Charlotte Gray, a film about a wartime secret agent, opened in cinemas at the weekend. Women's Editor Christen Pears reports on the incredible courage of the real-life undercover heroines.

SUZANNE Louise stood at the front of the tram, issuing tickets to the passengers. It moved off with a jolt, throwing her off balance, and she clutched at the bag strapped round her waist.

"I was terrified," she says. "I had been given a bomb to deliver and I had it hidden underneath the bag with the tickets. Every time the tram moved, I thought it would go off and blow everything up."

Suzanne Louise, whose real name is Irene Ward, was just 20 when she was recruited by the Belgian Resistance and, for two years, she risked her life daily. Once, she was captured and imprisoned for two weeks, but she was released because there was no evidence against her.

"People tell me I was brave, but I wasn't. I spent all that time being terrified. Every time the door bell rang, I thought it was the Gestapo and I prayed every night to the Virgin Mary to help me through."

A new film focuses attention on the Resistance movement, particularly the women who worked undercover to undermine the Nazi regime in occupied Europe. The adaptation of Sebastian Faulks' best-selling novel Charlotte Gray stars Cate Blanchett as a young Scotswoman, who is recruited by the Special Operations Executive after her pilot lover is shot down. She volunteers to go undercover in France with the intention of finding her sweetheart and is gradually drawn into danger herself.

Now 80, Irene lives in Guisborough with her husband Barny, but the film, and a television documentary about the real life Charlotte Grays, screened last week, have brought back her memories of the war. "Watching a programme like that brings it all back to you. It seems unbelievable when I think about it now but it's all true, I can guarantee that," she says.

Irene became involved with the Resistance when she was approached by a man at the cinema. He whispered to her that he needed her help urgently and pushed some papers into her bag.

"I had no idea who he was, but he sounded so desperate, I went along with it," she explains, slipping back into her native tongue from time to time.

"A few days later two men came to see me. I thought they could have been the Gestapo and I pretended I didn't know what they were talking about. But then they showed me their credentials from the Resistance and said they had come to thank me. They said that what I had done had saved about 20 people."

After that, she found herself gradually drawn into the Resistance network. At first, she carried messages and made the coffee, but her colleagues soon began asking her to carry out more dangerous missions.

"I had grown up in a convent so this was all very new to me but I was a bit of a daredevil. They kept asking me to do more and more things. I was frightened but I always said yes, because I was proud and I wanted to show people I could do it," she says, eyes sparkling as she recalls her work.

On one occasion, she was sent to the house of a doctor sympathetic to the cause. She helped operate wireless equipment hidden in the cellar to make contact with a fishing boat, which took Jews and other refugees to safety in England.

She was also asked to take up a post as a maid to a local noblewoman who entertained German soldiers. It was her job to listen to their conversations as she served them at dinner and pass on any information to the Resistance.

The bomb she carried round with her all day on the tram was safely delivered and her colleagues used it to blow up a German train packed with ammunition.

But the Germans took their revenge, rounding up 40 fathers and sons from the district and shooting them.

"That sort of thing happened a lot. It was dangerous work and I knew I could have been killed at any time but, because I was young, I didn't think about it. I was usually shaking because I was so scared but I was also excited because I knew I was doing something for my country."

Towards the end of the war, Irene met Barny, a young British soldier. They married and moved to Guisborough in 1947.

There were hundreds of female resistance workers like Irene, operating in France and Belgium, but there were also elite British agents, Churchill's secret army, with a mission "to set Europe ablaze".

Between 1942 and 1945, 39 women were sent into France as secret agents by the SOE. They came from all walks of life but were all fluent in French. Following intensive interviews, the successful ones were sent to camps in Scotland and southern England. They wore the uniform of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANYS) but they underwent tough military training, including unarmed combat, handling weapons and learning how to make explosives out of everyday kitchen chemicals. After a few months of training they were parachuted into France with a new identity. They were told the survival rate was one in two but it turned out to be one in four.

Mark Seaman an historian at the Imperial War Museum was an advisor on Charlotte Gray. "Usually women play a peripheral role in war, as ambulance drivers and nurses, but the SOE section was at the sharp end of warfare. These women were plucked from obscurity because of their linguistic ability to confront one of the most horrific regimes we have ever experienced."

Of the 39 female agents, 13 never returned. One of the most famous was Violette Szabo, whose story was dramatised in the film, Carve Her Name With Pride. Devastated after her husband, an officer with the Free French Forces, was killed at El Alamein shortly after their daughter was born, Szabo volunteered for duty in France and was twice parachuted behind enemy lines.

Finding herself surrounded but with a twisted ankle, she exchanged shot for shot with the enemy so an unarmed comrade could escape. She was arrested, tortured and ultimately taken to Ravensbruck concentration camp where she was executed at the age of just 23.

She was posthumously awarded the George Cross in 1946 and it was her four-year-old daughter, Tania, who collected the medal.

Tania, now 59, recalls: "I was very proud. I knew exactly what I had to do, I knew I had to keep it for my mother. Violette is representative of many brave women we have never heard of who died in obscurity and perhaps great pain."

l Charlotte Gray is playing at cinemas throughout the region