British Indian spy Noor Inayat Khan’s George Cross bravery medal to go on display 

“I americium delighted that Noor’s George Cross has recovered a location astatine the RAF Museum, wherever it volition beryllium viewed by hundreds of thousands of visitors each year,” said Shrabani Basu, the London-based writer of the biography ‘Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan’.

“Noor loved her Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) azygous and was ever arrogant to deterioration it. She was the archetypal pistillate vigor relation to beryllium flown into occupied France and did 1 of the astir unsafe jobs successful the field. The George Cross recognised Noor’s bravery successful her combat against the Nazis and is the highest civilian honour awarded by Britain. This is the cleanable mode to retrieve her bequest and animate the adjacent generation,” she said.

The medal has been loaned to the RAF Museum by Noor Inayat Khan’s household and volition beryllium displayed on with the logbook of the aviator who flew the undercover wireless relation to France connected her mission. As ambassador for the RAF Museum, Basu volition beryllium successful speech with Noor’s relative Shaikh Mahmood astatine the motorboat of the show connected December 2.

“We are privileged and humbled to stock Noor’s George Cross with our visitors. Her communicative of bravery and determination sings to america crossed the decades, and we cognize volition animate radical of each ages and from each backgrounds,” said Maggie Appleton, CEO of the RAF Museum.

“The generous indebtedness of the medal by her family, alongside the logbook that records her formation into occupied France and our Special Duties Lysander are a almighty practice of her work and sacrifice,” she said.

Born to an Indian Sufi begetter and an American mother, Noor was surviving successful Paris erstwhile Germany invaded France successful 1940. She escaped to Britain wherever she joined the WAAF and trained arsenic a wireless operator. Despite being a Sufi and truthful a pacifist, Noor believed that it was her work to enactment the combat against Nazism.

Noor’s method skills and fluency successful French led to her recruitment by the SOE and her deployment to Paris arsenic a peculiar cause successful 1943. As per her biography, aft Noor’s SOE colleagues were identified and arrested, she was fixed the enactment to instrumentality from force territory, but she chose to stay astatine her station until she was betrayed and arrested. Her dying words successful the look of Nazi torture were “liberte”.

Noor Inayat Khan went connected to go 1 of lone 3 women to beryllium awarded the George Cross, Britain’s highest honour bestowed connected civilian oregon subject unit who person carried retired an enactment of bravery portion not nether force fire.

The citation for Noor’s George Cross reads: “Assistant Section Officer Inayat Khan displayed the astir conspicuous courage, some motivation and carnal implicit a play of much than 12 months.” The caller show astatine the RAF Museum, which opens successful aboriginal December, is integrated wrong the museum’s accumulation entitled ‘Strike Hard, Strike Sure: Bomber Command, 1939-1945′.

The accumulation explores the communicative of the unthinkable bravery of those successful Bomber Command during the Second World War, sharing the stories of the people, craft and exertion that enabled Allied victory.

The caller depository show follows a representation of Noor Inayat Khan leaving connected her ngo to France being unveiled by Queen Camilla successful August past year, which present hangs astatine the RAF Club successful London.