In May 1944, 23-year-old Phyllis Latour jumped out of a US Air Force bomber and parachuted into occupied Normandy, France.

Philippe, Latour’s father, was a French doctor. He was married to Louise, a British citizen living in South Africa. Phyllis was born there in April 1921.

Her father died three months later during local conflicts in the Belgian Congo, and her mother remarried three years later. Her stepfather was a racing driver.

Her mission was to gather information about Nazi positions in preparation for D-Day.

Once on the ground, she quickly buried her parachute and clothes. She then began a secret mission that would last four months. During this time, she pretended to be 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, how to fix wireless radios, and how to spy without being caught.

She also went through tough physical training in the Scottish highlands.

One of her trainers was a former cat burglar, who taught her how to climb walls and sneak around without leaving a trace.

Phyllis wanted to get revenge on the Nazis who had killed her godfather.

Her mission was dangerous. Years later, Phyllis said, “The men who had been sent before me were caught and killed. I was chosen because I would be less suspicious.”

She would ride a bicycle through the region. She pretended to sell soap and secretly passed messages to the British about German locations. She acted like a silly country girl, chatting with German soldiers to avoid raising suspicion.

She moved from place to place to stay hidden and often slept in forests, finding her own food.

Phyllis also came up with a clever way to hide her secret codes. She wrote them on a piece of silk and pricked it with a pin each time she used a code. She kept it hidden inside a hair tie.

When the Germans briefly detained her, they searched her. She took out the hair tie and let her hair fall to show she had nothing to hide. In the summer of 1944, Phyllis sent 135 coded messages, helping Allied bombers find German targets.

After the war, Phyllis married and moved to New Zealand, where she raised four children. Her children didn’t know about her wartime service until 2000, when her oldest son found out 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 on October 7, 2023. May she rest in peace….

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