Code Name Page 2

  From the security of her new home, Odette observed the progression of her grandfather’s prophecy. Adolf Hitler had become chancellor of Germany in 1933 and a year later ascended to head of state upon the death of President Paul von Hindenburg. Germany soon occupied the Rhineland, and in ’38 it annexed Austria and occupied the Sudetenland. In 1939 it invaded Poland and the prophecy was complete: France and Britain declared war.

  Roy enlisted with the British army and left on deployment soon thereafter. But as Odette was about to discover, England itself was scarcely safe; the Battle of Britain began the following summer, and in September the Luftwaffe began lighting up London.

  Odette had no choice: she moved with her girls a hundred miles west to the safety of Somerset. The quaint village was a haven and refuge but had a surprising disadvantage: the countryside and rolling hills—fresh with apple orchards, blackberries, and dahlias—were so enjoyable that Odette began to feel guilty. Countless others, she knew, were sacrificing greatly for the war.

  One afternoon in the spring of 1942, Odette heard on the radio a plea from the Royal Navy asking for photos of the coast of France. From her time in Amiens and Boulogne, Odette had several she could send. They were quite useless, she thought, since they were of her and her brother on the beaches around Calais. In her accompanying letter, she noted that her parents were French, and that she knew the coastal area well. Mistakenly, however, she mailed her package to the War Office instead of the Admiralty.

  Odette Sansom and her girls: Marianne, Lily, and Francoise. MIRROR/PA

  A week or so later she received correspondence from a Major Guthrie asking if she could stop by the War Office at three o’clock the following Thursday. Odette assumed the purpose of the meeting was to return her photos, which she was eager to receive back. Over tea the silver-haired major asked about Odette’s childhood in Amiens and Boulogne.

  Odette explained why they had moved and reiterated her knowledge of the area. She offered to sketch the Boulogne Fish Market if the major liked. Guthrie said they probably had something in the file and came to the point.

  “Has it occurred to you, Mrs. Sansom, that your knowledge of France and, of course, of French, might be of use in some job or other? The War Office might possibly be able to find one for you.”

  Odette replied that she had three children and they needed a lot of looking after, but she wanted to help. “If I can be of any use to do some translations,” she said, “or adopt two or three French soldiers, or send alouette1 to a few, I would like to be able to do something. After all, I am French born, and I was brought up in France. My family has always lived on the battlefield of world wars, my father was killed thirteen days before the armistice in the first one, my brother is in this one, my mother is in France, suffering with the Germans, so I would like to be able to do some little thing.”

  Guthrie said he understood; three children were quite a responsibility. He mentioned that there might be some part-time jobs and asked if he could send her name along to someone he knew.

  Odette agreed. She went home assuming that was the end of the matter, but was disappointed she hadn’t received back her photographs.

  Shortly thereafter she received a notice from the Red Cross informing her that her brother had been wounded and was in a military hospital in Paris, and that the Nazis had taken her mother’s home. Odette was grief stricken; this was the second time in her mother’s life that she had been forced to leave her home and had lost everything to the Germans. On top of that, a number of Odette’s friends were already in captivity.

  She struggled with the situation. Here she was in the safety of Somerset, playing with her girls on the majestic rolling hills, while others suffered and died to secure her and her children’s freedom. Was she to accept this, Odette wondered, the sacrifice others were making, without lifting a finger? She reminded herself that as a mother of three she was somewhat exempted from the war, but she was tormented.

  On June 28 she received a letter from a Captain Selwyn Jepson2 asking her to visit him at room 238, Hotel Victoria, Whitehall, on July 10. Major Guthrie had not mentioned anyone by that name, but perhaps this had something to do with a part-time job, Odette thought.

  Jepson, it turned out, was the recruiting officer for F (France) Section of SOE—Special Operations Executive—a new sabotage outfit that Prime Minister Winston Churchill had tasked to “set Europe ablaze.”

  Its origins and objectives were predictable. Hugh Dalton, Minister of Economic Warfare, believed that Britain needed something more than the existing military to fight the Germans—something secret, something subversive. On July 2, 1940, he sent a letter to Edward F. Halifax, Foreign Secretary, outlining his idea:

  “We have got to organize movements in enemy-occupied territory comparable to the Sinn Féin movement in Ireland, to the Chinese Guerillas now operating against Japan, to the organizations which the Nazis themselves have developed so remarkably in almost every country in the world. This ‘democratic international’ must use many different methods, including industrial and military sabotage.”

  But fighting a guerilla or dirty war was not something any branch of the military would take on, Dalton knew. What was needed, he explained, was “a new organization to coordinate, inspire, control, and assist the nationals of the oppressed countries who must themselves be the direct participants. We need absolute secrecy, a certain fanatical enthusiasm, willingness to work with people of different nationalities.”

  Halifax presented the idea to Churchill and the prime minister agreed. SOE was born and Dalton was tasked to coordinate its development. Churchill gave the organization two directives: (1) to create and foster a spirit of resistance in Nazi-occupied countries, and (2) to establish an underground body of operatives who would perform acts of sabotage and assist in liberation when British forces landed.

