Sansom endured her time at Fresnes with stoic optimism. On at least two occasions, she was allowed to meet with Churchill and she saved portions of her rations to share with him. However, for the majority of her time in Fresnes, Sansom was kept in solitary confinement, with the words ‘Grande Criminale Pas de Privilèges’ affixed to her cell door. She received less food than other prisoners, and was not allowed to shower or to have any contact with other inmates. In an effort to keep up her spirits, Sansom communicated with her fellow prisoners through the window in her cell. This helped to pass the time but did have some rather nasty repercussions. One evening, a German wardress came into her cell and smacked Sansom twice on the face, accusing her of speaking with others through the window. Sansom was so incensed at this false accusation (for, although she spoke frequently through the window, she was actually innocent on this occasion) that she demanded to speak with the prison captain, giving her name as Mrs Churchill. The captain came to her cell, and Sansom was quite clear about her disgust at the way in which she had been treated. Full of apologies, the German captain was dismayed that Sansom might think poorly of the Germans. In an effort to ‘make things right’ he offered to send a parcel to Churchill, as well as a message that Sansom was all right. The captain followed through on his promises and reinforced, at least in Sansom’s mind, that using the name Churchill had been a very good idea!
Sansom was taken numerous times to Avenue Foch (German counter-intelligence headquarters), where she convinced the Germans that ‘her husband’ was merely an innocent bystander and that she alone was involved in espionage activities. She took full responsibility for all of the resistance activities in Annecy. The Germans apparently believed her, and ceased interrogating Peter Churchill. Instead, they focused on Sansom, repeatedly questioning her as to the whereabouts of her wireless operator Arnaud and the British officer named Roger. Sansom revealed nothing, and endured horrific torture, including being burned on her back with a hot iron and having her toenails torn out. The Germans quite often found someone of a prisoner’s own nationality to commit the torture, in the belief that the prisoner could then never say they had been tortured by the Germans. Sansom remembered her torturer as a young, handsome Frenchman, and during their sessions she often tried to shame him. The man clearly lacked any conscience but his efforts were wasted on his charge as Sansom simply refused to break. Sansom was the only person who knew the whereabouts of Arnaud and Roger, and her refusal to reveal this information undoubtedly saved their lives. She was both defiant and dismissive of the Germans, believing this attitude garnered some of level of respect from her captors, as well as allowing her to maintain her own dignity. The Germans finally tired of their efforts to break her having come to the conclusion that she would give them no information. Sansom was condemned to death in June 1943, but remained at Fresnes prison in solitary confinement for over a year. Her spirit still unbroken, she even managed to find some dark humour in her predicament. When her sentence was read to her at Avenue Foch, Sansom discovered she had been condemned to death twice, once for France and once for Britain. Her immediate thought was, ‘For which country will I die? I shall never know.’9 The effects of Sansom’s incarceration inevitably took their toll, however. Her tortured feet had never been properly tended to, and the lack of proper food and medical attention left her weak and in constant pain. In October 1943, Sansom was moved to a shared cell, with a French woman named Simone Herail. Herail was shocked by Sansom’s condition and, in a statement given after the war, recalled,
I knew and lived with Miss Odette Sansom from 15 October 1943 to 11 January 1944 in cell 33 Fresnes prison; she had been for many months in solitary confinement in that prison and when she came to live with me her health was seriously impaired by this inhuman procedure so dear to the Nazis, her weakness was extreme, she could no longer even eat the filthy repugnant food which was given to us.10
On 13 May 1944, Sansom was taken from her cell and transported to Avenue Foch. Travelling with her were fellow SOE agents Andrée Borrel, Diana Rowden, Vera Leigh, Yolande Beekman, Eliane Plewman and Madeleine Damerment, as well as Sonia Olschanezky, a German Jew who had been recruited in France to work for the JUGGLER circuit. This was Sansom’s first opportunity to meet her fellow agents. All of the women had trained at different times and had gone into France separately. The other women had had the opportunity to meet and communicate with each other at Fresnes prison, but Sansom, who had been kept in solitary confinement, had been denied much of this contact. She had, however, seen Diana Rowden during her time at Fresnes. Rowden had earned Sansom’s eternal gratitude one afternoon in February when a group of prisoners had been transported to Rue des Saussaies for fingerprinting. Peter Churchill was in the group, and, as he and Sansom manoeuvred into position so that they could exchange a few words, Rowden had moved in front of them to block them from the view of the German sentry.
