History. Heavy Metal. Running. Insomnia. Books.
England, United Kingdom
Joined August 2020
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I actually had tears when I saw these. Just speechless. #violetteszabo #SOE Wanted to see these in so long.
Craig S retweeted
🅱🅸🅲🆈🅲🅻🅴 🅸🅳 🅿🅻🅰🆃🅴
A bicycle identity plate owned by SOE agent Harry Rée, DSO, OBE, who led SOE's Stockbroker network in occuped France. He used a bicycle for transport just as when a schoolmaster in pre-war England.
#HarryRée #FSection #SOE #WW2 1/2
ALT A bicycle identity plate in Rée’s false name ‘Rehmenn’. Agents were often given false names that were similar to their own, so that if they mistakenly used their real name the error might not be noticed. © IWM (EPH 10085) SOURCE https://www.iwm.org.uk/research/projects/soe-secret-war/collection-highlights
ALT This photo of British schoolmaster and SOE agent Harry Rée was taken in August 1940, shortly before he enlisted for military service during World War II. Published in 'A Schoolmaster's War: Harry Rée — A British Agent in the French Resistance' by Harry Rée (edited by his son Jonathan Rée), Yale University Press, 2020. It was derived from the Rée family private archives. © Yale University SOURCE https://historynet.com/harry-ree-and-the-soe/ MORE INFORMATION https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_R%C3%A9e
Craig S retweeted
SIR PATRICK STEWART (1940-2026)
Before everything else, Patrick was defined by being born and bred in Yorkshire, the proud county in the north of England which he loved to the end. You could hear it in his accented voice and in the stern honesty with which he told you what he thought and felt. Yorkshiremen have no truck with half-truths or avoidance of big issues. He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love.
We first met as ambitious young actors with the Royal Shakespeare Company half a century ago but we weren’t in the same productions. My first strong memory was a few years later, meeting him in the street in central London when he told me about an offer to take over a leading part in 'Star Trek'. “But Patrick think of your stage career in the UK. Do you really want to risk—getting lost in Hollywood for years and years?”. Well, he took the risk and thank goodness for us all that he did for not just his devoted Trekkies but film and theatre audiences, who marvelled at his using international celebrity to star in a string of cinema successes ('X-Men' of course) and in great classical plays by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Arthur Miller, Peter Shaffer, Pinter and Beckett at Stratford-upon-Avon, in London’s West End and on Broadway.
America was his adopted home, where he met his adored Sunny who has cared for him through sickness and health, through thick and thin. But he never forsook his origins: and the proudest achievement of the most respected and beloved actor of his generation on either side of the Atlantic, was his appointment as Chancellor of Huddersfield University in Yorkshire.
His farewell performance in 'Avengers: Doomsday' is yet to be seen.
Ian McKellen 29 October 2026
Photo: University of Huddersfield
Craig S retweeted
Noor Inayat Khan, the British Indian SOE agent and the first female wireless operator sent into Nazi-occupied France, was betrayed, tortured for months, and executed at Dachau in 1944.
She gave away no secrets despite brutal interrogation and was posthumously awarded the George Cross for her outstanding courage.
Craig S retweeted
🅾🅽 🆃🅷🅸🆂 🅳🅰🆈
OCT 28, 2017: Yvonne Burney MBE dies aged 95. She was an SOE agent during the Second World War (then Yvonne Baseden), who worked as a W/T operator for SOE's Scholar network in German-occupied France until captured by the Gestapo. 🇬🇧
theguardian.com/world/2017/n…
Craig S retweeted
Violette Szabo was parachuted into occupied France in April 1944 to work with the ‘Salesman’ network.
When the circuit was compromised, she made a daring escape back to Britain.
She returned by parachute in the days before D-Day, only to be captured forty-eight hours later.
After brutal torture, she was executed.
Will you remember her?
Craig S retweeted
She stood naked among hundreds of other women, waiting for death. The heavy iron doors slammed shut. During the freezing winter of 1944, Gena Turgel found herself inside a gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau, waiting for the Zyklon B gas. Minutes passed in complete darkness. Women whispered prayers and quietly cried. But the gas never arrived. When the guards finally opened the doors, they were stunned to find that the women were still alive. Gena walked out on her own feet. Years later she said simply, “God must have protected me.”
She was later transferred to Bergen-Belsen. It was there that she encountered Anne Frank, who was gravely ill with typhus. Despite the danger, Gena brought her water, washed her face, and held her hand. Anne died just weeks before the camp was liberated. Gena later recalled, “Her eyes, they were screaming.”
