Marcel Jaurant-Singer joined the French Resistance in 1941. In 1942, he was sent across the Pyrenees and was transported – with the help of Allied operatives – to England, where he would be trained as a Special Operations Executive (SOE). Upon arrival in England, Marcel was sent to Commando training in Scotland, before returning to England to complete his wireless training at Thame park – he managed all this despite not speaking a word of English. In March 1944, Marcel was parachuted back into France where he quickly established an undercover network. Marcel goes on to recount his life as a wireless operator, outlining the cat and mouse game of avoiding detection by German troops – including the need to cycle up to 60km per day! Marcel’s contact with London in the build up to D-Day resulted in him taking charge of arming and training 350 men to prepare for the invasion. He talks in detail of how they used the existing infrastructure of secret caves and hills from WW1 to carry out these operations. Marcel’s interview ends with a brief discussion of his experience working alongside female SOE agents. This completes a fascinating insight into the structure of secret operations in occupied France and the development of French resistance forces in the build-up to D-Day.

Joyce experienced bombing in WW2 and her mother had a narrow escape. At nineteen, in 1947, she joined the WAAF and trained in air traffic control and radar. The Airlift started the day that Joyce was posted to Germany, and she was initially ambivalent and apprehensive about helping the Germans, due to wartime events. She had never been abroad before and found the experience quite daunting. When she arrived in Germany she became aware of the deprivation that the population were experiencing and how they too were bombed. At the RAF HQ in Ahnsen she worked as a ‘Hoe Girl’ using a table-top hoe to plot the movement of aircraft during the Airlift and this task demanded a high level of accuracy. As well as this duty she worked in communications, relaying messages from aircraft to officers. There were three air ‘corridors’ to Berlin differentiated by height, with an aircraft landing every three to four minutes. The work was hard and constant, with leave once a month, when she and her colleagues were sent to a hotel and during this period she met her husband to be, who was also working on the base. During her time overseas she met Germans of her age and spoke to them about Nazism and the Hitler Youth. They said it was like the British Scouts and tried to explain their enthusiasm for Hitler. These young Germans professed to have no knowledge of the Holocaust, partly because they lived in the countryside.