14. WWII’s Unlikely Spy
Odette Sansom, a housewife and mother of three from Somerset, heard a broadcast in 1942 from the British Admiralty appealing for photographs of the French coast. Having grown up in northern France, she had some photos, but sent them to the wrong address: the War Office, instead of the Admiralty. She attracted the attention of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a clandestine organization ordered by Winston Churchill to “set Europe ablaze!“, and was swiftly recruited.
Within a few months, Odette was inserted into occupied France, as a member of an SOE cell. What followed were harrowing adventures, narrow escapes, romance, capture, torture by the Gestapo, and stints in concentration camps. When the war was over and the dust had settled, Odette Sansom emerged as WWII’s most highly decorated spy – male or female.
