THE workings of a little-known, top-secret Second World War espionage unit and its links with the courageous and tragic ‘local’ heroine Violette Szabó are to be revealed.

Charles Pither will be discussing his novel, Ipseity at this year’s inaugural Hereford Military History Festival and revealing the part that Violette played.

Following the death of her French husband at the Battle of El Alamein in the autumn of 1942, Violette was recruited into the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to be trained in the cloak-and-dagger crafts of undercover missions in occupied Europe.

And as a fluent French-speaker, Violette was destined to co-ordinate with resistance fighters in France and she trusted her life on the forged documents that ‘proved’ her false identity.

These were meticulously designed and printed by a team of eccentric but brilliant artists and printers at the top-secret SOE Station XIV, based at Briggens House in Essex: ‘the Bletchley Park that no one has ever heard of.’

There, experts in all the printer’s skills painstakingly copied authentic paperwork, travel passes, and personal IDs issued by the authorities right across occupied Europe, to ensure those who carried these forged documents stood the best chance of evading detection.

But the intricate forgeries did not stop there. Utilising all the dark arts of misinformation and counterintelligence to destabilise the enemy from within, the team at Briggens House created everything from bogus foreign stamps and bank notes, to false ‘Wanted’ posters for leading Nazi officials and ration documents that were dropped in their millions all over the Third Reich to cause chaos in its food supply and distribution networks.

Mr Pither’s detailed research has uncovered a fascinating archive which forms the background to his lively illustrated talk.

Those attending will learn how a code poem, such as Violette Szabó’s famous ‘The Life that I Have’ was utilised to send and decrypt agents’ messages, as well as discovering the personal identities of the small, but now wholly forgotten, team without whose work no Special Operations Executive mission or operation could have stood any chance of success.

Charles Pither’s talk takes at Hereford’s Green Dragon Hotel at 12.30pm on Saturday, September 27.

Further details and ticketing information about this and all the festival events can be found on the festival website: herefordmilitaryhistoryfestival.com .

Violette is remembered today at the museum dedicated to her in a quiet corner of Wormelow, From her childhood onwards, including periods of leave from her wartime service, she was a regular visitor to the village home of relatives.

The poem, ‘The Life That I Have’ was written by Leo Marks and used as a coded message during the Second World War.

The life that I have

Is all that I have

And the life that I have

Is yours.

The love that I have

Of the life that I have

Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have

A rest I shall have

Yet death will be but a pause.

For the peace of my years

In the long green grass

Will be yours and yours and yours.