[1][2][3] The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany.

[5] She was good at sports, while her older sister (Léone) described Borrel as a tom-boy who had the strength, endurance and interests of boys whose favourite pastimes were bicycling in the countryside, hiking and climbing.

[7] In October 1939, Borrel's mother (Eugenie) was advised to move to a warmer climate for her health, so took Andrée and her sister to Toulon on the Mediterranean coast where they had family friends.

[10][8] First at Hôpital Compliméntaire in Nîmes in early February, though Borrel was sent back 15 days later following a decree that nurses under the age of 21 were not allowed to serve in hospitals.

[10][11] At the beginning of August 1941, Borrel and Dufour established the Villa Rene-Therese in Canet-plage, on the Mediterranean coast just outside Perpignan near the Spanish border.

[20] Her SOE interviewer commented: Since arriving in London, she attempted to join the Corps Féminin of the Free French movement but they have made it a condition that she should give them all the intelligence concerning the organization for which she was working in France.

I think that she would make an excellent addition to our own Corps Féminin and it should not be difficult to get her… She said that she was perfectly willing to let us have the information she refuses to give to the Free French.

[20]Borrel undertook training with SOE to become a field agent with their F Section while officially an ensign in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY).

"[23] On the night of 24 September 1942 (the night after their parachute drop was aborted due to the signals in the drop zone being incorrect), Borrel ("Denise") and Lise de Baissac ("Odile") leave England in a RAF Whitley and become the first female SOE agents to parachute into German-occupied France early on the morning of 25 September, [24][25] as part of operation "Whitebeam" to set up resistance networks in Paris and Northern France (circuits and sub-circuits).

[26] Borrel dropped first, while they both landed in a field in the village of Saint-Laurent-Nouan,[27] not far from the river Loire, about 160 km (99 miles) southeast of Paris, and were picked up by members of a local resistance team.

Back in England they told us the reception committee had a man missing so they couldn't place the lights for the signal the way they were supposed to.

With information supplied them by Germaine Tambour of the Carte network, Suttill and Borrell embarked on a tour of northern France to begin creating and organizing groups to resist the German occupation.

They had early success and on 17/18 November Suttill, Borrel, Yvonne Rudellat, and newly-arrived wireless operator, Gilbert Norman, received near Étrépagny a parachute drop of containers with weapons for the resistance.

They had success in finding many recruits for resistance groups and farm fields suitable for clandestine landings of airplanes and drops of containers of arms.

[37] Madam Guépin, the wife of George Darling (who ran a resistance group in north-west France), said Borrel "Had a head on her shoulders and a will of iron", and was "utterly loyal and devoted to Prosper [Suttill], as her chief, and to Archambaud (Gilbert Norman).

In November 1942, a German agent stole a list of the names of more than 200 supporters of the resistance group called the Carte network.

The rapid growth of Prosper and the large number of people associated with the network, including nearly 30 SOE agents sent from Britain, resulted in loose security.

One radio operator, Jack Agazarian, claimed to have transmitted messages for 24 different agents, again violating SOE doctrine.

On 23 and 24 June 1943, the Sicherheitsdienst, the intelligence agency of the SS based at 84 Avenue Foch in Paris and headed by Major Josef Kieffer, struck at Prosper's leadership.

[40][41][42] Borrel was interrogated, but according to one author exhibited a fearless contempt for her captors, maintaining "a silence so disdainful that the Germans did not attempt to break it.

"[43] Later transferred to the Fresnes Prison, Borrel smuggled out notes to her mother written on cigarette paper hidden in lingerie she sent her sister for washing.

[48] The agents were treated no differently from other prisoners – markedly better than those in concentration camps – and were given manual work to do, peeling potatoes, sewing, etc., which helped pass the time.

[48] Occasionally, through the high bars, they could hear Allied bombers headed for targets within Germany, so on the whole things looked good for them even if there was the possibility of dying in an air raid.

[52] Albert Guérisse, a Belgian army physician who had headed the Pat O'Leary escape line in Marseille,[53] recognized Borrel as one of his former helpers.

[59] 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.

Franz Berg was sentenced to five years in prison[61] but received the death penalty in another trial for a different crime and was hanged on the same day as Rohde.

Following Borrel's arrest by the Gestapo, the SOE produced a citation for an award that stated the following: This officer was parachuted into France in November 1942 as an assistant to an organiser in the Paris area.

Owing to her cool judgment she was always chosen for the most delicate and dangerous work such as recruiting and arranging rendezvous, and she acted as "cut-out" for her commanding officer.

Her commanding officer paid tribute to her great qualities, describing her as "a perfect lieutenant, an excellent organiser who shares all the dangers".

For her great bravery and devotion to duty during nine months of active underground work in France, it is recommended that she be appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (civil division).