06/08/2026
She wraps a strip of silk around a knitting needle, threads it through a shoelace, and ties it in her hair. On the silk are 2,000 codes. Each time she uses one, she marks it with a pinprick. If the N***s find it, she will be shot.
A coded message takes thirty minutes to send. The Germans can trace the signal in ninety. So she taps out the message, packs up her wireless, and moves -- through barns, forests, farmhouses -- always one hour ahead of the men hunting her. She has six bicycles hidden across the countryside. Seventeen radios. She poses as a poor teenage girl selling soap, chatting with German soldiers, smiling, gathering intelligence. She is twenty-three years old.
Phyllis Latour was born on this day in 1921 in South Africa -- to a French father and British mother. By the time France was liberated in August 1944, she had transmitted 135 coded messages from behind enemy lines -- messages that helped guide Allied bombing raids and prepare the way for D-Day, which began eighty-two years ago today. The average life expectancy of a wireless operator was six weeks. Latour lasted four months.
She didn't look like a spy. Small, slight, with wide appealing eyes, she could pass for fourteen. That was the point. "The men who had been sent just before me were caught and executed," she later said. "I was told I was chosen for that area because I would arouse less suspicion."
Latour had her reasons for taking the job. Her godmother's father -- a man she considered her grandfather -- had been shot by the N***s. Her godmother had committed su***de after being taken prisoner. When the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Britain's covert agency for sabotage and espionage behind enemy lines, offered her a chance to fight back, she didn't hesitate.
"They said I could have three days to think about it," she recalled. "I told them I didn't need three days. I'd take the job now."
SOE trained her to kill. A cat burglar released from prison taught recruits "how to get in a high window and down drainpipes, how to climb over roofs without being caught." She learned encryption, surveillance, Morse code -- tapping out twenty-four words per minute, twice the speed of a professional telegraphist. She made fourteen parachute jumps. On May 1, 1944, she leapt from an American bomber into N**i-occupied Normandy and landed in an apple tree.
The close calls came constantly. Once, two German soldiers walked in while she was mid-transmission. She calmly closed the wireless, told them she had scarlet fever, and said she had to leave the village. They fled. Another time, German soldiers hung their wet laundry on what they thought was a clothesline. It was her radio antenna.
On another occasion, the Gestapo rounded her up with other civilians and ordered her to strip. A female officer stared suspiciously at her hair. Latour pulled the shoelace from her hair and shook her head. "That seemed to satisfy her," she said. "I tied my hair back up with the lace."
She slept in forests, foraged for food, stayed with families who had almost nothing. "One family I stayed with told me we were eating squirrel," she recalled. "I found out later it was rat. I was half-starved, so I didn't care."
The work took its toll. After the war, a military file noted that "since the collapse of Germany, Miss Latour has suffered from severe nervous strain." She had been offered no support, no counseling. Female agents, she said, were left to face "the horrors of peace" alone.
One memory haunted her. She had sent a message requesting a German listening post be taken out by bombers. A German mother and her children were among the casualties. "I can imagine the bomber pilots patting each other on the back and offering congratulations after a strike," she said. "But they never saw the carnage that was left. I always saw it, and I don't think I will ever forget it."
She married, moved to New Zealand, raised four children. She never told them what she had done. For decades, she kept silent. "I didn't have good memories of the war," she said, "so I didn't bother telling anyone." Her eldest son found out by reading something on the internet in 2000. Her children insisted she apply for her medals. She agreed -- reluctantly.
In 2014, at the age of ninety-three, France finally gave her its highest honor: the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. She was surprised anyone still remembered.
Phyllis Latour Doyle died in October 2023 at the age of 102. She was the last of the thirty-nine women who had served as SOE agents in France during the war.
She had kept their secrets for eighty years. She had hidden codes in her hair, talked her way past the Gestapo, sent messages while soldiers searched for her signal. And when asked why she did it, she gave a simple answer: "I did it for revenge."
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Phyllis Latour published an autobiography shortly before her death: "The Last Secret Agent: My Life as a Spy Behind N**i Lines" at https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9781250384348 (Bookshop) and https://amzn.to/4sgtutv (Amazon)
For several excellent books about more real-life female spies and resistance fighters for adult readers, we recommend "Code Name: Lise" (https://www.amightygirl.com/code-name-lise), "The Nine" https://www.amightygirl.com/the-nine), "D-Day Girls" (https://www.amightygirl.com/d-day-girls), and "All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days“ (https://www.amightygirl.com/frequent-troubles-of-our-days)
For adults who love to read about heroic women of WWII, you can find more of the best fiction and non-fiction books in our blog post, "Telling Her Story: 40 Books for Adult Readers About Women Heroes of WWII," at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=24501
For a fascinating book about both famous and little known women heroes of WWII for both teens and adults, ages 12 and up, we highly recommend "Women Heroes of World War II: 32 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance, and Rescue," for teens and adults, at https://www.amightygirl.com/women-heroes-of-world-war-ii
For books for children and teens about girls and women involved in WWII resistance movements, we recommend "Jars of Hope" for ages 7 to 10 (https://www.amightygirl.com/jars-of-hope), "Making Bombs for Hi**er" for ages 10 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/making-bombs-for-hitler), "Resistance" for ages 12 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/resistance), and "In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer" for ages 14 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/in-my-hands)
