Odette Hallowes

ODETTE HALLOWES (SANSOM / CHURCHILL) d1995. British agent (code named Lise) for the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) in France during WW2. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers, especially Germany. SOE agents allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. She was the first woman to be awarded the George Cross by the United Kingdom and was awarded the Légion d'honneur by France. She arrived in France on 2nd November 1942 and worked as a courier with the Spindle network of SOE headed by Peter Churchill (whom she later married). In January 1943 (to evade arrest) Churchill and Sansom moved their operations to near Annecy in the French Alps. She and Churchill were arrested there on 16th April 1943 by spy-hunter Hugo Bleicher. She spent the rest of the war imprisoned in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. Her wartime experiences and endurance of a brutal interrogation and imprisonment were chronicled in books and a motion picture, made her one of the most celebrated members of the SOE and one of the few to survive Nazi imprisonment. She died in Surrey aged 82 on March 13th 1995