Marguerite (Peggy) Diana Frances Knight Smith

Marguerite (Peggy) Diana Frances Knight later Smith (1920 – 2004) code name Nicole, was born in France to an English father and Polish mother. She was working in England during the war when she came to the attention of the SOE.

The SOE rushed Peggy through her training and was sent to France as a courier, despite trainers not feeling that she was ready. In the months after D-Day, she carried messages across enemy and Allied lines and participated in an attack on a military convoy.

According to an interview, Peggy and her radio operator were met by a team of resistance fighters who shook them down and refused to take them to a safe place for several hours. The incompetence continued as the maquisards shot three colleagues as traitors and attempted to assassinate another colleague.

Peggy, the circuit leader, and about thirty maquisards were betrayed. They were able to fight free of the Nazi forces and Peggy returned to England. In December 1944, she married Sub-Lieutenant Eric Smith of the Royal Navy and had two sons.

An article in 1947 about Peggy was entitled “Train-wrecker, Spy and Nazi-killer” with the first paragraph reading, "You would not expect that the prim little woman who comes out of the newly built house… wheeling her 16-month-old and four-month-old in a second-hand pram...with shopping basket on the handrail, is our trusted and well-beloved Marguerite Diana Frances Smith' who once blazed away with a Sten gun at Germans hunting her down as a secret agent in France."