14-05-2025
Odile de Vasselot obituary: French Resistance heroine
In June 1940 Odile de Vasselot, a spirited 18-year-old from a French military family, tuned in to a homemade radio in her bedroom as she tried to follow the horrifying progress of the German conquest of her country. She had become increasingly depressed seeing columns of disconsolate refugees escaping the swift Nazi advance and felt deep shame at the collaborationist Vichy government's claim to be her country's new legitimate authority.
Suddenly, as she searched the airwaves, de Vasselot heard a familiar voice: that of the French army officer Charles de Gaulle. Living mostly on military bases after her birth at a cavalry headquarters in Saumur in 1922, de Vasselot had at one point played regularly with de Gaulle's son. Her father, a military instructor, and