On April 15, 1945, British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen. Amid the devastation Gena met Norman Turgel, a British intelligence officer. Six months later they were married. Her wedding dress was made entirely from the silk of a British Army parachute. The dress is now preserved at the Imperial War Museum in London.
Gena Turgel lived to the age of ninety-five and became a respected voice in Holocaust education. For decades she visited schools and spoke about what she had endured, without allowing hatred to define her message. She wanted future generations to understand the importance of compassion and respect. Her life had taken her through unimaginable loss, yet she continued to speak about the value of kindness.
Craig S retweeted
Tom Skerritt, who starred in the TV series “Picket Fences” and appeared in movies ranging from “MASH” to “Alien,” “Top Gun,” “A River Runs Through It” and “Ted,” has died of natural causes at 93.
variety.com/2026/film/news/t…
Craig S retweeted
🇫🇷 "Of course, I would have liked to live."
He was 17. Hours before his execution, he wrote to his mother, asking her to be brave.
October 22, 1941. Châteaubriant, occupied France. German forces took 27 hostages to a quarry and shot them in retaliation for the killing of a German officer in Nantes.
Among them was Guy Môquet, a teenage communist activist.
Before facing the firing squad, he wrote a final letter to his family: "I am going to die!"
Then came the words that still hurt, 85 years later: "Of course, I would have liked to live."
He asked his little brother to study hard. He asked his mother to find the courage to overcome her grief.
The hostages refused blindfolds. They faced death singing La Marseillaise.
Twenty-seven lives ended that afternoon. One boy’s letter still speaks.
Remember Guy Môquet. Remember all 27.
Follow @Vanguard_WW2 for the human stories behind WWII.
Craig S retweeted
During WW2, SOE agent Nancy Wake cycled nearly 500 kilometres through occupied France, passing countless German checkpoints in 71 gruelling hours, to deliver vital replacement codes after a Gestapo raid.
She later called it her most important contribution to the war.
Craig S retweeted
After Étienne Szabo was killed in North Africa in October 1942, Violette joined SOE.
Leo Marks gave her 'The Life That I Have' as her code poem.
He called her “A dark-haired slip of mischief….She had a Cockney accent which added to her impishness.”
Craig S retweeted
Mâcon. Une lycéenne. Qui, en 1945, à 18 ans, a déjà, de la vie, connu le pire et le meilleur. La défaite, la Résistance, la fraternité, la trahison, l'emprisonnement, la déportation, la maladie, la victoire. Elle utilisera les 73 années suivantes à l'enseigner. Suzanne Orts.
Craig S retweeted
Nansi Williams - the heroic dinner lady who died saving the lives of schoolchildren during the Aberfan disaster...
On October 21, 1966, a Welsh school dinner lady Nansi Williams threw herself over five children as a wall of coal waste crashed into their school. All five survived. She did not.
That morning, children at Pantglas Junior School in Aberfan, Wales, were preparing for their final day before the half-term holiday. Nansi, a local woman who worked in the school dining hall, was collecting dinner money from pupils.
Above the village stood enormous mountains of waste from the nearby coal mine. For years, residents had lived beneath them, despite concerns about their stability.
At approximately 9:15 a.m., one of those mountains collapsed.
Around 150,000 tonnes of coal waste and water surged down the hillside, smashing into houses and engulfing the school.
Inside, Nansi saw the danger approaching.
She ordered five children to get down, then threw herself over them, using her own body as a shield.
The impact killed her.
One of the children, Karen Thomas, later recalled how Nansi had jumped on top of them as glass shattered and the wall collapsed. The children initially did not understand that she was dead. They tried pulling her hair to wake her.
When rescuers recovered Nansi's body, accounts say she was still clutching a pound note collected for school dinners.
The Aberfan disaster killed 144 people, including 116 children.
An official inquiry later placed responsibility squarely on the National Coal Board. The catastrophe had been preventable.
Nansi had no children of her own. In her final moments, she saved five who belonged to other families.
For decades, her extraordinary sacrifice received little recognition beyond the community that remembered her.
Now, approaching the disaster's 60th anniversary in October 2026, a campaign to honor her has succeeded. A commemorative Purple Plaque is scheduled to be unveiled in Aberfan on October 30.
Five children went home because Nansi Williams never did.
#archaeohistories
Craig S retweeted
Every match at Lincoln, the names Bill Stacey and Jim West are there for all to see.
