Yvonne Rudellat

Yvonne Claire Rudellat, MBE, (née Cerneau; 11 January 1897 – 23 or 24 April 1945), code name Jacqueline, was an agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) organization in World War II.

SOE agents allied themselves with French Resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England.

She worked as a courier for the Prosper or Physician network (or circuit) from August 1942 until June 1943, when she was captured by the Germans and imprisoned.

"[2] As a courier she traveled widely around the Loire river valley to deliver messages and to participate in sabotage operations against facilities important to the Germans.

Her father was a horse-dealer for the French Army and, when her domineering mother would allow it, Yvonne accompanied him on buying trips.

After his death, Yvonne found it difficult to live with her mother, so she moved to London and got a job as a saleswoman at Galeries Lafayette then in Regent Street.

Unfortunately for Yvonne, Alex, following Italian tradition, invited his widowed mother-in-law to stay with them, which she did for a number of years before returning to France.

They stayed at a number of addresses around Pimlico in houses bought by Alex as an investment; they let rooms not used by themselves.

With the outbreak of war, her daughter Constance joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), met a sergeant in the Royal Army Pay Corps, Ronald Pepper, and married him on 12 December 1939.

She (and her ambition) came to the notice of Captain Selwyn Jepson, recruitment officer for the French (F) Section of SOE.

Jepson interviewed her [11] and as a result she left Ebury Court and was sent to Wanborough Manor, near Guildford, for preliminary training, vetting and selection.

In order to gain protection under the Geneva Convention it was advisable for her to be a member of a uniformed organisation, so on 1 June 1942 she was commissioned as an ensign in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY).

There she learnt how to live clandestinely in enemy territory and the skills required in her role as a courier, such as the use of ciphers, radio, and boîtes aux lettres for leaving messages securely.

Following SOE practice, this was based as far as possible on the truth as she was able to use her experience at Warwick Way to provide realistic details.

[18] Operation Sassafras saw Jacqueline leave by air for Gibraltar on 18 July 1942, accompanied by three male agents.

On 20 July they boarded Seadog, a felucca, which took them from Gibraltar to a rocky stretch of coast in the Golfe-Juan, a few kilometres east of Cannes.

This involved crossing the Demarcation Line between occupied and Vichy France; because of an alert over escaped prisoners she had to be smuggled across hidden in the tender of the locomotive.

They continued to organise parachute drops and to store and distribute arms and other supplies, pending the Allied invasion of France, which they expected in 1943.

With them in the car they had a parcel containing incriminating material: wireless telegraphy equipment brought by the Canadians and unencrypted messages addressed to members of the Prosper circuit by their code names.

Assuming Jacqueline was dead, Pierre, not having his suicide capsule, tried to kill himself by steering the car into a wall but it bounced off harmlessly.

[29] Plans to rescue her from the hospital came to nought as she was moved from Blois to Hôpital de la Pitié in Paris.

There she was classified as NN (Nacht und Nebel), meaning that she was liable for deportation to Germany and then to vanish without trace.

[33] In early 1945, probably through her confusion, Jacqueline got mixed up with a group being collected for transportation elsewhere and on 2 March 1945 she arrived at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp[34][35] in the middle of a typhus epidemic which killed around 20,000 prisoners in that month alone.

[39] Yvonne Rudellat was recommended for the Military Cross, probably at the instigation of Suttill when he visited London in April 1943.

[40] She is the only female officially recorded as having merited it during World War II, but she was ineligible as at that time it was not awarded to women.

[43] In the UK she is commemorated on a marble plaque on the wall of St Paul's Church, Knightsbridge, London, one of 52 members of FANY who gave their lives in the war.