The Secret WW2 Learning Network is an educational charity registered in the UK - a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) No. 1156796

Welcome to

Secret WW2

This is the website for The Secret WW2 Learning Network – the UK registered educational charity with the mission to

EDUCATE, COMMEMORATE and INSPIRE

 

Latest Secret WW2 News

To keep up to date with our news, activities and projects, subscribe to our free quarterly newsletter and notifications of our quarterly online presentations via the Subscribe button at the foot of this page.

Events

Unveiling of information board commemorating SOE’s Special Training School (STS 3) in Liss, Hampshire
Unveiling of information board commemorating SOE’s Special Training School (STS 3) in Liss, Hampshire
  • June 22, 2024
  • 10:30
  • Riverside Walk, Liss, Hampshire - by the railway station.
Tuesday, 18th June 2024, 10.30 am – L’appel 
Tuesday, 18th June 2024, 10.30 am – L’appel 
  • June 18, 2024
  • 10:30
  • De Gaulle statue, Carlton Gardens, London SW1Y 5AA.
COMMEMORATIONS IN FRANCE FOR F (FRENCH) SECTION SOE – PT 2 VALENÇAY
COMMEMORATIONS IN FRANCE FOR F (FRENCH) SECTION SOE – PT 2 VALENÇAY
  • May 6, 2024
  • 11:00
  • F Section Memorial, Carr Bénévent,
COMMEMORATIONS IN FRANCE FOR F (FRENCH) SECTION SOE – PT 1 ROMORANTIN-LANTHENAY
COMMEMORATIONS IN FRANCE FOR F (FRENCH) SECTION SOE – PT 1 ROMORANTIN-LANTHENAY
  • May 5, 2024
  • 16:00
  • Quai de l'Île Marin, Romorantin-Lanthenay

Help us to keep the memories alive while engaging younger and wider audiences.

Latest Facebook Posts

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17VwJ4MGbS/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002796r Features our Network supporter, Martin Sugarman.
The Aberdovey X-Troopers - BBC Sounds The Aberdovey X-Troopers - BBC Sounds
Join Dr Ben Jones as he explores the history of the allied special force task force known as The Jedburghs who worked behind enemy lines to strengthen the Allies’ position in France.
Online Talk: The Jedburgh's by Dr Ben Jones - Peterborough Cathedral Online Talk: The Jedburgh's by Dr Ben Jones - Peterborough Cathedral
As a courier for the Comet escape line, “Nadine” helped Allied evaders, including many downed RAF aircrew, travel clandestinely from Belgium into France, before crossing the Pyrenees into Spain to reach Gibraltar. https://www.legasee.org.uk/veteran/andree-dumon/
As a courier for the Comet escape line, “Nadine” helped Allied evaders, including many downed RAF aircrew, travel clandestinely from Belgium  into France, before crossing the Pyrenees into Spain to reach Gibraltar.

https://www.legasee.org.uk/veteran/andree-dumon/
We sadly report that our dear Life Friend and Veteran, Squadron Leader Stanley (Stan) Booker RAF (Rtd) MBE, Légion D’honneur, died peacefully on Sunday 26th January 2025, aged 102. Stan was a wartime Halifax navigator serving with the RAF when he was shot down in France in June 1944. Picked up by the French Resistance, but betrayed, Stanley followed captured SOE agents to Buchenwald concentration camp and was fortunate to survive the horrors of that infamous establishment. Postwar he continued in the RAF, served in RAF Intelligence and with SIS/MI6. For many years Stanley campaigned for recognition and commemoration of the British personnel and agents who had been imprisoned at Buchenwald. He and his wife visited the camp when it was still in East Germany and maintained a positive correspondence with leading politicians of the day, including Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Foreign Secretary Lord Howe. It is a fitting tribute to Stanley’s early and persistent efforts that two memorial plaques, listing the British and French agents murdered in the camp, were eventually placed in the cellar at Buchenwald where many of the agents were hanged. To the very end of his life, Stan never forgot the SOE and other agents who were murdered at Buchenwald and we will do our best to keep his mantra, adopted from that of the memorial site at Buchenwald, that “It is the duty of the living to honour the dead”. Our full tribute to Stan, with additional photos, can be seen here: https://secret-ww2.net/news/obituary-life-friend-and-veteran-stanley-booker/ An interview with Stan by SSAFA, can be viewed here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=815885766469780 Our condolences go to Pat and other members of Stan’s family.
STOP PRESS: pre-meet and wreath laying for SWW2LN followers at 2.30pm at the Memorial to the Missing, 1939-45 on Sunday, 2nd Feb 2025. This Sunday, 2nd February 2025 at 3pm at the RAF Shelter in Brookwood Military Cemetery, near Woking in Surrey, our Network will be joining the Brookwood Last Post Association - https://brookwoodlastpost.org/ - in remembering the murders of three women agents of F Section SOE at Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany - 80 years ago. Violette Szabo and Denise Bloch are commemorated on the Memorial to the Missing at Brookwood, Lilian Rolfe (as a former WAAF) is commemorated on the Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede in Surrey.
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Title image – B24 ‘Carpetbagger’ conducting parachute drop. Courtesy of Clive Bassett, Harrington Aviation Museum –  https://harringtonmuseum.org.uk/