Mom’s War
On June 25th, the Union Jack will fly from the flagpole at my house. Mom would be one hundred years old. She left us seven years ago, surrounded by her family, and giving instructions until the end. That was Mom, in charge.
I was thirteen years old in 1970, living in Dayton, Ohio. My Mom was from England; we had been there to visit relatives several times. I knew she had done something more in World War II than the civil service job she mentioned. I also knew she had a deep-seated hate for the Germans (a hate that faded when my good friend’s Dad turned out to have served in Luftwaffe.) But I didn’t know much about what Mom did during the War.
1970 was twenty-five years after the end of the War. It was also when the Official Secrets Act oath expired. Mom had sworn to keep her wartime activities secret, and had lived up to the promise. So we were in a car, driving down the South Dixie Highway, when Mom began to tell her story: the story of a covert operative at war.
Phyllis Mary Teresa O’Connor was born in June of 1918, during the Great War. She was the fifth and youngest child, and given the nickname Babs that stayed with her the rest of her life. Her parents did their best to raise their children in the tradition of the British “Public” School (what in the US we would called private boarding schools.) Mom went to several, finishing her education at the Loretto School in Leige, Belgium. When she returned to London, she was fluent in French with a Belgian accent, and began her study of English Literature at the University of London.
It was the late 1930’s: as the nations of the world recovered from the Great Depression, the young people found ways to have fun. Babs was friends with a group studying at Oxford University, and while in her later years she would strongly deny it, they were a partying crew. She fell for a young man, her “…golden haired Apollo,” and they loved life. Her parents held an engagement party; twenty men and twenty women attended.
“Babs” O’Connor Dahlman – 1945
But Nazism was growing more powerful in Germany, as Hitler moved to take over Europe. The leaders of Great Britain made compromises to appease him, but on September 1st, 1939, he invaded Poland, starting the Second World War. All of Babs’ male friends went into the service, her fiancé joining the Royal Air Force. By 1940 the Nazis determined that they could bomb Great Britain “…to her knees,” and the Battle of Britain began.
The Spitfire pilots of the RAF defended the island at a high cost. Her fiancé, stationed not far from London at Grantham, would “buzz” her home after each mission. But inevitably, he did not come back; shot down and killed. Of the twenty men at the engagement party, all perished in the war.
When the war began, military intelligence was forced to staff up quickly. One major source of personnel was academia, the professors from Oxford and Cambridge were brought in to defend their nation. As the young men went to the service to fight, their older professors went to the intelligence agencies. As these same young men died defending the skies over England, a new branch was formed: Special Operations Executive. The goal was to run missions in Nazi-occupied Europe, disrupting the infrastructure, and keeping Nazi troops pinned down controlling the countryside. SOE worked with underground resistance groups throughout Europe, and also performed solo missions.
What SOE needed was dedicated operatives, willing to risk everything, who could blend into the population. A young woman, educated in Belgium and desperate for a chance for revenge, would be perfect. Babs was approached by an SOE officer who was familiar with the Oxford group and the fate of her fiancé. He offered her that chance: “it would be very dangerous, was I willing to chance my life?” She was. She was given a code name: Virginia.
The select team was trained to be spies. They practiced tradecraft, how to leave and take secret messages. They learned how to work the tiny radios, and were trained to memorize at a glance (Mom was a master of “pelmanism,” what we would call fifty-two card pickup. We thought it was a game.) They followed each other through the streets of London, learning the art of remaining undetected.
They were sent to commando training in Scotland, climbing cliffs and making forced marches. Her group raided other groups, practicing their techniques as they stole cases of Scotch. It made the ten mile march back easier. While a sprained ankle delayed her parachute training, she was still ordered to deploy. Training was over.
Mom’s favorite plane was called a Lysander. It was a single engine, top wing plane that could land and takeoff on short and rough runways (we used to visit the one hanging in the Air Force Museum in Dayton.) The SOE used it to fly their agents into fields in Europe, lighted only by a few torches. Virginia started her first mission from RAF Base Tempsford, headed to France.
Lysander at US Air Force Museum
A chance encounter with a Messerschmitt almost ended things before they began, but the pilot was able to evade, and a few days later she was off again to France. The Lysander landed in a farm field, met by the Resistance. Information was exchanged, and soon after another Lysander landed in the field and she was back in England.
