10. Few Women of WWII Took Odette Sansom’s Path From Housewife Straight to Sneaking Into Nazi-Occupied Europe as a Spy
Many women actively participated in WWII in a variety of ways. However, few women followed the strange path of British housewife Odette Sansom, who went from raising her girls in bucolic England to sneaking into German-occupied France as a spy. In 1942, Odette Sansom, a housewife and mother of three in Somerset, England, heard a broadcast from the British Admiralty, appealing for photographs of the French coast. Odette had grown up in northern France and had some photos.
She sent the photos, but to the wrong address: the War Office, instead of the Admiralty. What she wrote attracted the attention of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the same clandestine organization to which Noor Inayat Khan belonged, and they swiftly recruited her. Just a few months after first hearing that Admiralty broadcast, 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. By the time it was all over, Odette Sansom would become WWII’s most highly decorated spy – male or female.