They Also Serve: An SOE Agent in the WRNS - Hardcover

"They Also Serve" is a fascinating account of one woman's experiences during World War Two within the Special Operations Executive and the WRNS. At the Scandinavian Section of the SOE Dorothy Baden-Powell was engaged in sending Norwegian saboteurs into occupied Norway and debriefing them on their return to London. After spending a year and a half with the SOE, at the age of twenty-one, she was given an assignment in the WRNS to try to break a ring of enemy spies. They were based on HMS Raleigh, a naval training camp at Plymouth and were sending information to Germany about the movements of British warships from nearly every port in the United Kingdom. She had already sniffed out one spy - a pro-German Norwegian naval officer - at the SOE. Charles Hambro, Chief of the Scandinavian Section of the SOE (as well as Chairman of Hambro's Bank) had put Dorothy Baden-Powell forward for the assignment but neither he nor she had much idea just what was involved. During those three months she endured the privations of life on the lower deck, assaults by drunken sailors ashore, the unwelcome scrutiny of a particularly unpleasant WRNS Superintendent, and a trumped-up charge and subsequent court-martial. Finally, once Dorothy Baden-Powell had been drafted to HMS Raleigh she uncovered an enemy agent trying to be taken on as a sailor, and, by a combination of bravery, sheer determination and luck, she narrowly managed to avoid being murdered and to succeed in having him captured. With her assignment successfully completed she gladly returned to her job with the SOE. "They Also Serve" is a remarkable story of bravery and dedication and, moreover, is a tribute to all those men and women who served their country during the Second World War.

Dorothy Baden-Powell was born in 1920, a great granddaughter of Christian Salvesen, founder of Christian Salvesen, PLC. She was in Norway when the war broke out in 1939 and returned to England. She served in the Finnish legation during the Russo-Finnish War. She later moved to the Foreign Office, where she worked in the German section of the Political Intelligence Department, and was transferred from there to the Special Operations Executive in July 1940. Towards the end of 1941 she was seconded to the WRNS. She now divides her time between London and Ireland. She has four children and ten grandchildren. Hale also published her earlier books Pimpernel Gold and Operation Jupiter.