in World War II.
38 Facts About Yvonne Cormeau
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Yvonne Cormeau was the wireless operator for the Wheelwright network led by George Starr in south west France from August 1943 until the liberation of France from Nazi German occupation in September 1944.
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SOE cryptographer Leo Marks said that in more than 400 transmissions Yvonne Cormeau never made a single mistake.
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Yvonne Cormeau survived an unusually long time for wireless operators who were vulnerable to detection and capture by the German occupiers.
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Yvonne Cormeau was a recipient of the Order of the British Empire from the United Kingdom and the Legion of Honour and Croix de Guerre from France.
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Beatrice Yvonne Cormeau Biesterfeld was born in 1909 to a Belgian consular official and Scottish mother.
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Yvonne Cormeau was living in London when in 1937 she married Charles Emile Cormeau, a chartered accountant.
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Yvonne Cormeau's husband enlisted in The Rifle Brigade and in 1940 he was wounded in France and was sent back to the UK.
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Yvonne Cormeau's life was saved by a bathtub which fell over her head and protected her, although killing her unborn baby.
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Yvonne Cormeau sent her two-year-old daughter Yvette to the countryside to escape the frequent bombing of London.
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Newly widowed, Yvonne Cormeau decided to "take her husband's place in the Armed Forces" and she joined the WAAF as an administrator in November 1941.
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Yvonne Cormeau was promoted to the rank of Flight Officer.
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Yvonne Cormeau placed her in a convent of Ursuline nuns in Oxfordshire where she remained until she was five.
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Yvonne Cormeau did her SOE training with Yolande Beekman and Noor Inayat Khan.
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Yvonne Cormeau was the only one of the three to survive her mission to France.
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Yvonne Cormeau's assignment was to work as the wireless operator on the SOE F Section Wheelwright circuit in Gascony.
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Yvonne Cormeau declined to take with her the cyanide pill offered by SOE to agents so they could commit suicide if captured.
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Yvonne Cormeau was a talented and accurate wireless operator, being able to transmit 18 to 22 words per minute in Morse code, compared with the 12 words per minute of the average operator.
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Yvonne Cormeau preferred to use a battery as she believed it was harder for the Germans to locate the source of the transmission and because the villages in which she worked often lacked electricity.
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Yvonne Cormeau carried the crystals for the machine and the codes separately in a hidden pocket of her briefcase.
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Yvonne Cormeau preferred to use codes written on silk handkerchiefs rather than more cumbersome one-time pads made of paper.
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Yvonne Cormeau was scheduled to do three wireless transmissions a week, which involved coding and decoding messages.
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Yvonne Cormeau identified herself as a district nurse, thus giving her a reason for moving from place to place if stopped by Germans or the French police, the Milice, to check her papers.
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Yvonne Cormeau was almost arrested by the Germans after being betrayed by an agent codenamed Rodolph.
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Yvonne Cormeau was stopped at a German roadblock with Starr; the pair was questioned while a gun was held to their backs.
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Yvonne Cormeau now transmitted several times a day and she stayed for lengthy periods in one place, the hilltop village of Castelnau-sur-l'Auvignon, the headquarters of George Starr.
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Yvonne Cormeau could see for three miles from the window where she worked, which was one safeguard; a more effective one was that there was no running water in the village, so the Germans who knew there was an English wireless operator somewhere close by never thought of looking for her there.
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Yvonne Cormeau made arrangements for arms and supplies to be dropped for the local Maquis.
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Yvonne Cormeau assisted in the cutting of the power and telephone lines, resulting in the isolation of the Wehrmacht Group G garrison near Toulouse.
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In June 1944, Yvonne Cormeau was shot in the leg while escaping from a German attack on Castelnau, but managed to escape with her wireless.
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Starr and Yvonne Cormeau drove into the city, American and British flags on their car.
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Yvonne Cormeau then worked as a translator and in the SOE section at the Foreign Office.
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Yvonne Cormeau became a linchpin of F Section veterans and arranged their annual Bastille Day dinner.
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Yvonne Cormeau was one of the earliest members of the Special Forces Club in London and she was a committee member.
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Yvonne Cormeau spent her later years at Tall Pines nursing home, formerly in Gally Hill Road, Fleet, Hampshire.
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Yvonne Cormeau was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1989 when she was surprised by Michael Aspel.
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Yvonne Cormeau was interviewed for the movie Charlotte Gray and described as the "real Charlotte" of the novel and film.
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Yvonne Cormeau was an adviser to the BBC television series Wish Me Luck.