📡 The Courage to Transmit – Danger in Salbris

Jun 26

Behind an unassuming garage facade, a young woman defied an empire.

By late April 1944, Muriel Byck — now operating under the field name Violette, and sending messages to London under the codename Benefactress — had settled into her first real SOE base: the small town of Salbris, in the Loir-et-Cher.

There, she was housed by Antoine Vincent, a local garage owner and long-standing Résistance contact. His garage — unremarkable, open to the public, and frequented by German soldiers — was the perfect cover. And it was also incredibly dangerous.

Muriel established four radio transmitting sites, rotating between them by bicycle. One of those transmitters was hidden in a shed behind Vincent’s garage — only meters from where German troops came daily to have their bicycles repaired.

This was her reality: staying invisible in plain sight.

🧳 Arrival in Salbris

Muriel arrived with her organiser, Baron Philippe de Vomécourt — codename Antoine — who took a personal, almost paternal interest in her safety. On her first day, they lunched in a local restaurant — only for Muriel to discover it was packed with German soldiers.

The point, Vincent later explained, was to prepare her. To teach her how to function under pressure. To learn to breathe through danger.

Muriel didn’t flinch. Not even when it counted most. But the meal didn’t taste very well.

Vincent's garage in Salbris — 📸 *Above: Vincent’s garage in Salbris, photographed after the war, now under a different name. A humble place that hid tremendous courage.* Photo - Michel Septseault via Tony Lark

👁️ The Day She Was Seen

One day, while transmitting from the shed, Muriel looked up — and froze. An eye was watching her through a knothole in the wooden wall.

A German soldier.

She was mid-transmission. But instinct kicked in. She sent a danger signal, signed off, and packed up her set. The guard meant to be posted outside had vanished. There was no protection.

Muriel left no trace behind. She quietly returned to the main garage, where Vincent was elbow-deep in a gearbox. He read her face instantly.

Within minutes, he had called de Vomécourt, who arrived in his Citroën and spirited her away.

Hours later, 40 to 50 German soldiers arrived to raid the garage.

They found nothing. The soldier who’d spotted her was humiliated and punished.

Muriel’s composure — and the Resistance’s quick coordination — had saved her life.

📖 From The Call of Destiny

She was halfway through encoding the coordinates when she felt it — a shift, a stillness. Not a sound. A presence. There — on the opposite wall — a crack in the wood where a sliver of light shone through. And within it: an eye.

Perfectly framed in a knot-hole of warped timber.

It blinked once. Then vanished…

🧠 Intelligence in Motion

Muriel continued her work, cycling between alternate locations and transmitting under tight precautions. The Vincent family adored her. To them, she was more than a guest — she was one of their own.

To the SOE, she was a vital link to London.
To the Germans, she remained a ghost. Almost caught, but never quite found.

📸 *Above: Antoine Vincent and his Résistance group in Salbris.* Photo - De Vomécourt collection

💭 Reflection

The incident in Salbris — when Muriel was nearly discovered — is the best-known episode in the short, intense life of this otherwise little-known SOE agent.

It was a combination of swift judgment, good luck, and the tightly run Resistance network around her. But it was also a testament to her courage — and to the deep, almost psychic connection her organiser, de Vomécourt, had with her wellbeing. I’ve come across no other organiser so invested in his wireless operator’s safety, and so utterly devastated when she later died in his arms in th hospital.

Muriel’s meticulous actions in the shed — sweeping, covering her tracks, walking instead of running — speak volumes. By 1944, wireless operators in France had a life expectancy of less than six weeks. She knew the odds. She knew what had happened to the others.

Her sangfroid is astonishing. It’s one of the clearest reasons why she truly was cut out to be an SOE agent in occupied France. That day in Salbris, she earned her stripes.

The Call of Destiny

Codename Violette

Timeless Spies is both a literary endeavor and a passion project, dedicated to immortalizing the legacy of the 40 female secret agents of the SOE in France during WWII.