342 Pages
ISBN 978-1-917120-38-8
B&W Images
 
Lilian Rolfe was born and educated in Paris. When her British father, George, was posted to work in Brazil, Lilian, her twin sister, Helen, and mother, Alexandra, went with him to a glamorous lifestyle in Rio de Janeiro.

In 1943 Lilian was one of several hundred volunteers from South American countries to come to Britain to join the war effort. Her dramatic journey involved one of the biggest attacks on an Atlantic convoy by a Wolfpack of German U-boats.

On reaching Britain she joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) and trained as a radio operator. It was this skill, and her fluent French, that then saw her accepted when she again volunteered - for F (French) Section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Further trained as a radio operator and as a secret agent, she was flown to a clandestine landing ground in Nazi-occupied France in April 1944. Captured later that summer, she was deported to the horror of Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany - and to her tragic end.