← Back to the front page

Overlooked Important WWII Figures from History

Khalid Elhassan October 20, 2019 31 min

12. Fleeing From Nazi Dogs

Odette was nearly undone in late 1942, when a French Resistance contact, tasked with finding an out-of-the-way landing area, bungled the job. The site was supposed to be suitable for the night time landing of a modified Hudson bomber, that was to whisk an SOE operative and four French generals back to Britain. Unfortunately, the contact ineptly chose an airfield located about 1000 yards from a German antiaircraft battery.

A new landing site was selected, this one an abandoned airfield about 500 miles away. After dodging German and collaborationist Vichy police, Odette and her party made it to the airfield, only to discover that the control tower and a nearby barracks were occupied by German troops. It was a trap, and the party was forced to scatter, with Germans hot on their tail. Odette crashed into bushes, with German dogs nearly snapping at her heels, plunged into an icy stream, and battled the freezing current to the other side, where she finally shook off the pursuit.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.