There, she met with her new SOE comrades, including her Commanding Officer, Peter Churchill, and a radio operator called Adolphe Rabinovitch. On the night of November 2, 1942, Odette landed on a beach near Cassis in Northern France. Listen to Odette's Granddaughter, Sophie Parker, discuss how she initially brought herself to the attention of the SOE with BFBS's Ben Coley, in the audio clip below.

Unbeknown to Odette, she had caught the attention of the War Office, who sought to enlist her as a secret agent for the SOE. Odette relocated to Somerset with her three children and mother for safety during the war years while Roy was away.īut in 1942, Odette’s country lifestyle was interrupted when she took a path that would change her life forever. Roy enlisted and became a sergeant in the British Army at the start of the Second World War. The couple married in 1931 and moved to London. Spending her teenage years in the French coastal city of Boulogne, she fell in love with Roy Sansom, a visiting Englishman who was involved in the hotel trade. Odette was a bright but sickly child, even from a young age her life was threatened when she contracted serious illnesses, including Polio, that blinded her for almost four years and left her bedridden for months. Odette was born in Northern France in 1912, and was only six years old when her Father, Florentin Brailly, was killed fighting in the French town of Verdun shortly before the Armistice in 1918.

The spy by sophie