Shortly after her birth in Moscow in 1914, Noor Inayat Khan and her family left Russia for Paris, and then moved onto London after the outbreak of World War One. By 1920 however, Noor and her family had moved back to France.

Fast forward to 1940, Noor and her brother Vilayat wanted to do their part during World War Two, despite being raised to believe in non-violence. They escaped to England to join the war effort. Noor joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force where she trained as a wireless operator.

Noor came to the attention of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) who were looking for people who spoke fluent French. She was quickly recruited and in 1943 became one of the first women to be sent for specialist SOE signals training.

Called away from her training earlier than planned, she was flown to France and made her way to Paris. Little did she know, the SOE group she was sent to join was about to be unravelled by the Nazi secret police.

Noor quickly became the only SOE wireless operator left in the Paris area. After months of difficult and dangerous work, she agreed to return to the UK. But just two days before she was due to leave, Noor was arrested by the secret police.

She was killed in Dachau concentration camp on the morning of 13th September 1944. She was 30 years old. Today Noor is commemorated on CWGC’s Runnymede Memorial in Surrey.

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.