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Plewman, Eliane Sophie

Date of birth:
December 9th, 1917 (Marseille, France)
Date of death:
September 13th, 1944 (Dachau, Germany)
Mentioned on:
Brookwood 1939-1945 Memorial (Memorial to the Missing)
Service number:
Fiels Agent
Nationality:
French (1870-present, Republic)

Biography

Eliane Plewman was a British subject, an agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and member of the French Resistance.
Plewman was born Eliane Browne-Bartroli in Marseille. The daughter of an English father and Spanish mother, she was educated in England and in Spain. When she finished college she moved to Leicester to work for an import company.
After the outbreak of the Second World War, Plewman worked for the British Embassies in Madrid and Lisbon. In 1942 she went to Britain to work for the Spanish section of the Ministry of Information. That same summer she married British army officer Tom Plewman. Later she joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and was given a codename "Gaby."
On 13–14 August 1943 Plewman parachuted into France and joined a MONK resistance network of Charles Skepper. She worked as a courier in the area of Marseilles, Roquebrune and St. Raphael.
When the network was betrayed in March 1944, Plewman was also arrested. The Gestapo interrogated her for three weeks and then transferred her to Fresnes Prison. On 13 May 1944 the Germans transferred her and three other SOE agents (Yolande Beekman, Madeleine Damerment and Noor Inayat Khan) to prison at Karlsruhe. On 10 September they were transferred to the Dachau concentration camp, where she, Beekman and Damermant and Inayat Khan were forced to kneel in pairs and were executed by a single shot to the head on 13 September 1944.
Memorial to Plewman and fellow agents in Dachau
Eliane Plewman is remembered on the Brookwood Memorial in Surrey (Panel 26 Column 3) and the F Section Memorial, in Valencay, France.

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Period:
Second World War (1939-1945)
Unit:
F Section, Special Operations Executive (SOE), British Government
Awarded on:
January 16th, 1946

With bronze star
Croix de Guerre (1939-1945)
Period:
Second World War (1939-1945)
Unit:
F Section, Special Operations Executive (SOE), British Government
Awarded on:
August 20th, 1946
Recommendation (partially):
"She was dropped in the Jura and was seprarated from her cicuit for some time. Instead of remaining in hiding she showed outstanding initiative and made several contacts on her own which were later of great value to her cicuit. For six months Plewman worked as a courier and her untiring devotion to duty and willingness to undergo any risk largely contributed to the successful establishment of her circuit. She travelled constandly maintaining liaison between the various groups, acting as guide to newly arriving agents and transporting wireless telegraphy equipment and compromising documents."

Posthumously awarded
King's/Queen's Commendation for brave conduct

Sources