The Stacey West Stand honours the two Imps supporters who were among the 56 people killed in the Valley Parade fire.
Forever remembered. ❤️
Craig S retweeted
RIP. On his final shift before retirement, K9 Kylo was murdered while protecting the community he had served for six years.
K9 Kylo was murdered when he was shot and killed while attempting to apprehend a homicide suspect in the area of Southeast 97th Avenue and Southeast Oak Street in Portland.
Around 1:45 p.m., the U.S. Marshals Service Pacific Northwest Violent Offender Task Force, working with the Portland Police Bureau and Gresham Police Department, attempted to arrest a man wanted for murder. While trying to apprehend the man, gunfire was exchanged, and K9 Kylo was struck.
K9 Kylo was transported to an emergency veterinary facility, where he succumbed to his wound.
The violent offender was pronounced dead at the scene.
Portland Police described Kylo as “happy, quirky, goofy.” He was known for howling along with the sirens on calls, and off duty he loved exploring the forest and playing with his little brother Apollo, a miniature dachshund.
🖤🙏💙🙏🖤
Craig S retweeted
She wrote children’s stories and believed in nonviolence. Then Britain sent her into Nazi-occupied France with a radio hidden inside a suitcase.
When London offered to bring her home, she refused.
Follow us to keep stories like hers alive.
On the night of June 16, 1943, a Lysander landed secretly near Angers. Aboard was the first female SOE wireless operator sent from Britain into occupied France.
Her codename was "Madeleine".
Days after she reached Paris, the "Prosper" resistance network began collapsing. Agents were arrested one after another. Soon, she was the only SOE wireless operator still transmitting from the city.
She could have left. She stayed, moving between safe houses while German radio-detection teams hunted her.
Betrayed and arrested in October 1943, she attempted to escape twice from Gestapo headquarters at 84 Avenue Foch. After the second attempt, her captors demanded that she promise never to try again.
She refused!
Classified as "highly dangerous", she was sent to Pforzheim prison in Germany, where she spent nearly ten months in solitary confinement, her hands and feet chained.
She gave away no names.
According to fellow prisoners, she scratched two things into the bottom of a metal bowl: "Nora Baker."
And her mother’s address in London.
If she disappeared, someone would know who she was.
On September 13, 1944, she and three other SOE women were taken to Dachau and shot in the back of the head. Their bodies were burned.
Paris had been liberated just 19 days earlier.
She was 30 years old.
Her real name was Noor Inayat Khan. She left no grave. Only a name scratched into metal, and a story the world must never forget.
Craig S retweeted
Combat medic Chantelle Taylor, one of the most remarkable voices to come out of the British Army’s long war in Afghanistan.
During a 2008 patrol toward Marjah, she made history when her convoy turned into a “Taliban shooting gallery.” Attacked from the left and rear, her Land Rover was raked with AK-47 fire. About 50 feet away, an insurgent was shooting at her vehicle. Overwhelmed by the feeling she was about to be shot in the face, she put her SA80 on him and fired seven rounds until he dropped, becoming the first female British soldier to kill an enemy at close range.
Later in the same tour she fought in a seven-week running battle from a patrol base while supporting operations around Kajaki. A force of about 100 British troops plus a small Afghan contingent took 66 casualties. Taylor treated the wounded under fire, managed dangerous helicopter evacuations in the “golden hour,” and when numbers got low she even stepped in as number two on a 51mm mortar.
After promotion to staff sergeant and a recommendation for an officer’s commission, Taylor chose a different path. She left the Army, and returned to Afghanistan with the US Department of State to help build trauma-care training. She later worked in diplomatic protection, and published her raw memoir, Battleworn (first released as Bad Company).
Today she continues using that experience beyond the battlefield, serving as an ambassador and speaking about the hidden costs of conflict, especially for women.
Craig S retweeted
🅾🅽 🆃🅷🅸🆂 🅽🅸🅶🅷🆃
SEP 24/25, 1942: Andrée Borrel and Lise de Baissac leave England in a RAF Whitley and become the first female SOE agents to parachute into occupied France. They drew straws and luck gave Borrel the first jump.
#AndréeBorrel #LiseDeBaissac #SOE #WW2 🇬🇧
ALT Andrée Raymonde Borrel, KCBC, CG, MR Lise Marie Jeanette de Baissac, MBE, CG MORE INFORMATION https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9e_Borrel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise_de_Baissac