On Sep 13, 1944, a princess from India lay dead at Dachau concentration camp. She had been tortured by the Nazis and then shot in the head. Her name was Noor Inayat Khan. The Germans knew her only as Nora Baker, a British spy who had gone into occupied France using the code name Madeline. She carried her transmitter from safe house to safe house with the Gestapo trailing her, providing communications for her Resistance unit. Wireless operators in France had a life expectancy of six weeks. Noor was actively transmitting for over three times as long. While she was in France, every other wireless operator in her network was slowly picked off until she was the last radio link between London and Paris. It was "the most dangerous and important post in France." She was offered a way back to Britain and refused. In fact, in her transmissions to London, she once said that she was having the time of her life, and thanked them for giving her the opportunity to do this. She was captured by the Gestapo, but never gave up; she made three attempts at escape. One involved asking to take a bath, insisting on being allowed to close the door to preserve her modesty, and then clambering onto the roof of the Gestapo HQ in Paris. Her last word before being shot was, "Liberté!"
47 of the most haunting photos from history historydefined.net/47-haunting-ph…
Major Dick Winters led perhaps the most storied U.S. Army unit in all of World War II. On D-Day, he and his "band of brothers" in Easy Company defeated a far larger German force and allowed the Allied advance to continue. At the Dachau concentration camp, they liberated scores of Holocaust prisoners who'd endured months, if not years, of hell. And as the war in Europe drew to a close, they captured Hitler's personal mountaintop retreat in southern Germany — then kicked back on his terrace in triumph while sipping champagne from his wine cellar. But for decades, Winters was reluctant to even tell his story, lest he be called a hero. Eventually, however, Easy Company's harrowing and courageous exploits on the Western Front in 1944 and 1945 would be immortalized in "Band of Brothers."
@fasc1nate @DavidLuckyMe We may well need heroes like her in North America the near future if things keep going the way they are.
@fasc1nate Wow someone who didn’t have to went an and served with more dignity than most.
@fasc1nate Noor Inayat Khan (a.k.a Nora Baker) was posthumously awarded the George Cross in 1949. Noor was the third of three World War II FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) members to be awarded the George Cross, Britain's highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy.