Born just after the end of the First World War in November 1918 in Paris, Andree Borrel was a spirited young woman and Special Operations Executive.

In her youth, Andree was described as a tomboy, fond of cycling, hiking and climbing. Her sister, Leone, described Andree as having the “strength, endurance, and interests of boys”.

The Borrels’ father died when Andree was 11. To help her family, she left school at 14, taking on a variety of roles, such as a dressmaker, boulangerie assistant and shop assistant.

Andree held socialist tendencies. In the 1930s, she travelled to Spain to fight for the Republicans against Nazi-backed Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. By the time she arrived in Spain, however, the war had all but been lost, so Andree returned to France.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Andree volunteered for the Red Cross and worked in numerous hospitals around southern France.

At the Hôpital de Beaucaire, Andree met Lieutenant Maurice Dufour. The pair would work together in hospitals but by July 1942, Maurice had recruited Andree to work on the Pat Line.

The Pat Line was an underground organisation that helped Allied airmen shot down over Europe, Jews, resistance fighters, and others, get out of occupied France to Great Britain.

It was operated by Belgian Major-General Count Albert Guérisse, taking its name from Albert’s codename Pat O’Leary.

In August 1941, Andree and Maurice Dufour established the Villa Rene-Therese in Canet-Plage on the Mediterranean Coast. This was the last Pat Network safe house before the Pyrenees. However, by 1942, this stage of the Pat Line had been compromised and the Villa raided.

Andree and Maurice managed to both avoid Gestapo arrest. The pair crossed the Pyrenees into Spain and then, via Portugal, flew to England.

Shortly after arriving in England, Andree was taken to an MI5 Security Clearance Centre where she was given the all-clear.

She had initially hoped to join with the Free French Forces in London, but they were reluctant to work with French Citizens who had worked with the British. Instead, Andree was recruited into the Special Operations Executive.

As a native French speaker, SOE selected Andree for its ‘F’ Section: agents tasked with spying and sabotage missions in France.

Her SOE training report states:

“Of sound intelligence, if lacking somewhat in imagination. She has little organising ability and will do her best work under definite instructions. She is thoroughly tough and self-reliant with no nerves. Has plenty of common sense and is well able to look after herself in any circumstances and she is absolutely reliable. Has lost her attitude of over-confidence and has benefited enormously from the course and developed a thoroughly level-headed approach towards problems. A very pleasant personality and she should eventually develop into a first-class agent.”

Andree became the first women to be parachuted into France on the night of September 24 1942. She and fellow agent Lise de Bassaic were dropped near the River Loire. The team were assigned to the Poitiers region initially.

In October 1942, Andree met with British SOE agent Francis Suttill in Paris. She had been sent there as a courier for Suttill’s “Physician” Network, although it is better known as “Prosper” after Suttill’s codename.

Together, the pair toured Northern France to create a string of resistance groups. Together, the pair posed as agricultural equipment salesmen and began to put together a string of farms that could be used as airfields and safehouses for future SOE operations.

In time, Francis Suttill came to realise Andree was one of the best agents he had worked with. In a March 1943 note to the SOE, he wrote:

“Everyone who has come into contact with her in her work agrees with myself that she is the best of us all. In J…'s absence, she acted as my Lieutenant. Shared every danger. Took part in a December reception committee with myself and some others. Has a perfect understanding of security and an imperturbable calmness. Thank you very much for having sent her to me.”

The Prosper Network expanded rapidly but its success garnered interest from the Gestapo. The Germans began to tighten the noose.

German suppression of the network began in April 1943 but the Prosper’s leadership, including Francis Suttill and Andree, were arrested in June, alongside many other SOE and Resistance operatives.

Andree was said to hold her captors in complete contempt and gave them no information, even after she was transferred to Freznes Prison.

In May 1944, Andree and seven other female SOE agents (Vera Leigh, Sonia Olschanezky, Diana Rowden, Yolande Beekman, Ellaine Plewman and Odette Samson) were transported to Germany.

Initially, the group were held in a prison in Karlsrhue and treated no better than any of the other prisoners. Even through their bars, Andree and the captive agents could hear the engines of Allied bombers, suggesting that time was running out for the now vulnerable Reich.

Time was also running out for Andree.

At around 6am on the morning of 6 July 1944, Andree, Vera Leigh, Sonia Olschanezky and Diana Rowden were taken to the prison’s reception area. Their personal belongings were returned before the women were huddled aboard a windowless truck.

Their destination lay 100km to the south: Natzweller-Struthof Concentration Camp.

The women’s arrival was unexpected and drew attention from inmates and guards alike. Coincidentally, Albert Guérisse, Andree’s partner from the Pat Line, was in the camp at the same time and witnessed the ladies’ arrival.

Each agent was led to a cell and after a time were taken to the camp’s crematorium. Inside, each woman was asked to undress under the pretence of a medical check.

An injection, nominally a typhoid vaccine, was administered, really a dose of phenol. When the agent was unconscious, hoped dead, she was fed into the crematorium and burned to ash.

More than one witness talks of a struggle between the guards and the fourth victim to be executed that day (believed to be Andree).

According to a Polish prisoner named Walter Schultz, the SS medical orderly Emil Brüttel told him the following: "When the last woman was halfway in the oven (she had been put in feet first), she had come to her senses and struggled. As there were sufficient men there, they were able to push her into the oven, but not before she had resisted and scratched [Peter] Straub's face."

Peter Straub was the camp’s execution. Walter Shutlz testified against Straub during his trial in 1946.

Andree was just 23 years old when she was murdered at Natzweller-Struthof Concentration Camp. As she has no known grave, she is commemorated on the Brookwood 1939-1945 Memorial.