Marthe Cnockaert

Marthe Mathilde Cnockaert , married McKenna (born October 28, 1892 in Westrozebeke , West Flanders; † January 8, 1966 there ) was a Belgian spy and writer . Cnockaert was employed by the British secret service during the First World War .

Life

Cnockaert was a daughter of Felix Cnockaert and his wife Marie-Louise, nee Vanoplinus. After attending school, she studied medicine at Ghent University.

The outbreak of World War I and the occupation of her homeland by the armies of the German Reich in August 1914 meant that Cnockaert had to break off her studies. In the first weeks of the war, her family's house was destroyed by the German occupation forces and the family was temporarily separated. Cnockaert subsequently worked as a nurse in a German military hospital that was built in her home village. Because of her achievements in caring for the injured, she was awarded the German Iron Cross.

In 1915, Cnockaert was transferred to the German military hospital in Roulers. There she was recruited as an agent for the British secret service by her friend Lucelle Deldonck, who belonged to a British secret service network that operated in the area. In the following two years, Cnockaert (who was given the code name "Laura" in the official intelligence reports ) used her position as a nurse to spy on the German occupation forces in Belgium. The information she collected was passed on to the British military leadership through underground channels.

In 1916, Cnockaert's espionage activity was exposed when the German authorities discovered her attempt to blow up a German ammunition depot by placing an explosive device in a sewer below that depot, after she lost her watch (with her initials engraved on it).

After her espionage activities were exposed, Cnockaert was arrested and sentenced to death in November 1916 . Her sentence was subsequently reduced to life imprisonment . She spent the next two years in a prison in Ghent . Due to the German defeat in the war, she was released again at the end of 1918.

After the war, Cnockaert was awarded various Belgian, British and French medals. She was also accepted into the French and Belgian Legions of Honor.

In the early 1930s, Cnockaert published under her married name - Martha McKenna - her memoirs, which her husband had written as a ghostwriter . The foreword to the book was written by Winston Churchill . In the following twenty years she also published more than a dozen spy novels and volumes of short stories. Her memoir was filmed in 1933 under the title I Was a Spy , with Cnockart played by actress Madeleine Carroll .

During the Second World War , Cnockaert lived in Manchester with her husband.

family

After the war, Cnockaert married the British officer John "Jock" McKenna. The marriage ended in divorce in the early 1950s.

Fonts

• I was a spy! , 1932.
• Spies I Knew , 1934.
• A Spy Was Born , 1935.
• My Master Spy: A Narrative of Secret Service , 1936.
• Drums Never Beat , 1936.
• Lancer Spy: a Story of War-Time Secret Service and Espionage , 1937.
• Set a Spy , 1937.
• Double Spy: a Story of modern Secret Service , 1937.
• Hunt a Spy 1939.
• Spying Blind , 1939.
• Spy in khaki , 1941.
• Arms and Spy , 1942.
• Nightfighter Spy , 1943.
• Watch Across the Channel , 1944.
• Write Your Own Best-Seller , 1946.
• Three Spies for Glory , 1950.
• What's Past is Prologue , 1951.

literature

• Women Heroes of World War I: 16 Remarkable Resisters, Soldiers, Spies, and Medics , Chicago Review Press, 2014, pp. 62ff

Web links

• Short biography (ndl.)