Cecile Pearl Witherington Cornioley, code names Marie and Pauline, was an agent in France for the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers. SOE agents allied themselves with French Resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. Witherington was born in Paris to British parents. She parachuted into France in September 1943 as a courier for the SOE Stationer Network and, in May 1944, became head of the SOE Wrestler Network in the Indre region in central France. She was the only woman to lead an SOE network and associated resistance groups, called maquis, in France. Witherington's network, comprising about 2,000 maquisard fighters after the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944, was especially efficient in sabotaging railroads and telephone lines. The official historian of the SOE, M.R.D. Foot, characterized the Wrestler network as "highly successful." She was a recipient of the Order of the British Empire from the United Kingdom and the Legion of Honor and Croix de Guerre from France.
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