13. The Risks of an SOE Operative
Odette found a convent boarding school for her daughters, and arranged for them to spend holidays with an aunt and uncle, before reporting to the SOE to commence her training. Before that, however, she had to go through an interview with Maurice Buckmaster, her F Section boss. He was amazed to discover that she had three daughters, noting that, despite her thirty years, Odette looked like a child herself. Perhaps feeling a bit guilty, he tried to make sure that she had no romantic illusions about what awaited her:
“In many ways it’s a beastly life. It will be physically hard. More than that, it will be mentally exhausting, for you will be living a gigantic lie, or series of lies, for months on end. And if you slip up and get caught, we can do little to save you“. When she asked “save me from what?“, she got the chillingly offhand reply: “Oh, from the usual sickening sort of thing; prison, the firing squad, the rope, the crematorium; from whatever happens to amuse the Gestapo“.