At Avenue Foch the women enjoyed a surprisingly comfortable day. Sansom requested that they be served tea, and the Germans complied. The women shared a lipstick that one of them had in their possession, and spent the day reminiscing and sharing their stories with each other. They talked about their mutual experiences at Avenue Foch, and took turns both encouraging and consoling each other. Sansom was impressed by all of the women’s bravery. Some of them cried, but Sansom felt optimistic. It was a beautiful spring day in Paris and she was finally in the company of other women. Things appeared much brighter than they had during her year-long confinement in Fresnes. Later that afternoon, the women were brought outside to be transported to the train station. Handcuffed together, the women were loaded aboard a train bound for Germany. Sansom was chained to Yolande Beekman, and they shared a compartment with Andrée Borrel and Vera Leigh. All of the women were apprehensive about their unknown destination. They had no idea whether they were being transported to another prison, a concentration camp, or their execution site. As the only one actually condemned to death at this point, Sansom was especially fearful.
The SOE agents were transported to Karlsruhe, a civil prison in Germany. Upon their arrival, the women were separated. Sansom was placed in a small dark cell with a German inmate, and life seemed better than it had at Fresnes. There was enough food to survive, she had the company of a cellmate, and prisoners could exercise in the prison yard and were expected to perform menial tasks, such as sewing or peeling potatoes, which helped to pass the time. She was even able to call greetings from her window when the SOE women were allowed out on the yard for separate exercise. At night, Sansom listened to the roar of the engines of the American and British bombers flying overhead, cautiously optimistic that end of the war was near, and praying that Allied bombs did not hit the prison. Then, without warning, Sansom was once again prepared for transport. This time her destination was Ravensbrück concentration camp.
While conditions at Karlsruhe had been bearable, life at Ravensbrück could only be described as horrific. Located in northern Germany, Ravensbrück was a camp designed for female inmates, complete with crematorium and gas chamber. There was massive overcrowding, poor sanitation, and near-starvation rations. The behaviour of the guards towards the prisoners was brutal, and disease was rampant. When Sansom arrived in July 1944, she was appalled by the sheer size of the camp and by the condition of the women she saw, whom she described as looking like wounded animals. However, Sansom had little opportunity to connect with her fellow inmates, as she was not incarcerated with the rest of the camp population. The Germans, still believing that she was Winston Churchill’s niece by marriage, placed her in solitary confinement in a small, dark underground cell next to the execution grounds. She was tortured in a variety of ways, being subjected to starvation, extreme darkness and having no heat in her cell through the winter months. Perhaps the worst torture came from hearing the daily abuse of other female prisoners, which took place in the punishment cell directly adjacent to Sansom’s. Every evening different women would be brought to the punishment cell to be beaten, and
Sansom could hear every stroke and every scream. After several months, Sansom was moved to another cell that was adjacent to the crematorium. The window of Samson’s cell was left partially open, and her cell would fill with both the smell and the cinders from the ovens. Although extremely ill by this point, Sansom could hear everything that went on outside her cell, and the bits of burning hair that settled on her cell floor left little doubt in her mind as to what was taking place.
