Code Name: Lise

Larry Loftis's Code Name: Lise is a work of narrative nonfiction that tells the true story of Odette Sansom, code-named "Lise," who became the most highly decorated spy of World War II while serving as a courier for Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE), a secret sabotage organization that Prime Minister Winston Churchill tasked to "set Europe ablaze" in Nazi-occupied countries.

Born in Amiens, France, in 1912, Odette grew up shaped by loss and hardship. Her father, Gaston Brailly, was killed in World War I, and her grandfather impressed upon her a duty to serve France. Childhood polio left her blind for years, and rheumatic fever further weakened her, but these ordeals forged resilience. She married Englishman Roy Sansom in 1930, had three daughters, and settled in London. When war broke out, Roy enlisted and Odette moved the children to Somerset.

In the spring of 1942, Odette mistakenly sent photographs of the French coast to the War Office instead of the Admiralty, an error that brought her to Captain Selwyn Jepson, the recruiting officer for SOE's F (France) Section. Jepson recognized her native French fluency as exceptionally valuable and urged her to train as an agent. Odette initially refused, citing her children, but Jepson persuaded her to try. After training in weapons, spycraft, and interrogation resistance, she received a mixed evaluation: patriotic and tenacious but impulsive. Major Maurice Buckmaster, head of F Section, nearly rejected her but decided her fighting spirit outweighed her weaknesses. Odette placed her daughters in a convent school. Four departure attempts failed before she finally reached France in November 1942 aboard a felucca, a small Mediterranean sailboat, departing from Gibraltar.

At Cassis, near Marseille, Odette met Captain Peter Churchill, head of SPINDLE, an SOE resistance network operating in southern France. Peter was a Cambridge graduate fluent in multiple languages who had already completed two dangerous tours of France. The circuit's radio operator, Adolphe Rabinovitch, code-named "Arnaud," was a fiery Russo-Egyptian Jewish operative whose gruff temperament belied deep competence and loyalty. Peter persuaded London to keep Odette as his permanent courier.

Odette's early missions tested her nerve. She escorted agents through Marseille, delivered money to a French Resistance general, and spent a night in a German soldiers' brothel when no other lodging was available after curfew, narrowly escaping a military police raid. Over the following months, SPINDLE armed the Maquis (French Resistance guerrilla fighters) and carried out sabotage against Nazi infrastructure. Through repeated narrow escapes, Odette and Peter grew closer, and their professional bond gave way to love.

Loftis traces the parallel story of Sergeant Hugo Bleicher, a German field security policeman working under the Abwehr, Germany's military intelligence service. A former banker's apprentice who spoke fluent French, Bleicher had risen to prominence by dismantling the INTERALLIÉ espionage network, arresting 60 agents through his skill at turning captured operatives into double agents. In March 1943, he arrested André Marsac, a Resistance chief, in Paris and, through psychological manipulation at Fresnes Prison, extracted names and addresses of agents across France.

When the neighboring CARTE resistance circuit collapsed due to security failures, SPINDLE relocated to St. Jorioz, a village on Lake Annecy in the French Alps. Bleicher, posing as "Colonel Henri," contacted Odette with a proposal to defect to England. Odette suspected a trap and cabled SOE's London headquarters, known as Baker Street, which confirmed that Henri was "highly dangerous" and ordered Odette to relocate. Peter, who had been recalled to London for debriefing, was ordered to return immediately, and Lieutenant Francis Cammaerts was sent as his temporary replacement in SPINDLE.

Peter parachuted onto Mont Semnoz on April 15, 1943. During the descent, Odette slipped on ice and fell 30 feet, shattering a vertebra, but told no one. Before the team could relocate the next day, Bleicher arrived with Gestapo agents and Italian troops, tipped off by an intercepted radio message. Odette led the arrest team to Peter's room and secretly extracted his wallet, which contained names and radio codes, hiding it under a car seat.

In captivity, Odette made two critical decisions. She told their captors that she and Peter were married and that Peter was closely related to Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Neither claim was true, but the Churchill connection made Peter too valuable to execute, and the marriage fiction extended that protection to Odette.

After transport through Italy and France, they arrived at Fresnes Prison in Paris on May 8, 1943. Peter was interrogated at Gestapo headquarters on Avenue Foch but, apparently because of his supposed Churchill connection, was not tortured. Odette's interrogation was different. When she refused to reveal the locations of Arnaud and Cammaerts, her interrogators seared her back with a red-hot iron and extracted all her toenails with steel pincers, one by one. She gave no information, and her silence protected both men.

Bleicher continued visiting Odette in prison, offering freedom and outings, but she refused every overture, unwilling to accept privileges denied to other prisoners. Father Paul Steinert, the prison chaplain, became a source of comfort for both Odette and Peter. Odette was tried in absentia and condemned to death on two counts: being a British spy and being a Frenchwoman in the Resistance.

In February 1944, Peter was transferred to Berlin and eventually to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Odette was sent to Germany in May 1944 alongside six other F Section women agents, all of whom were later executed at the Natzweiler-Struthof and Dachau concentration camps.

On July 27, 1944, Odette arrived at Ravensbrück, a women's concentration camp. Commandant Fritz Sühren placed her in the Bunker, a pitch-dark cell where she received minimal food and only five minutes of artificial light per day. In August, the heating was turned on full blast and she was denied food for six days. She developed scurvy and dysentery, her hair fell out, and she collapsed into a semicoma. After more than three months in total darkness, she was moved to a cell with a window located six yards from the crematorium, where ashes from burned bodies drifted daily into her quarters. As the war neared its end, a gas chamber was constructed at Ravensbrück and thousands of women were executed.

On April 28, 1945, Sühren loaded Odette into his Mercedes and drove to American lines, presenting her as a Churchill relative in hopes that delivering her safely would shield him from prosecution. Odette immediately identified him as the Ravensbrück commandant and told the Americans to arrest him.

Peter survived transfers through several concentration camps, narrowly avoiding execution under an order to kill all British officer prisoners. A rescue company from the Wehrmacht, Germany's armed forces, arrived at the last moment, and American troops liberated the group in Italy.

Reunited in England, Odette was gravely ill: Her shattered vertebra had deteriorated, she had severe anemia, and an infected toe had caused life-threatening sepsis. Multiple operations saved her life. On August 20, 1946, she was awarded the George Cross, the first woman who had faced the enemy to receive it. At the investiture, King George VI requested that she lead the procession of 250 recipients. She testified at the Ravensbrück war crimes trial. Sühren, who had escaped custody twice, was recaptured in 1949 and executed. Father Paul Steinert, believed dead, was found alive in Germany; his cousin delivered to Peter and Odette the rag dolls she had made at Fresnes, which Father Paul had saved for her children.

Peter and Odette married on February 15, 1947. They divorced in 1956. Peter died in 1972 at 63. Odette died in 1995 at 82, the most highly decorated spy of World War II.