Jaqueline Nearne was born in West Hill Street, Brighton, but her family moved to France when she was young, and were there when France fell to the Germans in 1940. By then she had started working, aged 18, in southern France as a commercial travelling representative for an office equipment company.
In 1942, she and her sister Eileen escaped through Spain and joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) back in England. But her knowledge of France and French meant she was soon recruited by the newly formed Special Operations Executive (SOE), which had been set up by Winston Churchill. This helped to fund and organize resistance movements which undertook espionage, sabotage and guerilla warfare in Nazi-occupied countries. As a secret agent, she was trained in everything from coding to silent killing, then dropped back into central France in January 1943.
Undercover agents had none of the protections which the Geneva Convention gave captured military, so this was highly dangerous. Under the code name Josette, and with papers in the name of ‘Jaqueline Norville’, she evaded detection, travelling across the country to meet with local groups to undertake reconnaissance and help finance, equip and plan attacks. SOE F-section leader Maurice Buckmaster said she was ‘one of the best we’ve had’. After 15 months without a break she was safely returned to England in April 1944, just weeks before D Day. 14 months was an unusually long time for an agent to remain uncaptured in the field. Her superior (Maurice Southgate) was captured just three weeks later, and the Germans posted a photograph of Nearne offering a reward for her capture ‘dead or alive’.
Her sister Eileen deserves recognition too, having also joined the SOE and served in France as a wireless operator. However, she was less fortunate, and was captured in July 1944, tortured for information at the Gestapo headquarters in Paris, and sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp. She survived, but suffered from the experiences for the rest of her life.
After the war, Jacqueline worked for the UN in New York until retirement and her return to England in 1978. In later years she was recognized in her home country by the MBE, and in France with the Croix de Guerre. In Brighton, the blue plaque on her childhood home was announced on what would have been her 100th birthday.