Phyllis Latour: The secret life of a WW2 heroine revealed
- Published
Born in South Africa, Phyllis Latour was orphaned at the age of four
Phyllis Latour, the last of the 39 female secret agents who served in Sir Winston Churchill's "secret army" in France, has died aged 102. Now, previously classified official files paint a vivid portrait of her life as a World War Two spy behind enemy lines.
In the summer of 1944, in a village in German-occupied western France, a slim young woman with dark hair and grey-green eyes sat in a building with a wireless set, tapping out messages in Morse code.
She was an agent in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), known as Churchill's Secret Army. Her codename was Genevieve and she was sending urgent messages back to London.
The French resistance in the area was sabotaging key transport links, disrupting German forces as they fought the Allied advance. For this they needed supplies - dropped by air from Britain - and aerial support.
The messages being sent by Genevieve were vital intelligence from inside enemy territory, as they included precise locations for the RAF to bomb, as well as where to drop equipment.
As she typed out her transmission, two German soldiers opened the door, looking for food.
Calmly, she closed up the wireless set, pretending it was a case she was packing. Genevieve told them she had scarlet fever - which had been sweeping the area - and said she had to get out of the village. The soldiers left quickly.
This was one of several close shaves for Genevieve. Working behind German lines, as the fighting grew closer, was incredibly dangerous, but she never lost her nerve. She had "tons of guts" according to her citation for the MBE at the end of the war.
Genevieve's real name was Phyllis Latour. After she married, she became known as Pippa Doyle, moved to New Zealand, and rarely spoke about her wartime career.
Now she has died at the age of 102, and for the first time her full wartime story can be told.
A yearning for adventure
Latour's wartime SOE file has been released by the National Archives and shows exactly what she did, painting a vivid portrait of one of the little-known heroines of the war.
Born in South Africa in 1921 to a French father and British mother, Phyllis was orphaned at the age of four and went to live with an uncle in Jadotville in the Belgian Congo.
She spent all her spare time on "saffaris [sic]" with her guardian, according to her SOE form, travelling around the country as her uncle tried to stop the smuggling of ivory. It was an exciting time - when she was training for SOE one report noted that she was "always talking about the Belgian Congo".
Phyllis spoke English, French, some Arabic, Swahili and Kikuyu. At 16 she was sent to boarding school in Kenya, then in May 1939 she left with her guardians for Europe. In November 1941 she joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, or WAAF, as a balloon operator.
But it is clear from her files that she yearned for more adventure, and by autumn 1943 she was training for SOE.
She was a "simple-minded, naïve, ingenuous girl", according to her first report. She was "bright, eager and plucky", with a dislike of "sedentary" duties - office-based work, in other words. She was "childlike" and had "no grasp of the realities of life".
Male trainers at SOE often underestimated the female agents, according to Clare Mulley, who has written several books about women agents in World War Two.
"Latour's training reports appear dismissive, warning that she is 'unsuitable' for work in the field, but in France she gave exceptional service," says Ms Mulley.
According to the historian, this was not uncommon. Ms Mulley recalls another trainee's report, which read: "Would make an excellent wife for an unimaginative man."
Reports from Phyllis's trainers were often less than glowing
A former agent turned trainer, Odette Wilen, dismissed Phyllis Latour on New Year's Day, 1944, as a "cheerfull [sic] little scatterbrain" who was "uncontrolled and stubborn". She was "too unreliable emotionally for this type of work".
But Phyllis's reports improved. She was good with a pistol, although a 9mm was too heavy for her. She was sent to SOE's Special Training School in January 1944 and took to parachute jumping with great enthusiasm - though on her first attempt she landed on top of another student.
She was allocated to the network of agents - or circuit - codenamed "Scientist". Her keyword for communicating with HQ was SMOKEGETSINYOUREYES . The circuit was run by Claude de Baissac, who the head of F (France) section described as "the most difficult of my officers". It ran operations across a large swathe of Normandy.
