Eileen Mary "Didi" Nearne MBE, Croix de Guerre (15 March 1921[1][2] – 2 September 2010 (date body found)) was a member of the UK's Special Operations Executive (SOE) in France during World War II.

Born in 1921 in London[5] to an English father, John Nearne, and Spanish mother, Marie de Plazoala, she was the youngest of four children.

[7] After the German invasion in 1940, the two young women made their way to London via Barcelona, Madrid, Lisbon, Gibraltar and Glasgow, while the rest of the family remained in Grenoble.

Enrolled into the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry FANY, Nearne worked as a home-based signals operator, receiving secret messages from agents in the field, usually written with invisible ink on the back of typewritten letters.

[8] Nearne "survived, in silence, the full revolting treatment of the baignoire" in the torture chamber of the Paris headquarters of the Gestapo on the Rue des Saussaies.

[11][12] On 13 April 1945 she escaped with two French girls from a work gang by hiding in the forest, later travelling through Markkleeberg, where they were arrested by the S.S. but released after fooling their captors and reportedly hidden by a priest in Leipzig until the arrival of United States troops.

[13] On 19 February 1946 she was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by King George VI for "services in France during the enemy occupation".

[13][14] After the war Nearne lived in London with her sister, Jacqueline, where, The New York Times reported, she suffered from "psychological problems brought on by her wartime service".

[16] It was only when her flat was being searched by council workers to try to establish her next of kin that medals and other papers related to her war service were found.

Nearne died intestate and her estate of around £13,000 went to her niece in Tuscany, Italy, according to BBC One's programme Heir Hunters; series 6, episode 1.