  From its founding, the organization was shrouded in secrecy; even other military branches working with it had no idea what it was. To the War Office, it was MO 1 (SP); to the Admiralty, NID (Q); to the Air Ministry, AI 10; to others, the Inter-Services Research Bureau, the Joint Technical Board, or the Special Training Schools Headquarters. Its officers and operatives called it “Baker Street,” after its address at 64 Baker Street. Money, too, was hidden: its operating budget was covered largely by siphoning expenses from other ministries, with remaining costs paid from a secret fund.

  Operating in the shadows of ill intent, its agents were referred to by many names: spies, saboteurs, commandos, Baker Street Irregulars, and Churchill’s Secret Army. Indeed, they were spies, but the role of Baker Street was not one of spymaster—that was MI6’s field—but to be masters of mayhem.

  The Germans called them terrorists.

  This purpose, though, led to direct conflict between SOE and the Secret Intelligence Service; the latter wanted to eavesdrop, the former to be a bull in the china shop.

  So Odette found herself in the bowels of the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, but the only secret she knew was that someone was hoarding her photos. Once again, she assumed that she’d been summoned to pick them up and, perhaps, to set up some part-time translating.

  Captain Jepson was nothing like what she expected. Instead of a rigid officer in crisp khakis, she found a man who looked like a high-priced barrister. He wore a grey suit, dark-blue tie, and beautiful shoes. His eyes were intelligent and shrewd, and he came across as kind and generous. What kind of military outfit would have a captain like this? she wondered.

  Jepson explained that they had made inquiries about Odette in England and France, and were very satisfied with what they found.

  Odette was appalled. She had simply provided some photos and here they were traipsing around two countries digging about her business.

  “Why did you have to make inquiries about me?” she asked. “What do you think I am?”

  What she was, in Jepson’s mind, was the one in a million who could pull it off. F Section’s biggest recruiting hurdle was the language; fe
w native-born Britons could speak French without an accent. As a result, anyone born and raised in France who happened to be in England at the time—like Odette—was a jewel not to be missed; agents who went to France without this language skill typically did not return.

  Jepson gave her the minimum: “We train people here. We send them to their country of origin, or if they speak a foreign language very well we send them to that country. We think women could be very useful, too.”

  What Jepson couldn’t tell her was that SOE desperately needed women to counter the Nazis’ Service du Travail Obligatoire3: the rounding up of able-bodied Frenchmen for forced labor in Germany. F Section women, who would be used as couriers, could move about France more easily and with far less suspicion than men.

  He asked her how she felt about the Germans, and she said, “I hate them. I mean that I hate Nazis. For the Germans, oddly enough, I have pity.”

  “I thought you might separate Germans and Nazis. It was not the Nazis but the Germans who killed your father.”

  Odette blinked. Jepson had done his homework.

  She looked at the captain. “Yes, but they were driven then as they are driven now. I think the Germans are very obedient and very gullible. Their tragedy—and Europe’s—is that they gladly allow themselves to be hoodwinked into believing evil to be good. Last October a German major was shot in Bordeaux. You know that?”

  Jepson nodded.

  “The Nazis took one hundred hostages and shot fifty of them. You know that too?”

  He nodded again.

  “Well, it’s not only because of that that I hate Nazis. It’s because theirs is a humorless creed and a damned creed, and because they make men despoil other people’s fields and carry misery and fear wherever they go.”

  Sensing he had touched a nerve, Jepson let Odette continue.

  “I do hate Nazis,” she went on. “But it’s not much good hating people, just like that. I’m a woman and I can’t do anything about it.”

  Jepson heard what he wanted. “Yes,” he said, “it must be most unsatisfactory for you.” He paused a moment and then asked, “How would you like to go to France and make things unpleasant for those despoilers of other people’s fields?”

  Odette found the suggestion preposterous. “You may or may not be aware that the Germans have conquered France and that the Channel boats are no longer running. I understood from Major Guthrie that there was a possibility of some part-time work. Could you please tell me about that?”

  Jepson assured her that there were other ways of getting to France.

  “You mean that the War Office can send people to France—in spite of the Germans?”

  “Never mind how these things are arranged, Mrs. Sansom. Accept the fact that the journey to France could be arranged and tell me how the idea appeals to you.”

  Odette said it didn’t appeal at all, that she was the mother of three children.

  “Yes. Three daughters. Francoise, Lily, and Marianne.”

  “It’s not possible. It’s absolutely not possible. My children come first. I mean, I want to do everything I can for this country, which is my adopted country and the country which has adopted me. My children are English and I have a French family, and all my roots are in France; I have two reasons for wanting to help, but I can’t do that. Furthermore, you’ve got the wrong person. Certainly you must be of a certain type to do this kind of job. I am not it. I haven’t got the brain for it, I haven’t got even the physical things that are necessary for the job. So, no.”

