www.voicesofwar.co.uk
Life Story
Pearl Witherington was born in 1914 into middle-class family living
comfortably in France during the First World War. Remaining in
France after her rst experience of war ended, she was to be
pitched by a second into a role as one of the most successful and
impressive agents of British secret services during the Second
World War.
Pearl was born in Paris on 24th June 1914 to a French mother
and British father. After the end of the First World War, the family
remained in Paris. By 1939, Pearl was working as a secretary to the
Air Attaché ofce in Paris and living with her mother and two sisters.
Her father was an alcoholic and struggled with debt as a result, with
the rest of the family having to bail him out with his creditors. This
caused his early death some time before Pearl enlisted with SOE as
her recruitment forms note: “father – deceased.” The responsibility
this must have brought on her in her early life may well have given
her a grounding that helped her later on. She was engaged to a
Parisian perfumer named Henri and her life seemed settled and
happy. The outbreak of war was to change all of that.
Pearl managed to remain in Paris until December 1940 when she
left for Marseilles, forced to ee after the German occupation of
Paris. Henri had joined the military and subsequently been captured
by the Germans and transferred to a POW camp. Alone in the
city, Pearl only stayed there for three months, before heading to
Lisbon in March 1941. This was a common route for people to get
to the UK given the supposedly neutral status of Portugal and the
transports to the UK were over subscribed. Pearl and her family
arrived in the UK in July of 1941.