KS2 History: Noor Inayat Khan

My name is Jeanne-Marie Regnier. Jeanne-Marie Regnier. Of course, I have my ID documents to prove it…

This is Paris. 1943. It’s World War Two. The Germans have taken over France. And they’re looking for me.

I’m the only one of my spy group left in the whole country.

My real name… my real name is Noor Inayat Khan. I’ll tell you my story…

I had a wonderful childhood. My father was from an Indian royal family. He was a musician, and he taught people about our religion – Sufi Islam. My mother was American. I was born in 1914. We lived in London, and then in Paris.

I grew up playing Indian music and writing poetry. I never thought I would end up in a war.But when I was 25, the German army invaded France, and I had to make a choice.

Sufism is a religion of non-violence. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, but I felt strongly that what the Germans were doing was wrong…

So I chose to go back to England, and I joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.I trained to become a radio operator, sending and receiving messages over long distances.And then I was asked if I wanted to do a more difficult job – to work as a secret agent.

In occupied France, there were many people secretly working against the Germans.Britain needed to be able to communicate with them – and the only way to do that was to have secret radio operators in France. Of course, they had to be people who spoke perfect French – like me.

I knew that it would be a very dangerous job. But I agreed, and started my training - in how to send messages in code, how to make contact with other secret agents, and most importantly, how to stay hidden.

In June 1943, I was flown into France, in a plane that was small enough to not be detected by the enemy. Using my false identity – Jeanne-Marie Regnier – I travelled to Paris, met up with someone from the secret organisation, and set up a radio link with London.

But my contacts in London weren’t the only ones listening for radio signals coming from Paris.

The German secret police were always listening out too. They were trying to hunt down any enemy spies. They had men driving around the city with radio detector vans, which could zero in on the position of a transmitter. That meant that I could never broadcast for more than 20 minutes.

And I had to keep moving around. A radio transmitter was a heavy piece of equipment – I had to lug it around in a suitcase, or a pram to disguise it.

I think I knew that I’d never make it home again…

The Germans caught somebody in my secret group. They forced her to talk. The other agents who’d been sent out from London were all captured. I was the only radio operator left. And they were hunting for me night and day! I kept moving, and I kept transmitting – for months. But in the end… they got me.

They tried to make me talk. I wouldn’t. I escaped but they caught me again. They transferred me to a prison in Germany. And in September 1944, they had me executed.

But they didn't make me forget who I was, or why I was trying to stop them. Someone else in the prison that day said he heard my final word – ‘Liberté!’ - ‘freedom’.