Embarrassed by a Heroine.

My brother, Keith, and I were embarrassed by a very famous heroine in 1950 - this is the story of how that came about.

We were visiting Culmstock in Devon where our Aunt Hannah lived on a farm with her husband Uncle Owen Fisher, and my cousins, Bill, Fred, Roy, John, and Harold. The farm was almost totally self sufficient, a dairy herd, slaughter house, butcher, cider orchards etc. It was also a lot of work for all hands.

At the beginning of the war Aunt Hannah had befriended lots of people that she came into contact with including a certain young woman recruited by England's spymaster. Aunt Hannah was born in Ireland in Cappoquin, County Waterford, in 1884 and was a larger than life kind of person. [Incidentally she became very friendly with Nan's Mum who born in the same year.]

Anyway on the day in question I helping my cousins to prepare bags of onions for pickling in the courtyard by the cider press. My Mum and Dad were talking to Aunt Hannah and keeping an eye on the lads. Then this luxury motor car draws up and out steps this flamboyant Irishman and a very attractive French lady. Both were obviously very fond of Aunt Hannah and entered into an animated conversation that included my Mum and Dad. This is the story that they were told.

The lady was Odette who made a landing near Canne in 1942, where she made contact with her supervisor, Peter Churchill. Using the code name Lise. She brought him funds and acted as his courier. A double agent betrayed this operation in France, and Odette and Peter were arrested on 16 April 1943 and imprisoned. The Gestapo at Fresnes prison in Paris tortured her but she stuck to her cover story that Churchill was the nephew of Prime Minister ,Winston Churchill, and that she was Peter’s wife. The hope was that in this way their treatment would be mitigated.

She was condemned to death in June 1943, although a time for execution was not specified, and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp. She survived the war and testified against the prison guards at a 1946 war crimes trial .The Camp commandant Fritz Suhren had brought her with him when he surrendered to the Americans in the hope that her supposed connections to Churchill might allow him to negotiate his way out of execution.

The flamboyant Irishman was Jerrard Tickell, an author, who was a another friend of Aunt Hannah and wrote Odette Churchill's biography and the film script for the movie where the role of Odette was played by Anna Neagle.

And the embarrassment? that came when Odette got to the point of telling of her torture and took her blouse off to show the burn scars by her spine. We had never seen a lady in just a bra! Those were very different times. We were quickly told by our Aunt to resume peeling our onions.