13. Odette Gets Started
Upon arrival in southern France, Odette Sansom’s first task was to arrange room and board for her SOE network’s radio operator, who had no ration card – a necessity at the time. She pulled that off and other early assignments, but things got hairy barely a week after her arrival, in November of 1942. That was when the Germans, reacting to the Allied landings in North Africa, invaded and occupied the nominally independent rump France, in which Odette and her SOE network operated.
The new conditions worsened the network’s internal strife. Odette was kept busy with her secret courier work between the SOE and various Resistance elements, while the network descended into chaos. That led to sloppy security work, which almost got Odette captured by the Germans during a failed attempt to arrange a clandestine night time airplane landing.