During those early missions, Virginia was paired with a teammate, Tony Graham. Tony was another dashing blonde from Oxford, part of the social group that included her fiancé. He fell in love with her, and she loved him, but only as a great friend.
Virginia and Tony went on many missions into occupied Europe. In one, she had the information about the mission, he had the explosives needed for the job. They landed in Belgium, contacted the underground, and delivered the goods. A Nazi troop train was destroyed, and Virginia and Tony were picked up by another plane.
The plane was shot up and caught fire. They bailed out, parachuting back into Belgium. The pilot wasn’t so lucky, staying with the burning plane into the ground. Virginia made her way to a safe house. Tony was on his way to the same place, when he ran into a German tank column, asking for directions. He directed them in perfect German and both went on their way. Tony arrived at the safe house, and in a day, both were back in England, Babs at her cover assignment in the pensions office.
Tony was later sent to the Tehran conference (Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt met in Tehran in 1943 to plan the invasion.) He was captured by the Nazis along the way. Of the ninety-six members of Virginia’s group in SOE, only three survived the war.
Virginia was sent to Yugoslavia (now Serbia) to work with the Resistance there. She aided in their operations, and met the leader and future dictator of Yugoslavia, Tito.
When back in London, Babs continued to find ways to have fun. An American was coming to London and arranged a blind date with her through a mutual friend. Since Americans had “terrible reputations,” she wanted to meet publicly, so she chose a restaurant called “the Queen’s Brasserie.” As she described it, “… she kept looking at the tall blonde Americans coming in the door. But then there was a dark haired smaller man, he looked interesting.”
Don Dahlman – 1944 (thread on canvas by Patricia Dahlman)
Babs and Don fell madly in love. They talked through the night, walking through the blacked out streets of London. Don only had suspicions of what Babs did (he had some friends in US Army Intelligence) but he wanted to be near her, so he wrangled a transfer to be closer to London. They were married on March 27thof 1944, but their honeymoon was interrupted. Don was sent to a port in England to prepare for the D-Day Invasion, Virginia was flown to France to help the coastal Resistance groups prepare.
After the invasion, Don followed the fighting across France. Virginia continued missions ahead of the battle, and for ten months they were separated. After one mission, she hitchhiked across France to find Don. When she finally located his unit, he was out on the town and she had to return without seeing him.
As the Nazis faced total defeat, Virginia was sent to search for her SOE teammates in the Concentration Camps, where they might be taken if they weren’t executed. She found Tony at Dachau. The Nazis had done brain surgery experiments on him, and there was little left to save. She got him back to England, but there was nothing the doctors could do. He soon died. As Mom said, “…Virginia died then too.”
In late 1945, Babs and Don left England for the United States, sailing on separate ships. They went to Cincinnati (Don’s hometown) to start a family, then teamed together to advance his career in broadcasting. It wouldn’t be until that drive in 1970 that she would talk about her real role in World War II to family and friends: Babs, Virginia, Mom; we learned about a real story of sacrifice in the War.
Don and Babs Dahlman – 2008
It is Mom’s 100thbirthday, and her story lives on. She had a final request, that as much as she loved the United States, she was “always, always,” to be remembered as a citizen of England. We quoted her favorite poet, Rupert Brooke, on her headstone.
Mom’s Grave Stone
Note: Mom told us many of her stories in the latter years of her life. We (the family) are lucky to have them both in written and recorded form. The actual SOE records were destroyed in the 1950’s –burned in a fire – too many lives lost. I have used information from her writings for this essay, as well as my own ‘history teacher’ memory.
My sister Pat has done a complete art work of Mom’s life – link here. Thanks for allowing me to use one of her works in this essay.
Awesome story!
Thanks for sharing that story. Fabulous!
Oh, Babs! How we loved her!
We were flying on a private plane for company business (for her husband and mine). I said something about sky diving and asked if she had ever considered such a thing. And then she told me about the war. I was astonished to hear her words. This wise, kind, proper British woman carrying out those missions.
Babs was one of the most extraordinary person I ever met and I felt blessed to be her friend.
I remember our long conversations about her role and how modest she was in describing some of the most courageous acts of which I had ever heard. I still miss my dear friend, Babs, and all that we shared together. Thank you for putting your words to her story.
I can see her smiling in happiness right now.