Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan, GC (1 January 1914 – 13 September 1944), also known as Nora Inayat-Khan and Nora Baker, was a British-Indian agent in France in the Second World War who served in the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in countries occupied by the Axis powers, especially those occupied by Nazi Germany.
As an SOE agent under the codename Madeleine she became the first female wireless operator to be sent from the UK into occupied France to aid the French Resistance during the Second World War. Inayat Khan was betrayed, captured, and executed at Dachau concentration camp. She was posthumously awarded the George Cross for her service, the highest civilian decoration for gallantry in the United Kingdom.
Early life
Noor Inayat Khan was born on 1 January 1914, in Moscow. She was the eldest of four children. Her siblings were Vilayat Inayat Khan, an author and Sufi teacher; Hidayat Inayat Khan, a composer and Sufi teacher; and Khair-un-Nisa Inayat Khan.
Her father, Inayat Khan, was born in Baroda, Bombay Presidency, and came from a family of Indian Muslims with hereditary nobles and classical musicians among both sides of his ancestors. Inayat Khan's great-great-grandfather was Tipu Sultan the ruler of Mysore. Inayat Khan lived in Europe as a musician and a teacher of Sufism. Her mother, Pirani Ameena Begum (born Ora Ray Baker), was an American from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who had met Inayat Khan during his travels in the United States.Ora Baker was the half-sister of American yogi and scholar Pierre Bernard, her guardian at the time that she met Inayat. Claims that Ora Ray Baker was related to Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy require corroboration. Afterwards, Vilayat became head of the Sufi Order of the West, later the Sufi Order International, and now the Inayati Order.
In 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, the family left Russia for Britain, and lived in the Bloomsbury neighborhood of London. Noor attended nursery in Notting Hill. In 1920, the family moved to France, settling in Suresnes near Paris, in a house that was a gift from a benefactor of the Sufi movement. As a young girl, Noor was described as quiet, shy, sensitive, and dreamy. After the death of her father in 1927, 13-year-old Noor took on the responsibility for her younger siblings from her grief-stricken mother. She studied child psychology at the Sorbonne, and also music at the Paris Conservatory under Nadia Boulanger, composing for both harp and piano.
As a young woman, Noor began a career as a writer, publishing her poetry and children's stories in English and French and becoming a regular contributor to children's magazines and French radio. In 1939, her book Twenty Jataka Tales, inspired by the Jataka tales of Buddhist tradition, was published in London by George G. Harrap and Co.Twenty Jataka Tales. Retold from the Pali Jataka and the Jataka-mala by Noor Inayat, and illustrated by H. Willebeek Le Mair, London: George G. Harrap, 1939, worldcat.org. Retrieved 6 September 2020.
During the Second World War, when France was conquered by Nazi Germany, the family fled to Bordeaux and then by sea to Britain, landing at Falmouth, Cornwall, on 22 June 1940. Initially they stayed in Southampton, at the parental home of the philosopher Basil Mitchell.Mitchell's father had been an early disciple of Noor's father.Jean Overton Fuller, Born For Sacrifice (Pan Books, 1957) pp. 43, 56–57.
Women's Auxiliary Air Force Although Noor was deeply influenced by pacifist ideals, she and her brother Vilayat decided they wanted to help defeat Nazi tyranny: "I wish some Indians would win high military distinction in this war. If one or two could do something in the Allied service which was very brave and which everybody admired it would help to make a bridge between the English people and the Indians."
In November 1940, Noor joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) and, as an Aircraftwoman 2nd Class, was sent to be trained as a wireless operator. Upon assignment to a bomber training school in June 1941, she applied for a commission in an effort to relieve herself of the boring work there.
Special Operations Executive
Later, Noor Inayat Khan was recruited to join F (France) Section of the Special Operations Executive; and in early February 1943 she was posted to the Air Ministry, Directorate of Air Intelligence, seconded to the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY). She was sent to Wanborough Manor, near Guildford in Surrey, after which she was ordered to Aylesbury, in Buckinghamshire, for special training as a wireless operator in occupied territory.
She was the first woman to be sent over in such a capacity, as all the woman agents before her had been sent as couriers. Having had previous wireless telegraphy (W/T) training, Noor had an edge on those who were just beginning their radio training, and was considered both fast and accurate.
From Aylesbury, Noor went on to Beaulieu, where the security training was capped with a practice mission – in the case of wireless operators, to find a place in a strange city from which they could transmit back to their instructors without being detected by an agent unknown to them who would be shadowing them.
