Vera Leigh - Spying

Spying

After offering her services for the war effort, Leigh came to the attention of the Special Operations Executive, who recruited her for F Section, and she became an Ensign in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. She excelled in her training and was known to be "the best shot in the party". Leigh was dispatched on her first and only mission and returned to France on 14/15 May 1943. She arrived at a field in the Cher Valley, near Tours, one of four new arrivals that night who were received by F Section's air movements officer, Henri Dericourt. Her companions were Juliane Aisner, Sidney Jones and Marcel Clech. Aisner was to be a courier for Dericourt's Farrier circuit, while Jones (an arms instructor) and Clech (a wireless operator) were to join Leigh in establishing a new sub-circuit known as 'Inventor', which was to work alongside the Prosper network.

After receiving further instructions at a safe house in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Leigh took an apartment in Paris and carried messages from Jones in and out of the city as far as the Ardennes. One day in the Gare Saint-Lazare, she met by chance her sister's husband, who ran a safe house for Allied airmen as part of an escape line. She increased her own risk by becoming involved with this operation, escorting some of the men through the Parisian streets to their next contacts. She also socialised openly with other agents, including Julienne Aisner.