Behind enemy lines
Phyllis arrived in France on 1 May, 1944. At first she travelled around the area of Caen and Vire with another agent, who would be covering the area. The Gestapo heard of their presence - and they even encountered a German vehicle full of Allied parachutes which they had found.
Phyllis and her colleague got away, but then had to pack up their base in a village called Champgeneteux in the middle of the night, destroying documents and decamping to St Mars, a resistance base near Nantes.
One citation in the file notes how she had to move constantly, without a change of shoes or clothes. "This did not worry her," the file said, "so great was her eagerness to serve". In one of the rare interviews she gave in later life, Phyllis described how she hid her codes, on fine silk, by wrapping them round a knitting needle, then feeding that into a shoelace, which she used to secure her hair.
An extract from Phyllis's field report, in which she noted being found by German soldiers
She didn't carry the bulky wireless sets around - she had 17 of them, in different places. She carried out 135 transmissions in the few weeks she was in France.
As the Americans began to advance rapidly, life became even more difficult behind the German lines. The SOE agents used to stay on farms, but once the RAF bombing increased, the Germans occupied these.
Phyllis started sending her transmissions from the open fields instead. At the beginning of August, as the US forces had taken over, Phyllis contacted them, but was initially taken prisoner, until they confirmed her identity.
Return to England
Back in Britain, Phyllis looked for other work as an agent in the field, trying to avoid being sent back to WAAF and a "disciplined" existence, which "horrified" her.
On 7 December 1944 one senior officer wrote he had seen her, saying: "Latour seemed to think that SOE was displaying gross ingratitude towards her and others like her. She told me that no attempt had been made to find her other employment."
She asked to go to the Far East, but was told there was no employment there for women as agents. Then, she was recommended to MI5, but they had no "suitable employment" either.
So she volunteered to go to Germany for SOE and another round of intensive training followed, this time with glowing reports, especially from parachute training.
"She is extremely keen on her job and will put her whole heart and soul into the work," the instructor wrote.
Phyllis was, he said, the first woman who enjoyed the experience and asked to have an extra turn. The instructors turned her down as they "didn't want to set a precedent".
In Phyllis's original application form, she strongly indicated her preference for field work over an office posting
But the Allied armies' rapid advance meant Phyllis was never sent on this second mission. She stayed in England, a change in fortune which appeared not to suit her.
In June 1945 one note says: "Since the collapse of Germany, Miss Latour has suffered from severe nervous strain."
She had seen the resident psychiatrist at the Air Ministry, who recommended she be released "immediately" from her home military department, the WAAF. They wanted Phyllis to return "home" to South Africa as soon as possible.
In September 1945, Phyllis was awarded an MBE. The recommendation says she was "a bit scatters" - a scatterbrain, in other words. "Always wanted to be doing something dangerous but had no idea it was dangerous. Thought it was all rather fun. Tons of guts. Wants to go on with the work, provided it's dangerous enough."
Vera Atkins, who was in charge of female SOE agents in France, wrote to Phyllis that she was "delighted" by the MBE. She asked whether Phyllis had "settled down again to shooting elephants and ostriches and other peace-time occupations".
Phyllis was awarded the Legion d'Honneur medal by the French ambassador to New Zealand in 2014
"After the thrill of clandestine resistance in enemy-occupied territory, many former SOE agents found it hard to adjust to what one called 'the horrors of peace'," says historian Clare Mulley, adding that returning SOE agents were given no support or counselling to help them adjust.
There was little opportunity to make use of their exceptional field skills.
After World War Two, Phyllis married and lived in Kenya, Fiji and Australia, before settling in New Zealand.
France had already awarded Phyllis the Croix de Guerre, but in 2014 she was made a Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur, the country's highest decoration, in a special ceremony in New Zealand.
Of the 39 women agents who served with Special Operations Executive in the field in France, Phyllis Latour - Pippa Doyle - was the last survivor.
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