Saturday, October 3, 2009

Poem Code:
Following intelligence practice that agent's codes were better kept in their heads than on paper. SOE (Special Operations Excutive) initially used codes based on famous poems and quotations. The purpose of these poem codes were to give the agents something to concentrate on during enemy interrogations.

The following was Violette Szabo's poem code.

The Life that I Have

Is All that I Have

And the Life that I Have

Is Yours

The Love that I Have

Of the Life that I have

Is Your and Yours and Yours

A Sleep I shall Have

A Rest I shall have

Yet Death will be but a Pause

For the Peace of my Years

In the Long Green Grass

Will be Yours and Yours and Yours

From p. 225 of Women Who Lived for Danger: The Agents of the Special Operations Executive by Marcus Binney (William Morrow, 2002)