Violette Bushell was born in Paris to a French mother and English father. After her husband, Étienne Szabo, a French Foreign Legionnaire, was killed at El Alamein in 1942, the young widow with an infant daughter was recruited by the Special Operations Executive.
Despite having a two-year-old daughter, Tania, Szabo was determined to fight. She trained in firearms, explosives, silent killing, and parachute operations, proving to be an exceptional shot—reportedly the best in her SOE class.
Her first mission to France in April 1944 was a success: she reorganized a resistance network in Rouen that had been devastated by German arrests, coordinated sabotage operations, and gathered intelligence on German factory production.
Her second mission, in June 1944 after D-Day, ended in tragedy. While driving through the French countryside with a Maquis leader, their car ran into a German roadblock. Szabo stayed behind with a Sten gun to cover her companion's escape, engaging an entire SS Panzer division in a running gun battle through a wheat field. She fought until her ammunition was exhausted and her ankle was badly injured.
Captured, she was interrogated and tortured by the Gestapo but revealed nothing. She was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she was executed by firing squad in February 1945, along with two other SOE agents—Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe. She was 23 years old.
Szabo was posthumously awarded the George Cross—only the second woman to receive the honor—and the Croix de Guerre. Her daughter, Tania, who was four when her mother was killed, accepted the medals on her behalf. Her story was told in the film "Carve Her Name with Pride" (1958).