Eileen Nearne...Hero.

Fuggedabout those Covet Affair and la Femme Nikita babes for just a NewYawk minute. Yesterday in the seaside city of Torquay, Eileen Nearne, a spy and WWII hero who died penniless was given a hero's funeral. In attendance were hundreds of mourners, and members of British Legion clubs, representatives of armed forces, military attache from the French embassy in London, and a military bugler and piper. Designated for a pauper's burial, after her body was found, the police discovered the French Croix de Guerre among Eileen Nearne's belongings illuminating the recluse's intensely private life which she lived for decades. During WWII, as a member of Churchill's Special Ops forces conducting espionage and sabotage behind enemy lines, Eileen Nearne was one of 39 British women who were parachuted into France as secret agents. In Paris, Nearne operated a radio which was used to organize weapon drops to the French resistance and to shuttle messages back and forth between London and the resistance preparing the French for the 1944 D day landings. She eluded capture several times, but was finally caught and sent to a camp for women outside of Berlin where thousands died. Repeatedly tortured by the gestapo for her real identity, names of people working in the resistance and her assignments, Nearne never cracked. Even when she blacked out from lack of oxygen while being held under ice cold water, she later said she believed in will and destiny. Shuttled back and forth from Nazi death camp to death camp, head shaved, she was 23 years old. While working 12 hour shifts on a forced road repair in a camp outside of Leipzig, she and 2 other women escaped and linked up with American soldiers who immediately identified her as a Nazi collaborator and held her in a detention center with other captured SS until Britain verified her as a Special Ops agent. After wartime, Eileen Nearne never quite adjusted to civilian life. She missed the life in the shadows, having flourished in it's independence and secrecy. Living alone she shunned all publicity. On a red cushion on top of her casket were displayed the Croix de Guerre, and the MBE (Order of the British Empire)...medals which are given for distinguished acts of heroism and bravery. Had they ever met, Agatha Christie who also lived in Tourqay might have found the makings of a masterpiece in Eileen Nearne's life. Nearne was 89 when she died.