Categories: just-life
Date: 14 September 2010 19:20:29
There are some who don't have a lot to say because there's just not a lot happening* and there are those who don't say a lot when the stories they could tell are one of a kind... At the moment I am very much in the first band, however Eileen Nearne who recently passed away in Torquay is very much of the latter.
When council workers went through Eileen's effects attempting to discover if she had any friends or family who might wish to attend a funeral service they were most surprised to discover several military awards and indeed even an MBE. It turns out that unknown to all of those who knew her Eileen Nearne had during WWII been a member of the secretive organisation SOE and had not only been dropped into war-torn France to work and fight behind enemy lines but had been caught by the gestapo and talked her way out... and later picked up by the SS. Despite being tortured she stuck to her cover story and after being sent to a concentration camp managed to escape and spent the remained of the war in hiding with a priest in Lipzig.
I have no doubt that we shall be seeing a movie of her life in the near future and if it is made I really, really hope that it's a British film as it much more likely to be closer to the truth. And when the truth is as amazing as this there is just no need for it to be "Americanised"...
* - I shall regale you of stories from the crematorium where I'm currently working at another time