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Section Officer NOOR (Nora) INAYAT-KHAN

Service Number: 9901
Regiment & Unit/Ship

Women's Auxiliary Air Force

Date of Death

Died 13 September 1944

Buried or commemorated at

RUNNYMEDE MEMORIAL

Panel 243.

United Kingdom

Commonwealth War Graves Commission - Headstone Placeholder
  • Secondary Unit, Regiment seconded to W.T.S. (F.A.N.Y.), attd. Special Operations Executive
  • Country of Service United Kingdom
  • Awards George Cross, Mentioned in Despatches
  • Additional Info (Served as Nora). Daughter of Mrs. O. R. Inayat-Khan, of Oxford.
  • Additional Citation note

    The London Gazette of 5th April, 1949, gives the following details: Assistant Section Officer Nora Inayat-Khan was the first woman operator to be sent into enemy-occupied France, on 16th June, 1943. During the weeks immediately following her arrival, the Gestapo made mass arrests among the Paris Resistance Groups, to which she was detailed. She refused to abandon what had become the most important and dangerous post in France, and did excellent work which earned her a posthumous Mention in Despatches. After three and a half months she was betrayed to the Gestapo. They asked her to co-operate in the use of her codes which they discovered, but she refused and gave them no information of any kind. She twice attempted to escape, and when she refused to promise not to make any further attempts, she was sent to Germany "for safe custody"-first to Karlsruhe, then to Pfersheim, where again she refused to give any information as to her work or her colleagues. On 12th September, 1944 she was taken with three others to Dachau concentration camp, where on arrival she was taken into the crematorium and shot. Assistant Section Officer Inayat-Khan displayed the most conspicuous courage, both moral and physical, over a period of more than twelve months.

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Buried or commemorated at