November 2, 2018 Hello ,
As promised, here's the story of a courageous English woman and World War II spy who hid her bravery for
decades.
Pippa Latour parachuted into France and provided intelligence that aided in the success of the Normandy D-Day invasion. Revenge was her initial motivation to join the Special Operations Executive (SEO) , but during three years of high risk undercover operations her goals would change again and again. Pippa joined Britain's Women Auxiliary Air Force in 1941 to train as a flight mechanic. Her father being French, she was fluent in the language, an asset in demand by the SOE. Pippa was recruited to go to France as an intelligence
agent.
She agreed immediately, seeing her chance to avenge the deaths of two close family friends. Her godmother’s father had been shot by the Germans and her godmother had committed suicide after being taken prisoner by the Nazis.
She entered a grueling period of training, later telling a reporter “a cat
burglar [“Killer” Green] had been taken out of prison to train us…we learned how to get in a high window and down drainpipes, how to climb over roofs without being caught.”
Pippa and 39 other SOE women agents learned to use a Sten gun, plus a martial arts technique of unarmed combat known as silent killing. Early on the morning of May 2,
1944, a heavy U.S. bomber, painted black flew in low over a drop zone in Northern France. Pippa, code name, Genevieve hung her legs out the open fuselage door of the B-24 Liberator and waited for the signal to jump. Pippa landed with a small spade strapped to her leg and used it to bury her clothing and parachute. She also carried a Benzedrine pill to stay alert and a suicide capsule in case of capture. Two men
dropped in the same area before her had both been killed, and by the end of the war, four women SEO agents died in Nazi gas chambers and three others were shot at the Dachau concentration camp. Another died in action.
Pippa made contact with the local resistance and started collecting intelligence. Posing as a 14-year-old school girl, she bicycled around the countryside selling soap to German soldiers,
engaging them in talk, encoding information she learn on silk and hiding it in her hair.
Another time she pretended to be an artist, and then a farm worker, often staying with French families in the countryside, or sleeping in the forest. Times were difficult for the local people due to severe food shortages and frequent searches by the Vichy authorities looking for spies like
Pippa.
She told a reporter she was often forced to eat whatever she could find. “One family I stayed with told me were eating squirrel. I found out later it was rat. I was half-starved so I didn’t care.”
Despite the danger and harsh conditions, Pippa felt proud of herself for helping the Allied war
effort. But over time, the constant risk and endless anxiety wore on Pippa, as did the loneliness of living and working with strangers while unable to receive news from home.
As
the operator of a hidden wireless radio, Pippa sent more than 135 coded messages to London. Many of those supplied intelligence that guided Allied bombers to their targets.
One such raid took out a German listen post, also killing a German woman and two children.
“I heard I was responsible for their deaths. It was a horrible feeling, she
recalled. “I later attended the funeral of a grandmother, her daughter and her two grandchildren, knowing I had indirectly caused their deaths."
The human toll of the war traumatized Pippa, and she began to hate the work she did. "I can imagine the bomber pilots patting each other on the back and offering congratulations after a strike. But they never saw the carnage that was left. I always saw it, and I don’t
think I will ever forget it."
As the Allies planned for the D-day invasion, Pippa's radio transmissions became even more important. Her work helping identify troop positions and supply depots had a significant impact on the success of the Normandy invasion, and the
coming victory in Europe.
She was awarded France's highest medal for bravery, the Croix de Geurre, but Pippa was a reluctant heroine.
After the war, she married and moved to New Zealand where she raised four children and never talked about her career in espionage.
Her secret did not come out until
1990 when her oldest son read about her wartime work on the internet and asked her about it. Her family urged her to accept the many medals she earned, and her story became public.
Today, at age 97, Pippa, whose full name is Phyllis Latour Doyle, lives quietly in Auckland, New Zealand. My source for this story:
http://www.army.mil.nz/downloads/pdf/army-news/21july2009armynews400.pdf
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