Sonya Butt
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Sonya Butt | |
|---|---|
| Born May 14, 1924 | |
| Nickname | Blanche |
| Place of birth | Kent |
| Allegiance | United Kingdom, France |
| Service/branch | Special Operations Executive, French Resistance |
| Years of service | 1943-1944 |
| Rank | Field agent and guerrilla commander |
| Commands held | Headmaster |
| Awards | MBE, Mentioned in Dispatches |
Sonya Esmée Florance Butt MBE, also known as Sonia d'Artois, was a heroine of the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War.
Contents |
[edit] Service in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force
Sonya's father served in the RAF, but was soon as possible (aged 17 and a half - the earliest a girl could sign up) she left the family home in Woking and joined the WAAF on November 14, 1941. She detested that her trade was as administration, but whilst working at RAF Gosforth (alongside another future SOE Agent Patricia O'Sullivan), her fluency in French was found out she was recruited for work in the SOE. She was promoted to the rank of Assistant Section Officer.
[edit] Special Operations Executive
She officially joined the SOE on December 11 1943. During her training she became friends with fellow SOE Agents Nancy Wake and Violette Szabo and she also met and fell in love with fellow SOE agent French Canadian Officer Captain Guy D'Artois.
Sonya was parachuted into the Le Mans area on May 28 1944 to work as the Courier to Christopher Hudson (codename Albin) the organizer of the Headmaster Circuit using the codename "Blanche". She was one of the last WAAFs landed in France before the Allied invasion, only nine days before D-Day. After one of the other agents dropped with her was shot during a battle between the Maquis and the Germans, Sonya took on the additional role of Weapons Training Officer. She said "I filled in wherever the need arose."[1] As a courier her primary roles were to carry money, pass messages and maintain liasion with all of the SOE Agents, Maquis and local operatives working with the circuit.
She was stopped in June 1944 by two Germans whilst moving about the countryside, but despite being taken in for questioning her cover story and false papers held up to examination and she was released.
In October 1944, Sonya returned to England , her mission completed. She was still only 20 years old.
[edit] Post War Life
She survived her SOE work and, much to the annoyance of her superiors, left to marry Guy d'Artois without signing off. After the war, Sonya and Guy went to live in Canada. They had six children (three sons, Robert, Michel and Guy, and three daughters, Nadya, Christina and Lorraine). Guy died at the Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue Veterans hospital in March 1991.[2] She now goes by the psudomyn of Toni D'Artois.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Squadron Leader Beryl E. Escott, Mission Improbable: A salute to the RAF women of SOE in wartime France, London, Patrick Stevens Limited, 1991. ISBN 1-85260-289-9
- ^ D'ArtoisLG
[edit] References
- Squadron Leader Beryl E. Escott, Mission Improbable: A salute to the RAF women of SOE in wartime France, London, Patrick Stevens Limited, 1991. ISBN 1-85260-289-9
- Marcus Binney, The Women Who Lived for Danger: the Women Agents of SOE in the Second World War, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 2002. ISBN 0-340-81840-9
- Liane Jones, A Quiet Courage: Women Agents in the French Resistance, London, Transworld Publishers Ltd, 1990. ISBN 0-593-01663-7
