Phyllis Latour

Latour's father, Philippe, was a French doctor and married to Louise, a British citizen living in South Africa, where Phyllis was born 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, and would let his new wife race his automobiles as well. During one such race, her mother's car malfunctioned and she was killed when the car crashed into a barrier.[1] Latour then went to live with her father's cousin in Jadotville in the Belgian Congo. She was later sent to a boarding school in Kenya at age 16.[2]

Latour moved to England in May 1939,[2] and joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) in November 1941 (Service Number 718483) as a flight mechanic for airframes. Because of her fluent French, however, she was immediately asked by SOE to become an agent, and went through vigorous mental and physical training. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in countries occupied by the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany. SOE agents allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. She joined the SOE in revenge for her godmother's father having been shot by the Nazis and for her godmother's suicide after being imprisoned,[1] officially joining on 1 November 1943 and was commissioned as an Honorary Section Officer.

Latour parachuted into Orne, Normandy on 1 May 1944 to operate as part of the Scientist circuit, using the codename Genevieve to work as a wireless operator with the organiser Claude de Baissac and his sister Lise, his courier and assistant.[2][3][4]

Small of stature, Latour posed as a teenage girl whose family had moved to the region to escape the Allied bombing. She rode bicycles around the area, selling soap and chatting with German soldiers. When she obtained any military intelligence she encoded it for transmitting by using one-time codes printed on a piece of silk she concealed by wrapping it around a knitting needle that was inserted into a flat shoelace, which she used to tie up her hair, and would translate using Morse code equipment.[1] She was searched on several occasions, and at one point was brought in for questioning, but the German authorities did not think to examine her hair tie and she was released.[1] Latour's 135 coded messages helped guide bombing missions to enemy targets.[5] She had several close shaves while in France. Once, as she typed out a transmission two German soldiers opened the door looking for food. Calmly she closed up the wireless set, pretending it was a case she was packing, while telling them she had scarlet fever - which had been sweeping the area - and said she had to get out of the village. The soldiers left quickly.[6]

After World War II, Latour married an engineer with the surname Doyle, and went to live in Kenya,[7] Fiji, and Australia. She later lived in Auckland, New Zealand,[8] and turned one hundred years old in April 2021.[9] She was the last living female SOE agent of the 39 who worked in France during World War II.[9]

Latour did not discuss her wartime activities with her family until her children discovered them by reading about them on the Internet in 2000.[1]

Phyllis Latour died on 7 October 2023, at the age of 102.[10][11]

In September 1945, Latour was appointed an additional Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services in France during the German occupation.[12] She was appointed a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour (Knight of the Legion of Honour), by the French government on 29 November 2014, as part of the 70th anniversary of the battle of Normandy.[13]

UK		Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE)[1]
UK		1939–1945 Star
UK		France and Germany Star
UK		Defence Medal
UK		War Medal 1939–1945
France		Croix de guerre 1939–1945 [1]
France		Legion of Honour[1]

• Squadron Leader Beryl E. Escott, Mission Improbable: A salute to the RAF women of SOE in wartime France, London, Patrick Stevens Limited, 1991. ISBN 1-85260-289-9
• Liane Jones, A Quiet Courage: Women Agents in the French Resistance, London, Transworld Publishers Ltd, 1990. ISBN 0-593-01663-7

• A South African Girl in the Special Operations Executive (article by Ross Dix-Peek)