Mary Katherine Herbert (also known as Maureen) (1 October 1903 – 23 January 1983), code named Claudine, was an agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) organization during World War II in France.
The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in countries occupied by the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany.
[1] Herbert trained as a courier with the second group of SOE women agents, including Odette Sansom, Jacqueline Nearne and Lise de Baissac.
Following her training, she travelled by submarine from England to Gibraltar, and then by felucca, landing on the southern coast of France the night of 31 October 1942.
Scientist was one of SOE's most promising networks, organizing and arming resistance groups and carrying out intelligence operations in a large area of southwestern France.
As a courier Herbert traveled widely by bicycle and train, liaising with the different groups of the French Resistance, carrying messages, documents, money, and wireless parts, acting as a post-office box for the members of the network, and seeking out safe houses and potential recruits.
[2] In June 1943, the Germans penetrated the Prosper network in Paris and arrested many SOE agents and hundreds of their French contacts.
De Baissac requested or was ordered to return to England to avoid arrest and he and his sister, Lise, flew back on a Westland Lysander from a clandestine airfield on the night of 16/17 August.
She told Landes who ordered her to cease all clandestine activities and installed her in a nursing home in the suburbs of Bordeaux where she had a daughter she named Claudine in early December 1943.
In September 1944, Claude and Lise de Baissac were back in France, now liberated from German control, as part of the Judex mission which aimed to locate lost and captured SOE agents and the French people who had helped them.