🪂 The Parachute Drop – First Steps in Occupied France

Though of poor quality, these photographs are from a false ID card issued to Muriel in France. Photo – via Tony Lark.

On Easter Sunday 1944, a young woman stepped into the dark above France… and into history.

By April 1944, Muriel Byck was just 25 years old — but had already survived SOE training, fallen in love, and committed to a mission that would take her deep into Nazi-occupied France. Though she hadn’t completed her final training phase, the need for wireless operators was too urgent. D-Day was imminent, and the flurry of messages flying back and forth over the English Channel grew by the day. Muriel agreed to go.

Her cover identity: Michèle Bernier, a governess from Paris.
Her field name: Violette.
Her assignment: to support veteran agent and organiser of the VENTRILOQUIST Network, Philippe de Vomécourt, in the Loir-et-Cher area.

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🌒 Easter Sunday at Tempsford

Muriel’s departure was delayed by bad weather for two nights. On the third — Easter Sunday, 9 April 1944 — she finally boarded a Hudson aircraft with Major Sydney Hudson and Captain George Jones.

The plan had been for them to land at a Resistance-organized drop zone near Issoudun. But due to scheduling conflicts, the drop had to be blind — no reception party, no welcoming faces, no margin for error.

Muriel jumped into a forest in central France, in the pitch of night.

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🌲 Landing in the Dark

The descent went smoothly, but the drop site — a wooded area instead of a clearing — added instant risk. Miraculously, Muriel’s parachute didn’t snag in the trees. She regrouped with Hudson and Jones, and the three worked by lamplight to retrieve their scattered supply containers, including Muriel’s wireless set.

As dawn broke, they left the trees and walked into the unknown.

By 8 a.m., they reached the town of Issoudun. Muriel and Jones stayed in a café while Hudson made contact with local ally Jacques Trommelschlager — the first link in the hidden network that would sustain them.

Muriel, now Michèle, was officially behind enemy lines.

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🏡 Shelter in Chédigny

A few days later, Muriel was driven — via backroads and Resistance contacts — to a safe house in the village of Chédigny, in the Indre-et-Loire. There, she stayed with Madame Marthe Dauprat-Sevenet, the mother of another SOE agent, Captain Henri Sevenet.

Despite exhaustion from the journey and an early episode of illness en route, Muriel began to recover in this quiet, flower-filled village. She helped around the house, charmed her host, and won the trust of the household. Madame Sevenet later described her as “full of charm, full of courage, full of life.”

To outsiders, she was simply a young woman, resting in the countryside.
To the Resistance, she was Violette, preparing to transmit Allied intelligence from the heart of occupied France.

Le Breuil, the house of Madame Marthe Dauprat-Sevenet in Chédigny, where Muriel first stayed in France. Photo – Paul McCue’s collection.

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📖 Snippet From The Call of Destiny

Whatever it was—exhaustion from the three tense nights, or Heaven granting her a small mercy—Muriel closed her eyes before takeoff and, somehow, slept. Soundly. Deeply. Until a hand shook her shoulder.
“Violette! We’re almost there.”
The engines roared in her ears. The smell of oil and metal filled her nose. She blinked. Outside the tiny window: darkness—and then, the glow of the full moon. A smattering of stars. France.
The signal light turned green. Albin slid down the chute first. She followed, as if in a dream. Isidore came last. The wind tore the thoughts from her head. And then—silence.
A bloom of white above her. The eerie hush of descent. A world stilled under moonlight. Three parachutes. Three agents. She wasn’t alone.
Below: France.
She hit the ground hard. Rolled. Coughed once. Lay still, her heart pounding, waiting for the signal. Footsteps. She held her breath.
Then—Albin appeared, grinning like a wolf. “You made it.”
“I did.” Her voice trembled, then steadied. “Where’s Isidore?”
“Safe. Bloody trees. Bit of a miracle we didn’t all end up dangling in one.”
“True.”
There was no time to reflect. Just movement. The three of them stripped off their harnesses and jumpsuits. Buried their parachutes in silence. Found their sets. One by one, they shrugged on civilian jackets and French identities.
What remained were three British agents—French in name only—armed with false papers and a trembling kind of hope.

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🔐 Layers of Cover

Muriel’s cover was carefully constructed. She was to be passed off as the fiancée of Henri Sevenet. Her forged papers, her new name, her memorized background — everything had to hold up under German scrutiny. Any slip could mean arrest, torture, or worse.

Yet even amid danger, she never lost her warmth. She made tea, she listened, she joked with those around her. One small detail stands out: she insisted on taking Maurice Martin’s powder compact into the field — aged with ammonia to look worn. A tiny token of love, carried through the fire.

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💭 Reflection

While writing Muriel’s story and “living” with her for the months I did, she came to life for me as an extraordinary mix: quiet and self-possessed on the outside, fearless and determined on the inside.

Her sudden, deep-felt love affair with fellow agent Maurice Martin is somewhat of an enigma to me. Perhaps it was the intensity of being thrown together in the unfamiliar Scottish Highlands, training like modern-day commandos. Perhaps she needed his support. Perhaps she needed to be in love — to be engaged — in order to dare enter France knowing someone would be waiting for her when the war was over. Maybe it truly was love at first sight.

We’ll never know. It may have been all these things.

But they separated, and Muriel went to France. From the beginning, she struggled with the stress and the physical demands of constant movement under harsh conditions. The signs of illness appeared early on, yet she soldiered on.

I’m absolutely certain she would not have wanted to miss one second of the hardship and terror that filled those six weeks of her mission.

Muriel was where she belonged — fighting for the freedom of France.

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📅 Next Week

➡️ Signals in the Shadows – Muriel’s First Transmissions and the Day the Enemy Saw Her🗓 The Call of Destiny: Codename Violette launches 15 July

Note: This series of blog posts—and most of the accompanying photographs—are based on SOE historian Paul McCue’s research on Section Officer Muriel Tamara Byck (HS9/1539/5 de V file). Used with permission.