The following are examples of memorials and commemorative plaques that have received Trust support.
The formal and responsible commemoration of SOE’s casualties is one of the Trust’sprincipal functions. It has funded, fully or in part, several major memorials. These include the French Section Memorial at Valençay in France and plaques at the sites of the former concentration camps of Buchenwald, Ravensbrück, Flossenbürg, Sachsenhausen, Gross-Rosen and Natzweiler.
The Trust also supports the commemoration of buildings and similar sites that have links to the history of wartime special forces. Recent grants have included support for plaques at former SOE training schools in Hertfordshire and the memorial plaque commemorating SOE’s wartime headquarters at 64 Baker Street, London.
- Grant for the commissioning of a new standard and associated equipment for Libre Resistance.
- Funding for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) to attend the annual SOE memorial commemorations in Valencay. This also allowed them to hold their own ceremony to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the first FANY’s to parachute into occupied France.
- A plaque to commemorate the contribution of the Special Duties Squadrons of the RAF in St Clement Danes church
- SOE Landing Jetty Memorial on Tresco in the Scilly Isle.
- Grant towards the Long Range Desert Group memorial to sit alongside the David Stirling statue at Keir in Scotland.
- Four blue plaques to commemorate the heroic WW2 service of four Brighton-born agents of the Special Operation executive.
- Grant towards the New sculpture and stained-glass window for Hereford Cathedral to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the foundation of the SAS in 1941.
