In May 1944, 23-year-old Phyllis Latour jumped from a US Air Force bomber and parachuted into occupied Normandy, France. Her mission was to gather information about Nazi positions to prepare for D-Day. Once on the ground, she quickly buried her parachute and clothes, then began a secret mission that lasted four months, posing as a poor teenage French girl.
Phyllis had been trained by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). She learned how to send secret messages in Morse code, repair wireless radios, and spy without being caught. She also underwent tough physical training in the Scottish Highlands. One of her trainers was a former cat burglar who taught her how to climb walls and move stealthily without leaving a trace. Phyllis was driven by a desire to get revenge on the Nazis who had killed her godfather.
Her mission was perilous. Years later, Phyllis recalled, “The men who had been sent before me were caught and killed. I was chosen because I would seem less suspicious.” She rode a bicycle through the region, pretending to sell soap, while secretly passing messages to the British about German positions. She played the part of a simple country girl, chatting with German soldiers to avoid drawing suspicion. She frequently moved from place to place to stay hidden and often slept in forests, finding food on her own.
Phyllis also devised a clever way to conceal her secret codes. She wrote them on a piece of silk and pricked it with a pin each time she used a code. She hid it inside a hair tie. On one occasion, when the Germans briefly detained and searched her, she let her hair down, showing she had nothing to hide. In the summer of 1944, Phyllis sent 135 coded messages that helped Allied bombers target German locations.
After the war, Phyllis married and moved to New Zealand, where she raised four children. Her children didn’t learn about her wartime service until 2000, when her oldest son discovered it online. In 2014, on the 70th anniversary of D-Day, the French government honored her with the Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. This hero passed away on October 7, 2023. May she rest in peace.