Leyton & Leytonstone

Historical Society

Peggy Knight, The Leyton Typist with Nerves of Steel (continued)

Peggy had been dropped into France a month before the D-Day landings.  A major concern of the Allied leaders at this time was to mislead Hitler as to where the invasion would take place.  (Maureen Patricia ‘Paddy’ O’Sullivan had been insubordinate during SOE training from July to December 1943.  In March 1944 she was suddenly offered the opportunity of being parachuted into France, without attending the usual course on security precautions, an omission of which she was to complain on her return to Britain.  There are suspicions that some SOE agents were expected to be captured by the Germans, and to ‘reveal’, unwittingly, that the Allied landings were to be in the Pas-de-Calais rather than Normandy.  Paddy O’Sullivan’s sudden invitation to become an agent without being properly taught how to evade arrest suggests she may have been a tool in such a scheme.  The fractured nature of the 'Donkeyman' circuit may have been seen in London as an opportunity to plant more seeds of deception, by some means that we still do not know.)

Sommecaise and Perreux are on a wooded ridge west of the Yonne valley and Auxerre.  With the Allied invasion of Normandy under way, Peggy’s Resistance group tried to lure their German opponents in Burgundy into a trap.  Noel used the radio transmitter for 3 hours at the same position.  Nobody came.  They settled for the night in a forest camp.  At 5am Peggy started a spell of sentry duty with a colleague, Captain Thomson.  They heard a shot.  Captain Thomson was fired at when he went to investigate.  Another colleague found the Resisters were surrounded by hundreds of Germans.  As they went deeper into the woods Peggy and another colleague heard more firing, and decided they had best lie hidden.  The sounds of continued searching by German forces persuaded them to stay where they were, without food or drink, from 8.30 am to 7 pm.