Born: 28 April 1912, France
Died: 13 March 1995
Country most active: France
Also known as: Odette Hallowes; Odette Churchill; (code names) Odette Matayer, Céline, Lise. Born Odette Marie Céline Brailly
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
Such attitudes are particularly infuriating in light of the battles women have had to wage just to be allowed into the armed forces, and recognised as such when they have served. Historically, women have been grouped into supposedly civilian roles even as they perform the same duties as men in the armed forces and are frequently sent into war zones. The women of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) who spied—and often died—in service to their country during World War II often received commendations that were explicitly designated for “civilians.” Even when the SOE as an agency recommended women like Pearl Witherington (who led an SOE network of around 2,000 fighters in France) for military commendation, the government was likely to change it to a civilian version. In at least one instance where a woman—Odette Sansom—had refused to give the enemy information despite being tortured, a note in her files said that the military commendation she had been recommended for “stands little chance of acceptance without:—(a) Medical evidence of maltreatment. (b) Witnesses of her refusal to speak under threat of torture, during torture and after torture.” There were, in fact, several doctors’ notes in her files attesting to the signs of torture. The SOE’s official historian, M. R. D. Foot, tried to undermine Sansom’s credibility by claiming that, “Unfortunately her experiences in Ravensbruck had induced in her a state of nervous tension so severe that she had considerable trouble for many months in distinguishing fantasy and reality and it is likely enough that she got the two confused.” He also criticised her as a bad mother, calling her “so combative that she had sacrificed the company of her three small daughters in England to go back to war.” It seems highly unlikely that he was running around calling the men delusional and bad fathers for doing their duty.