This Is Your Life: Yvonne Bailey

Yvonne BAILEY MBE (1922-2017)

The first regular edition of This Is Your Life

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Yvonne Bailey, former Special Operations Executive agent, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in the audience at the BBC Television Theatre, having been led to believe she was there to take part in an overseas broadcast.

Yvonne was born and raised in Paris but moved to London with her family in 1936. At the outbreak of the Second World War, she joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force as a clerk, where her skill with radio and fluency in French attracted the attention of the Special Operations Executive, a clandestine organisation formed to encourage and facilitate espionage and sabotage behind enemy lines. Having trained and qualified, Yvonne became the SOE's youngest female agent in 1943.

In March 1944, Yvonne was parachuted into France, where she would assist in recruiting and training operatives and marshalling airdrops via her radio to London. Following one of the largest daylight airdrops of the Second World War, she was subsequently captured and interrogated, then sent to the notorious Ravensbrück concentration camp, where despite torture and illness, she refused to reveal the names of any of her fellow operatives. Yvonne finally escaped in April 1945 on a Red Cross train to Sweden and returned to her duties in London. In 1948 she married Desmond Bailey of the Colonial Service and moved to Rhodesia.

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