Noor Inayat Khan: Life of a Spy Princess (5)

Noorunissa Inayat-Khan's Biography • Noor Inayat-Khan Memorial Trust • Donate to Noor's Memorial Trust

By Sarah Jobling

Noor's George Cross
Noor was awarded the George Cross – Britain’s highest award given for acts of conspicuous gallantry not in the face of the enemy (under fire) - in April 1949. She is one of only three women awarded the honour in wartime. The other two recipients were fellow SOE Agents Violette Szabo and Odette Hallowes.

Noor had initially been recommended for the lesser honour of an MBE, but the Special Operations Executive later nominated her for a higher award. Ironically it was the deposition from Hans Kieffer, the head of the Gestapo in Paris, which finally swayed the British authorities to award Noor the George Cross.

At the end of the war Kieffer was tracked down by Vera Atkins, from SOE's French Section. He testified that unlike other captured SOE agents, Noor had revealed nothing at her interrogation in Paris. He maintained that she had consistently lied to her interrogators and that they could not trust anything she said.

Engraved on the back of her George Cross are the words ‘Asst. Sect. Officer, WAAF, Nora Inayat-Khan’. ‘Assistant Section Officer’ was the honorary rank she was given before she flew to France in June 1943. ‘WAAF’ stood for Women's Auxiliary Air Force. Her name, incorrectly shown as ‘Nora Inayat-Khan’, was probably as a result of Noor’s decision to take the Anglicised name ‘Nora Baker’ when she joined the WAAF in 1940. Since the end of World War Two only one other George Cross has been awarded to a woman.