THIS year has a special poignancy for a quiet corner of Herefordshire that was the childhood holiday home of one of the bravest heroines of not just the Second World War but any era.

On the last Sunday in June people will gather as they have for the past five years at Cartref House in Wormelow to pay homage to the memory of Violette Szabo.

It is the home of a museum opened six years ago, to commemorate the young woman who was executed just months before the end of the Second World War, aged just 23.

Violette was born in France but after coming to England as a young girl she spent much of her childhood with her family on holiday in Herefordshire.

In 1940 she married a young officer with the Free French who died in action in North Africa leaving her with a young baby.

Determined to avenge his death and help free her native France, Violette was recruited to the Special Operations Executive to undertake dangerous undercover work in France helping the Resistance.

Her first mission to Rouen was a success and she even managed to return from France with presents bought in Paris for her young daughter.

The beautiful young woman was parachuted into France again on D-Day 1944. Three days after she was captured following a shoot-out when the car in which she was travelling with a member of the French Resistance was ambushed.

Months of torture and beatings in prison and concentration camps followed before she was executed with a bullet in the back of the neck at the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp on January 26, 1945 - just four months before the war ended.

In 1947 Violette was posthumously awarded the George Cross and her life was later portrayed in the film Carve Her Name with Pride in which Virginia McKenna played the lead role.

Rosemary Rigby opened the Violette Szabo Museum in 2000 and the following year held the first annual memorial picnic.

This year the picnic is scheduled for Sunday, June 26, and will be special, coming in the 60th anniversary year of Violette Szabo's death and the end of the war.

Involvement by the local community in remembering the heroine has included the Wye Valley Brewery's special limited edition Resistance Ale.

On Sunday, August 14, there will be another special event at the museum to mark the anniversary of the end of the war in Japan.

Plans already arranged include a living history display by members of the World War Two Re-enactment Society. Kate Vigurs, Director of the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds will pay tribute to the work of women secret agents.