Churchill ordered: 'Set Europe ablaze!'

So, the Special Operations Executive, formed in June 1940, tasked agents with sabotage and subversion behind enemy lines. And 75 of its most renowned spies were women - 16 of whom made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom

- By Clare Mulley

IN December 1939 a "flaming Polish patriot... expert skier and great adventuress", according to British secret service records, submitted a bold plan to ski into German-occupied Poland. The men laughed when Krystyna Skarbek demanded, rather than volunteered, to be taken on.

Agents were expected to be both British and male. Yet Britain needed to make contact with the Polish resistance - and Skarbek not only spoke the language, she was very well-connected.

She even knew secret mountain ski-routes because, as a bored countess, she had once smuggled cigarettes over the border passes just for the thrill. Too useful to ignore, the British signed her up. "She is absolutely fearless," that first report concluded, although someone would later pencil in the margins: "She terrifies me."

Skarbek, also known as Christine Granville, was not only the first woman to serve Britain as a special agent during the Second World War, she would also become our longest-serving agent, male or female, and among the most effective.

Having established contact with the Poles, she repeatedly smuggled out microfilm of military intelligence hidden inside her gloves. In the spring of 1941, she brought out film-footage of preparations for Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Soviet-held territory when Hitler betrayed his former ally Stalin.

This was so explosive that when it reached Winston Churchill, he told his daughter that Skarbek was his "favourite spy".

But her successes were one of several factors that eventually overturned British policy against deploying women on or behind enemy front lines.

After the fall of France in June 1940, Britain established a pioneering organisation to support the resistance there and eventually across the world. The Special Operations Executive, or SOE, established that July, was launched with Churchill's famous order to "set Europe ablaze".