The ultimate training exercise was the mock Gestapo interrogation, intended to give agents a taste of what might be in store for them if they were captured, and some practice in maintaining their cover story. Noor's escaping officer found her interrogation "almost unbearable" and reported that "she seemed terrified … so overwhelmed she nearly lost her voice", and that afterwards, "she was trembling and quite blanched." Her final reportHer final evaluation report was found in her personal file long after the war by the official historian of F Section. read: "Not overburdened with brains but has worked hard and shown keenness, apart from some dislike of the security side of the course. She has an unstable and temperamental personality and it is very doubtful whether she is really suited to work in the field." Next to this comment, Maurice Buckmaster, the head of F Section, had written in the margin "Nonsense" and that "We don't want them overburdened with brains."
Noor's superiors held mixed opinions on her suitability for secret warfare, and her training was incomplete due to the need to get trained W/T operators into the field. Khan's "childlike" qualities, particularly her gentle manner and "lack of ruse", had greatly worried her instructors at SOE's training schools. One instructor wrote that "she confesses that she would not like to have to do anything 'two faced'", while another said she was "very feminine in character, very eager to please, very ready to adapt herself to the mood of the company; the one of the conversation, capable of strong attachments, kind hearted, emotional, imaginative." A further observer said: "Tends to give far too much information. Came here without the foggiest idea what she was being trained for." Others later commented that she was physically unsuited, saying she would not easily disappear into a crowd.
Physically quite small in stature, Noor received poor athletic reports from her instructors: "Can run very well but otherwise clumsy. Unsuitable for jumping" "Pretty scared of weapons but tries hard to get over it." Noor was training as a W/T operator, and in that field she was getting quite adequate reports. Her "fist", or style of tapping the keys, was somewhat heavy, apparently owing to her fingers being swollen by chilblains, but her speed was improving every day. Khan, who played the harp, was a natural signaller like many talented musicians.
Further, Vera Atkins (the intelligence officer for F Section) insisted Noor's commitment was unquestioned, as another training report had readily confirmed: "She felt she had come to a dead end in the WAAF, and was longing to do something more active in the prosecution of the war, something that would demand more sacrifice." So when Suttill's request first came, Vera saw Noor as a natural choice, and although her final training in field security and encoding had to be cut short, she judged her ready to go.
Noor's mission would be an especially dangerous one. So successful had female couriers been that the decision was made to use them as wireless operators as well, which was even more dangerous work, probably the most dangerous work of all. The job of the operator was to maintain a link between the circuit in the field and London, sending and receiving messages about planned sabotage operations or about where arms were needed for resistance fighters. Without such communication it was almost impossible for any resistance strategy to be co-ordinated, but the operators were highly vulnerable to detection which was improving as the war progressed.
Hiding themselves as best they could, with aerials strung up in attics or disguised as washing lines, they tapped out Morse on the key of transmitters, and would often wait alone for hours for a reply saying the messages had been received. If they stayed on the air transmitting for more than 20 minutes, their signals were likely to be picked up by the enemy, and detection vans would trace the source of these suspect signals. When the operator moved location, the bulky transmitter had to be carried, sometimes concealed in a suitcase or in a bundle of firewood. If stopped and searched, the operator would have no cover story to explain the transmitter. In 1943, an operator's life expectancy was six weeks.
Noor had been staying at a country house in Buckinghamshire, a place where agents had a final chance to adjust to their new identities and consider their missions before departure. Noor's conducting officer, a female companion who watched over agents in training, told Atkins that Noor had descended into a gloom and was clearly troubled by the thought of what she was about to undertake. Then two fellow agents staying with Noor at the country house had written directly to Vera to say they felt she should not go. Such an intervention at this stage was most unusual.
Atkins decided to call Noor back to London, to meet and talk. Vilayat remembered trying to stop his sister going on her mission exactly at the time of this meeting. "You see, Nora and I had been brought up with the policy of Gandhi's nonviolence, and at the outbreak of war we discussed what we would do", said Vilayat, who had followed his father and become a Sufi mystic. "She said, 'Well, I must do something, but I don't want to kill anyone.' So I said, 'Well, if we are going to join the war, we have to involve ourselves in the most dangerous positions, which would mean no killing.' Then, when we eventually go to England, I volunteered for minesweeping and she volunteered for SOE, and so I have always had a feeling of guilt because of what I said that day."
Noor and Atkins met at Manetta's, a restaurant in Mayfair. Atkins wanted to confirm that Noor believed in her own ability to succeed. Confidence was the most important thing for any agent. However poor Noor's jumping or even her encoding, Atkins believed those agents who did well were those who knew before they set off that they could do the job. Her intention was to let Noor feel she had an opportunity to back out gracefully should she so wish. Atkins began by asking if she was happy in what she was doing. Noor looked startled and said: "Yes, of course."