27 Facts About Odette Hallowes

Odette Hallowes was the first woman to be awarded the George Cross by the United Kingdom and was awarded the Legion d'honneur by France.

Odette Hallowes spent the rest of the war imprisoned in Ravensbruck Concentration Camp.

Odette Hallowes had a convent education and was considered difficult, perhaps because of her illnesses.

Odette Hallowes met an Englishman, Roy Patrick Sansom, in Boulogne and married him in Boulogne-sur-Mer on 27 October 1931, moving with him to Britain.

The couple had three daughters: Francoise Edith, born 1932 in Boulogne; Lily Marie, born 1934 in Fulham; and Marianne Odette Hallowes, born 1936 in Fulham.

Odette Hallowes left her three daughters in a convent school, and was trained to be sent into Nazi-occupied France to work with the French Resistance.

Odette Hallowes seems to have little experience of the outside world.

Odette Hallowes is excitable and temperamental, although she has a certain determination.

Sansom, posing as "Madame Odette Hallowes Metayer", was required to find food and lodging for Rabinovitch, who was in France illegally and had no ration card, as well as to tend to air drops that were sometimes carelessly placed in dangerous areas.

Odette Hallowes's work brought her initially to Marseille, then considered a dangerous town because of its infiltration by German agents.

Odette Hallowes later recalled that she had suspicions of disloyalty about other members of the Spindle network, but declined to identify whom she suspected.

Odette Hallowes learned from Marsac the location of Churchill and Sansom, got a letter of introduction to them from him, and proceeded to Saint-Jorioz where he introduced himself to Sansom as "Colonel Henri".

Odette Hallowes's back was scorched with a red-hot poker and all of her toenails were pulled out.

Odette Hallowes refused to disclose the whereabouts of Rabinovitch and another British agent, stuck to her fabricated cover story that Churchill was the nephew of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, that she was his wife, and that he knew nothing of her activities.

Odette Hallowes had calculated that, if the Germans thought she was related to the British Prime Minister, they would want to keep her and Peter alive as a possible bargaining tool.

Odette Hallowes hoped that her supposed connections to the Prime Minister might allow him to negotiate his way out of execution.

Odette Hallowes adopted an attitude of defiance, and found that this resulted in a degree of respect by her captors and helped her survive the imprisonment mentally.

Roy and Odette Hallowes's marriage was dissolved in 1946 and she married Peter Churchill in 1947.

Odette Hallowes was divorced from Churchill in 1955 and married Geoffrey Hallowes, a former SOE officer, in 1956.

Odette Hallowes died on 13 March 1995 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England, aged 82.

Odette Hallowes was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire and was the first of three Second World War First Aid Nursing Yeomanry members to be awarded the George Cross, all for work with the SOE.

Odette Hallowes remains the only woman to have received the George Cross while alive, all other female awards to date being posthumous.

Odette Hallowes was appointed a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur for her work with the French Resistance.

Buckmaster played himself in the film, and Sansom, then known as Odette Hallowes Churchill, wrote a personal message that appeared at the end of the film, which was well received.

Odette Hallowes Churchill had opposed making the film in Hollywood, for fear that the film would be fictionalised.

Odette Hallowes served as a technical advisor on a film on her fellow SOE agent Violette Szabo, Carve Her Name with Pride.

On 6 March 2020 Great Western Railway named a Class 800 train after her; the ceremony in Odette Hallowes's honour was held at Paddington Station in London and attended by Anne, Princess Royal.