Baissac Lise de - D-Day girls: the untold story of the female spies who helped win World War Two

FIELD NAME: Denise

OPERATIONAL NAME: Whitebeam

COVER IDENTITY: Monique Urbain

FIELD NAME: Odile

OPERATIONAL NAME: Artist

COVER IDENTITIES: Irne Brise, Jeanette Bouville

FIELD NAME: Lise

OPERATIONAL NAME: Clothier

COVER IDENTITY: Odette Metayer

FIELD NAME: Suzanne

OPERATIONAL NAME: Soaptree

COVER IDENTITIES: Jacqueline Viallet, Jacqueline Gauthier, Jacqueline Culioli

FIELD NAME: Claudine

OPERATIONAL NAME: Corvette

COVER IDENTITY: Marie Louise Vernier

FIELD NAME: Prosper

OPERATIONAL NAME: Physician

COVER IDENTITY: Franois Desprez

FIELD NAME: Archambaud

OPERATIONAL NAME: Butcher

COVER IDENTITY: Gilbert Aubin

FIELD NAMES: Michel, Raoul

OPERATIONAL NAME: Spindle

COVER IDENTITIES: Pierre Marc Chauvet, Pierre Chambrun

FIELD NAME: David

OPERATIONAL NAME: Scientist

COVER IDENTITIES: Clement Bastable, Michel Rouault, Claude Marc Boucher

Under the eternal gaze of Admiral Lord Nelson, high on a stone column in the center of London, Mrs. Odette Sansom raced toward her appointment at the War Office. The one-eyed, one-armed hero of Trafalgar got pelted in the rain, a bronze memorial to the glory that was Pax Britannica, many bloody conflicts removed from the London of July 10, 1942.

It was the 1,043rd day of the worlds worst war.

Much of the city lay in ruins, a ragged collection of gaps and edifices, like a childs mouth after a lost tooth. Odette tilted her hat against the unremitting damp and sprinted past the admirals brass lions as if spirit alone could somehow put London to rights, so that it might smile again.

Upon meeting Odette, Londoners were confronted with her Gallic lan, her essential Frenchness. She was self-consciously prettier than her English peers: big chestnut eyes, a fresh complexion framed by dark hair that was pulled high off her heart-shaped face and hung loose down her neck. Her light coat was cinched with a belt, the only burst of color in an otherwise bland London rain-scape; the city was full of uniformssoldiers, sailors, airmen. The entire world had gone drab. Although she had lived in England for much of her adult life, Odette never shed her Continental air, nor did she care to; frosty Britain seemed indifferent to sex and to women. With an inextinguishable flair for the theatrical, Odette preened and men in khaki swooned. It was said she even smiled in French.

The Victoria Hotel was a grande dame on mothballs, requisitioned for war work as the administrative home of the War Office. There were no bellhops to greet Odette; the twinkling chandeliers were packed off to safe storage; the building was dingy and practical like everything else. There were no dandies sharing cigarettes in the pink marble lobby; it was still busy, but with clerks and sergeants, men in mufti held back from the front, the old, the broken, those unsuited for battle, those too useful to be sacrificed. Someone had to run the war.

Odette arrived on account of a typed invitationher second from the War Office:

Dear Madam,

Your name has been passed to me with the suggestion that you have qualifications and information which may be of value in a phase of the war effort.

If you are available for interview, I should be glad to see you at the above address at 1100 hrs on Friday 10th July.

Would you let me know whether you can come or not?

Yours truly,

Selwyn Jepson

Captain

For an unhappily married woman in the third year of the war, the letter on government stationery was rife with potential. At a minimum, Odettes appointment afforded a precious afternoon alone; there was a new film opening in Leicester Square, Mrs. Miniver, the story of how English housewives contribute to the war by coping, how matriarchs move mountains while men are at the front. There was window-shopping to do, though, as elsewhere in Europe, very little could be bought under rations on a husbands service pay. At best, the letter might rearrange Odettes life a little, for what qualifications and information could the army need but her native French-language skills? Perhaps the War Office sought translators. Or secretaries. She was not too old to type at speed, or she could write letters to prisoners of war in France. That would be a very worthy service.

Odette did not know what would be asked of her, and the captains note gave away little. If the War Office had something practical in mind, she was determined to be useful.