By this time Sansom’s health had been thoroughly compromised. A camp doctor told her she was likely suffering from tuberculosis, and offered to perform surgery on her lungs, but Sansom refused. Sansom was also suffering from both scurvy and dysentery. Her condition grew so grave that a camp guard actually told the camp Commandant, Fritz Suhren, that ‘she would not live longer than a week if she were not cared for properly’.11 Samson overheard this conversation, and thought that death would be a pleasure. Suhren had other plans, however. He began to visit Sansom in order to monitor her condition, and gave orders that she was to receive medical treatment for all of her conditions. He realised the potential value of having a relative of Winston Churchill as his prisoner, and was not prepared to lose her to disease or starvation. With no way to communicate with other prisoners, Sansom had no idea that the Allied armies were forcing a German retreat on all fronts. After the Allied forces had landed in Normandy in June 1944, they had slowly but steadily advanced against the German forces. The Russians in the east were also scoring victories against the Germans. By March 1945 the Americans had crossed the Rhine River into Germany, and by April the Russians had begun their assault on Berlin, the German capital. The Russians were also closing in on Ravensbrück. On 28 April 1944 a decision was made to vacate the camp, and hundreds of prisoners lost their lives during the evacuation. Some were executed to eliminate witnesses of the horrors of Ravensbrück, some were machine-gunned down while trying to escape, and some were simply too ill to survive the move. However, Sansom’s deception with regard to her relationship to Winston Churchill saved her life. Fritz Suhren, recognising that the Germans were about to be overrun by the Russians, took Sansom as a hostage. Grabbed from her cell, Sansom was escorted out onto the exercise yard to wait while a car was brought for her. As she waited, she gazed around the camp, bewildered by its state of upheaval. Suddenly, a young girl of about eighteen or nineteen, head shaved but still relatively healthy-looking, was shot dead in front of her. The other female prisoners, driven crazy by hunger, descended up on the still-warm body, devouring it.
Shocked and horrified at what had just taken place, Sansom was grabbed and placed into the car with Suhren. Certain that this was the end, she assumed that she was being taken to a field or a wooded area, where she would be executed, leaving no trace. Suhren, though, had a different plan for Sansom. Hoping to trade his valuable hostage for his freedom, or at the very least preferential treatment, he drove with Sansom towards the American lines. After making contact with the Americans on 1 May 1945, Suhren handed Sansom over to an American officer. Sansom immediately told the American officers who Suhren was, and the horrors that he was responsible for, and the Americans took him into custody. Sansom refused the Americans’ offer to find her a place to sleep for the night, choosing instead to spend the night in Suhren’s car. It had been so long since she had seen the stars, she wanted to spend the night simply staring skyward. She also knew that Suhren had numerous documents in the car, and she was determined to read them and bring them back to Britain. The Americans arranged medical treatment for Sansom, who was in a deplorable physical state. When she was well enough to travel, she returned to Britain, arriving home on 8 May 1944. Fritz Suhren managed to escape custody but was arrested by the German police in 1949. In 1950 he was found guilty of war crimes and hanged.
Upon returning to Britain, Sansom continued to work for SOE, providing details about what had happened during her incarceration, which assisted in war crimes trials, and helping Vera Atkins track down what had happened to the other female agents who had never returned from France. She was also reunited with Peter Churchill, who like Samson had also survived the horrors of concentration camp life. Sansom decided her marriage to Roy was over, and the union was dissolved in 1946. She married Churchill in 1947. This marriage lasted until 1956, when Churchill sued for divorce on the grounds of adultery, and she married yet another former SOE agent, Geoffrey Hallowes, in 1957. A few years younger than Sansom, Hallowes was a very wealthy man and shared many common interests with her. She described him as a ‘truly marvellous husband’, and the two enjoyed a very happy life together.12 Sansom was made a Member of the British Empire (MBE) in 1945, receiving the George Cross in 1946 and the Légion d’honneur in 1950 for the bravery she showed during her time as a German prisoner. There was some controversy regarding whether or not Sansom actually deserved these honours. After all, the torture she received and the interrogations where she allegedly revealed nothing were all conducted with few witnesses. However, extensive documentation of the torture she had received while incarcerated was provided by numerous medical experts, and Francis Cammaerts (code-named Roger) issued a certified statement indicating that Sansom alone knew the whereabouts of both he and the wireless operator Arnaud. The Germans were aware that she possessed this knowledge, and tortured Sansom to force her to reveal Roger and Arnaud’s whereabouts. Since both Roger and Arnaud were able to continue their work unmolested, it was clear that Sansom had suffered in silence to protect her fellow agents.
Plagued by constant pain as a result of her wartime experiences, Sansom was declared permanently disabled, and was awarded the sum of £1,300 for her internment in Ravensbrück and a disability pension of £413 per year for the remainder of her life. She became heavily involved in numerous organisations, charities and causes, such as the National Poliomyelitis Association and Amnesty International, and even became Vice-President of the FANY in 1967. In 1993, at the age of eighty-one and despite being quite frail, she travelled to Ravensbrück to unveil a memorial plaque that had been crafted to honour the agents who had died at the camp.
