For a real-life Charlotte Gray who risked death to serve Britain, the discreet ceremony in France yesterday was a sign that it may never be too late for your country to say thank you.
Pearl Cornioley with her wings: ‘This is a woman whom it is impossible to meet and not admire’
Pearl Witherington, who was denied the Military Cross because she was a woman, had already sent back the MBE offered in recognition of her perilous wartime exploits in Churchill's secret army, the Special Operations Executive or SOE.
Being a woman had not saved the former Air Ministry typist from having a bounty of one million francs placed on her head by the Nazis. A civilian honour was of no interest to someone who had effectively commanded 1,500 French resistance fighters.
But yesterday, at the age of 91 and 63 years after she made what a parachute instructor calls an "almost recklessly low" jump from 300ft into unfamiliar territory behind enemy lines, she finally collected her parachute wings.
Now known as Pearl Cornioley, the widow of a resistance fighter she married after the Second World War, she felt she should have received her wings to mark her parachute training before the drop into occupied France in 1943.
To her intense annoyance, her case was overlooked, probably because of the highly secretive nature of the SOE and official reluctance to admit that women had undertaken such dangerous roles.
Her cause was not fully taken up until 2002, when Sqn Ldr Rhys Cowsill, an RAF parachute jump instructor, saw her in a television interview and travelled to France to meet her.
"This is a woman whom it is impossible to meet and not admire," Sqn Ldr Cowsill said yesterday, after joining Major Jack Lemmon of the Parachute Regiment to present the wings at the retirement home where Mrs Cornioley lives in Chateauvieux.
"She was very brave, which is obvious from what she did, but also exceptionally determined, putting herself through training that was certainly not to be undertaken by just anyone and, in those days, was quite remarkable for a woman."
Still spirited despite "a few rusty spare parts", Mrs Cornioley said she was "thrilled" to have received belated acknowledgement.
"I didn't refuse the MBE because I considered it an insult," she said. "I didn't do anything during the war in the hope of having decorations. But put it like this: if you are going to do the job at all, do it properly. The MBE was a civilian award."
Mrs Cornioley was born in Paris to English parents and worked at the British embassy. When the war began, she escaped to England and put her fluent French to use after joining what she did not realise at the time was the SOE.
She was dropped from an RAF Halifax near Chateauroux, in the southern Loire, and joined the "Wrestler" resistance group of maquis fighters until France's liberation. She went on to marry her wartime fiancé, Henri Cornioley.
Her story was published in 1997 with the title Pauline, her French codename, and bears many similarities to the fictional character Charlotte Gray created by Sebastian Faulks and later turned into a film.
Mrs Cornioley said she remembered her SOE service clearly, though she had no recollection of fearing that each day might be her last.
"When you ask me to recall perilous or uncomfortable events, it all depends what you mean by danger and discomfort," she said. "We knew we risked capture and that our training had prepared us to hold out and keep quiet come what may for 48 hours to let others get out.
"I trusted myself to be able to do that if the need arose.
"The most awful things I remember are actually travelling by unheated trains in that bitter winter of 1943/1944.
"I blended in as much as I could. I'd carry plenty of pro-German newspapers and as I was fairly tall and had plaits like Germans, I didn't look French. In any event, nobody ever interrogated me.
"Dangerous? I'll say it was. But I have never regretted my experience. It made me very open-minded and added great richness to my life."
Don Touhig, the minister with responsibility for veterans, said he was delighted that Mrs Cornioley's long wait for her wings was over and praised her "outstanding bravery in the face of extreme dangers throughout the war".
"Not only does it take great courage to make a parachute drop, but doing so alone, into hostile territory at the height of a vicious war is all the more exceptional," he said.
"It is clear her determination and selfless commitment were exemplary and contributed in no small measure to the overall success gained by the Allies."
colin.randall@telegraph.co.uk
