Juliette Dodu (Saint-Denis de la Réunion, June 15, 1848 – October 28, 1909) was a legendary heroine of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and the first woman to be awarded the Legion of Honor. However, many doubts have been raised about her actions during the war, and her story remains controversial.
Odette Marie Léonie Céline Hallowes, (née Brailly; 28 April 1912 – 13 March 1995), also known as Odette Churchill and Odette Sansom, code named Lise, was an agent for the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) in France during the Second World War. She was the first woman to be awarded the George Cross by the United Kingdom and was awarded the Légion d'honneur by France. The following information relating to her war service uses 'Sansom' as this was her surname during this period.
The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers, especially Germany. SOE agents allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England.
Sansom arrived in France on 2 November 1942 and worked as a courier with the Spindle network (or circuit) of SOE headed by Peter Churchill (whom she later married). In January 1943, to evade arrest, Churchill and Sansom moved their operations to near Annecy in the French Alps. She and Churchill were arrested there on 16 April 1943 by spy-hunter Hugo Bleicher. She spent the rest of the war imprisoned in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp.
Her wartime experiences and endurance of a brutal interrogation and imprisonment, which were chronicled in books and a motion picture, made her one of the most celebrated members of the SOE and one of the few to survive Nazi imprisonment.
Mathilde Carré (30 June 1908 in Le Creusot, France – 30 May 2007), née Mathilde Lucie Bélard and known as "La Chatte" ("The Cat"), was a French Resistance agent during World War II who betrayed the Franco-Polish resistance organization, Interallie, and, as a double agent, was responsible for the arrest of dozens of Interallié operatives by the German occupiers of France. French Resistance leader Pierre de Vomécourt persuaded her to leave France with him and become an agent for the British. Upon arrival in Britain she was interrogated and imprisoned for the remainder of the war. After the war she was deported to France and convicted of treason and sentenced to death. The sentence was later reduced and she was released from prison in 1954.