Sansom’s incredible self-sacrifice and determination earned her the admiration of her adopted country, Britain. Perhaps this was most clearly illustrated when Sansom’s medals were stolen from her mother’s home, and her mother, describing the sacrifice that had earned Sansom these honours, appealed through the press for their return. The thief, obviously a man with a conscience, returned the medals through the post, enclosing the following letter:
Your appeal for the return of the medals and orders of your very brave Odette and Captain Peter Churchill doesn’t go in vain. You, madame, appear to be a dear, old lady. God bless you and your children. Thank you for having faith in me. I’m not all that bad – it’s just circumstances and I can’t help it. Your little dog really loved me. I gave him a nice pat and left him a piece of meat – out of the fridge. Sincerely yours, A Bad Egg. PS. I promise I’ll not give a second call.13
Odette Brailly Sansom Churchill Hallowes died in her home on Eriswell Road in Walton-on-Thames on 13 March 1995. She was buried at Burvale Cemetery in Hersham, Surrey, England.
7
Mathilde Carré (1910–70)
Code Name: The Cat/Victoire
While the female agents of the Second World War may have differed in many ways – including nationality, appearance, age, social background and assignment – their exploits commanded the respect of their peers and the gratitude of the country for which they served. Defiant in the face of danger, unwilling to yield even in the face of horrific torture, these women were ready to lay down their lives for their country. Such names as Szabo, Khan and Sansom, among many others, are spoken with reverence and respect. One agent’s name, however, elicits a much less complimentary reaction. That agent is Mathilde Carré.
Most sources cite Mathilde’s birthdate as 19 February 1910. Mathilde herself said she was born on 30 June 1908, in Le Creusot, France. Her given name was Mathilde-Lucie Bélard, and as a child she was always ref
erred to as Lily. Shortly after her birth, Mathilde was turned over to her maternal grandfather and two spinster aunts to be raised, as her parents were far too busy enjoying one another, and keeping a busy social schedule, to raise a little girl. She saw her parents only sporadically, and was kept relatively isolated from other children. Her grandfather was quite wealthy, and she spent her early years in a vast house surrounded by splendid gardens, where her solitude helped to foster her vivid imagination. The onset of the First World War had little impact on young Mathilde. In 1914 her engineer father became a lieutenant and then a captain in the French army, and her mother spent most of the war following her husband to his various postings. Mathilde joined them both at Versailles when her father was sent there for a three-month mining course, but her contact with her parents remained limited. When she turned twelve, Mathilde left her grandfather’s home and was enrolled in a private school in Orleans. Deprived of the companionship of her peers for so long, Mathilde revelled in her newfound social circle, and immediately set about making up for lost time. She discovered boys, and began ‘to receive and then to write little love notes and to exchange kisses and rendezvous carefully arranged in advance’.1 Despite her newfound social life, Mathilde was a capable student and did well in her first year in Orleans. However, during her second year a more unsavoury streak in her character began to manifest itself. Mathilde described herself as ‘deceitful, untruthful and vicious’, and she paid little heed to her schoolwork.2 She wished only to do what she wanted, and viewed school as a tedious irritation. Upon being demoted to a lower grade, Mathilde’s keen sense of self-preservation kicked in. Following a reprimand by the headmistress, Mathilde threw herself down a flight of stairs. For this, Mathilde received an outpouring of care and concern, and there was no further mention of her poor attitude towards academics. When recounting the incident, Mathilde noted smugly, ‘I had won.’3 Mathilde had discovered that by manipulating people she was often able to obtain what she wanted. Longing for more freedom, and suspecting that a school in Paris might be more exciting, Mathilde began developing illnesses that eventually resulted in her being sent back to her grandfather’s estate to regain her health. After this leisurely recuperation period, Mathilde’s parents transferred her to a school in Paris, where she completed her high school education while enjoying all the gaiety that the French capital had to offer!
Women who Spied for Britain Page 13