  Jepson ignored the finality of her answer and returned the conversation to France. He spoke with the familiarity of a Frenchman, bringing up Baudelaire and the Bistro, Pau and Pétain. And did Odette know about the Stavisky affair?

  “This is where people like you come in, Mrs. Sansom. People who know and love France, people who can move about freely and not be noticed.” He emphasized that the work was very dangerous and that some who went failed to return.

  “My view is that you could be of very great value to us,” he added. “I do not say that because of your more obvious qualifications but because of the singleness of purpose which I believe you possess.”

  Odette sighed. “Captain Jepson, you must know that I am a very simple, ordinary woman. Believe me, I am not very intelligent or well informed. I do not know about politics or governments or movements. I am a housewife and as good a mother as I can make myself. Sometimes that’s not very good, I’m afraid. Frankly, I don’t think I’m the right sort of person to undertake this work.”

  Jepson nodded. “Possibly not—but I think you are.” He explained that there was some training and that if Odette participated, everyone would know for certain whether she was fit for the job. He said he didn’t need an answer right away.

  Odette stood and Jepson saw her out. “Thank you for seeing me,” she said. “I think . . . I think I shall say ‘no.’ ”

  He gave her his number and asked that she call sometime.

  Jepson returned to his desk and made a final notation at the bottom of Odette’s dossier: “Direct-minded and courageous. God help the Nazis if we can get her near them.”

  Odette contemplated the matter all day and mentioned it to Roy that night. He said the decision was hers to make, but primary sources reveal no more. Was their relationship strained at this point, such that a husband and wife would both go to war, risking not only the loss of a spouse but also possibly orphaning their children?

  We don’t know.

  Odette struggled with the decision for months. “If everybody thinks my way,” she asked herself, “what is the future going to be for all of those children everywhere? If I were in France, with children, I could be like some of other people who’ve already been captured, even with their children in concentration camps. No, because I’m here, I have a great excuse for not doing anything more than staying put with my children.”

  She saw only one solution: to do the training and show Jepson that she was not the right person. That way she could come back saying she had tried and wasn’t right for the job, and her conscience would be clear.

  She found a convent—St. Helen’s, in Brentwood, Essex—where the children could board during the school term. For holidays, Odette made arrangements for them to live with an uncle and aunt.

  She notified Jepson and he set up a meeting with a man soon to play an important role in her life: Major Maurice Buckmaster, head of SOE’s F Section. Buckmaster was an Eton man and an Oxford scholar who had moved to France after college to take a position as a reporter for Le Matin. He became fluent in the language and at age thirty switched careers to become a manager with the French division of Ford Motor Company. It was this position which provided Maurice with tremendous knowledge of French towns and roads. Four years later, in 1936, he was promoted to a managerial position in England.

  Although he was doing well, Buckmaster wasn’t satisfied with business. In 1938 he joined the reserves as a captain, even managing a short course with the Secret Intelligence Service. When war broke out, he was assigned to the British Expeditionary Force and was soon fighting the Germans in Béthune and Arras. On June 4, 1940, he would catch one of the last boats out of Dunkirk.

  The British saw in Buckmaster a natural leader and he was promoted quickly, becoming an acting major in December. He spent three months with Admiral Cunningham’s fleet and was then reassigned to the Africa Campaign as an intelligence officer. Before leaving for Libya, Maurice told his commanding general that he didn’t speak Italian and asked if there was an assignment where he could utilize his French. The general said he’d look into it.

  On March 17, 1941, Buckmaster was transferred to SOE and six months later, in September, was appointed head of F Section.

  * * *

  THE MEETING WITH ODETTE was held entirely in French, and Buckmaster began by asking for a brief summary of her background. When she mentioned her children, the major blurted, “Good God, you look like a child yourself!”

  Odette ha
d just turned thirty but looked years younger. She finished her thought and Buckmaster gave her an overview of the work of SOE, noting that she’d probably be a courier. First, however, was the training, which would begin at a country house in New Forest. But before the training, the major wanted to make certain that she understood the risks.

  “In many ways it’s a beastly life,” he told her. “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.”

  “To save me from what?” Odette asked.

  Buckmaster shrugged. “Oh, from the usual sickening sort of thing; prison, the firing squad, the rope, the crematorium; from whatever happens to amuse the Gestapo.”

  As one agent put it, what Buckmaster offered was quite simple: death.

  But a useful, heroic death.

  * * *

  1. Cheese spread.

  2. Before and after the war, Jepson was an accomplished novelist. Many of his thrillers were later made into movies, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright (1950), adapted from Jepson’s Man Running.

  3. While the rounding up of French citizens began earlier, the Vichy law requiring compulsory labor in Germany for Frenchmen between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-five was enacted in September 1942. The law was extended to all Frenchmen in February 1943.

  CHAPTER 2

  JINXED

  Death, particularly the kind slow and painful, is a potent deterrent. The major asked if she wanted to reconsider, given the danger, but Odette shook her head.

  “No. My mind is made up.”

  It will be your duty . . .