Odile de Vasselot, aristocratic French resistance agent who helped Allied airmen reach safety
Odile de Vasselot, who has died aged 103, served in the French Resistance during the Second World War as a liaison agent and escort for escaped prisoners and Allied airmen; her involvement in the mainly working-class movement was unusual because she had been born into an aristocratic family.
One of four children, Odile de Vasselot de Régné was born on January 6 1922 to Lt-Col Gaston de Vasselot de Régné and Chantal, née de Cugnac, in Saumur in the Loire Valley, the seat of the French cavalry school, where her father was an instructor. The family had a long and distinguished military history. Her maternal grandfather was a general, and an ancestor had fought against the British in the American War of Independence.
During Odile's childhood the family followed her father around military postings, including in Dijon and Metz, where they became friendly with then Colonel Charles de Gaulle. Odile recalled playing with de Gaulle's son, Philippe.
Her father was taken prisoner by the Germans during the invasion of France, and on June 18 1940, listening to the BBC on a radio made by her brother at the family castle in Poitou, Odile heard General de Gaulle's call to the French people to fight on: 'I came down to the living room, and I said, 'You know what I just heard – de Gaulle is in London. He's calling people to come to him, quickly.' Right away, we were all with General de Gaulle.'
Her mother moved with Odile and her siblings to Paris where, on November 11, Odile took part in the student demonstration on the Champs-Élysées, the first public act of resistance against the occupation. 'It was necessary to act,' she recalled in 2023: 'It was not possible to do nothing.'
Although she and her siblings staged freelance acts of resistance, such as chalking the Lorraine Cross on walls and tearing down German and Vichy propaganda posters, she felt frustrated at being unable to do more.
Her chance came at the end of 1942, when a friend put her in touch with a Resistance group known as the Zero network, and under the code name 'Danièle' she was tasked with transporting mail between network members in Paris and Toulouse, taking the night train on Friday and returning to Paris, via an overnight train, on Sunday morning. 'The hardest part was lying to my mother about my activities, especially since I had to stay out two nights a week,' she recalled. At that time, 'young women were kept under close watch. Everything I did, I had to tell my mother about it.'
By the end of the year, arrests had made it dangerous to work with the Zero network so, under a new pseudonym, 'Jeanne', Odile joined another group, the Comet network. For two months, until early 1944, she trudged through muddy fields at the Belgian frontier, meeting up with Allied airmen and parachutists, accompanying them to France, then helping them to return to Britain via Spain.
Odile de Vasselot: she ate the ticket stubs of the airmen she had been escorting - ALAIN JOCARD/afp
On January 4 she was escorting two British airmen on a train from Lille to Paris when the Gestapo burst into the compartment and arrested the men. 'The boys walked past me, didn't wink at me, but looked at me,' she recalled. 'I imagine they wanted to say thank you anyway, good luck... They were only prisoners of war and came back.
'What still amazes me is that the Germans didn't know the conductor was a young girl. Since I was blue-eyed, blonde, and young they didn't ask me anything.'
She still had the men's ticket stubs in her pocket: 'I ate them.'
She rejoined the Zero network that summer, as the Allies were moving toward Paris, and in August 1944 she participated in the liberation of the city.
After the war, she graduated in history at the Sorbonne and joined the Saint-François-Xavier apostolic community as a consecrated laywoman. In 1959, the congregation sent her to Abidjan, in Ivory Coast, where she founded and directed a school for girls, the lycée Sainte-Marie.
After retiring to Paris in 1988, she devoted much of her time to touring schools to share her story, passing on, as she put it, 'love of country, the rejection of the intolerable, empathy, and respect for cultures.'
Among many honours, Odile de Vasselot was presented with the British King's Medal for Courage in the Cause of Freedom and in November last year she was appointed Grand Officer of the National Order of Merit by President Macron at the Élysée Palace.
Odile de Vasselot, born January 6 1922, died April 21 2025
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