With the anniversary of the D-Day landings only 12 months away, one of the young British couriers who was parachuted into occupied France in the run up to the operation was remembered on Sunday (30th June).

Violette Szabo was attached to the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the group responsible for conducting espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe and with D-Day just months away there was an urgent need for more female couriers.

On her second mission, the day after D-Day, she was to help organise all the resistance groups in the Limoge area so that they could try to stop (or hinder) the Das Reich Panzer Division that was rushing up from the South of France to try to force the allies off the Normandy beaches.

Violette, aged 23, was travelling between two groups when she and the leader of one of the groups, ran into an advance column from a panzer division. Violette held them at bay allowing the Frenchman to escape. She was captured and tortured for her codes, but she didn't reveal anything.

She was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp and was shot sometime in 1944.

Violette's story was told in the film Carve Her Name With Pride (1958) with Virginia McKenna taking the leading role.

The actress has returned to the house in Wormelow nearly every year to take part in the memorial day to remember the young British spy.

Violette spent her time between her two missions in France and recovering from a sprained ankle suffered during a practice parachute jump at her uncle's house in Wormelow, and is remembered by Normandy veteran Peter Davies as riding around the village on a motorbike with a 'stiff leg'.

It was he who suggested putting a plaque on the wall to remember the Second World War herione and the museum in her memory soon followed.

Rosemary Rigby MBE founded the museum and has run the The Violette Szabo GC Museum at the Wormelow Tump, in Herefordshire, since June 2000.

Ex-servicemen and civic leaders, including Monmouth's mayor and consort Councillor Jeana Hall and her husband William along with deputy mayor Jane Gunter, and members of the public joined the gathering.

Violette was the first woman to be awarded the George Cross, the highest civilian award for bravery, usually regarded as the equivalent to the Victoria Cross. She was also awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French.

A blue plaque was erected at Violette's family home in Stockwell in 1981, and her name is commemorated on the SOE memorial plaque at Ravensbrück, the Brookwood Memorial in Surrey and the FANY memorial at St Paul's Church, Knightsbridge.

In 2009 she was also chosen as the 'face' of the SOE memorial, unveiled on London's Albert Embankment.

If anyone would like to know more about the museum, call Rosemary Rigby on 01981 540477.