Code Name: Lise

by Larry Loftis

“Be regular and orderly in your life,” Flaubert had said, “that you may be violent and original in your work.”

This is one of my favorite quotes, and every author knows what Flaubert means. To think deeply, to be creative, to plumb the depths of your soul, one must eliminate life’s distractions. Easier said than done, of course, but this is why so many of us are on our laptops at three in the morning. In his Pensees, Pascal put it this way: “The chief problem of man is that he cannot sit quietly in his room.” ... Which is what every writer must do!

Odette was not only the most highly decorated woman of World War II, she was the most highly decorated spy—male or female.

One of the reasons I felt I had to write this book was because literally no one (including military historians) knew this. In the paperback (just released Nov. 12) I include a chart so that folks can distinguish between “most decorated” (Nancy Wake), and “most highly decorated” (Odette Sansom).

Odette heeded the instruction and, as Hemingway put it, became strong in the broken places.

To me, this was the heart of the story and the reason I used Hemingway’s quote for the epigram.

Jepson, it turned out, was the recruiting officer for F (France) Section of SOE—Special Operations Executive—a new sabotage outfit that Prime Minister Winston Churchill had tasked to “set Europe ablaze.”

Churchill, master of the spoken and written word, could not have described SOE’s task any better.

Churchill gave the organization two directives: (1) to create and foster a spirit of resistance in Nazi-occupied countries, and (2) to establish an underground body of operatives who would perform acts of sabotage and assist in liberation when British forces landed.

People who are unfamiliar with the SOE sometimes expect that Odette would be doing what Churchill had described above: setting Europe ablaze with sabotage. But only a portion of SOE operatives were saboteurs. Peter Churchill was a circuit “organizer” (leader), Odette was a courier, and Arnaud Rabinovich was their radio operator. Their job was not to sabotage, but to recruit locals for the Resistance, and call in ammo drops to London (among other things). And, for the record, the “soft” job of courier was far more dangerous than being a saboteur. What was the most dangerous job for the Allies in WWII? Bomber Command, 45 percent fatality rate. Number two? SOE courier: 42 percent fatality rate.

Operating in the shadows of ill intent, its agents were referred to by many names: spies, saboteurs, commandos, Baker Street Irregulars, and Churchill’s Secret Army. Indeed, they were spies, but the role of Baker Street was not one of spymaster—that was MI6’s field—but to be masters of mayhem.

My main task in editing is to work on assonance, consonance, and meter. It’s not enough simply to convey information, even though this is a nonfiction book. Beautiful prose should not be limited to literary fiction, but the problem is that the research required for scholarly nonfiction takes up so much time that the writing itself often suffers. I wrote a blog article about this, by the way, in my Goodreads review of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. In the last sentence of the highlighted quote, notice the effect of the consonants “s” and “m.”

“Direct-minded and courageous. God help the Nazis if we can get her near them.”

One of my favorite quotes of the story, and if you knew Odette, it makes sense. If you saw me on the TODAY show on April 19, the woman interviewed with me was Nicole Miller-Hard, Odette’s granddaughter. I’ve gotten to know her very well over the last year and every spark that you see in Odette definitely wells in her. They are not only from the same mold, they are the same size; Nicole wears Odette’s clothing to this day, and the scarf she had on during the interview was Odette’s.

Without instruction, Peter realized, Father Paul was teaching and the first lesson was that the battle of faith required many scars before it was won.

Father Paul was the sleeper of the story. Odette and Peter were touched so much by this man, and almost every time I read what he did or said to them, I got choked up. He epitomized gentleness and love. My favorite photo in the book is the one with Odette and the incredible dolls she made for Father Paul’s niece and nephew. Don’t want to throw out a spoiler, but the interchange about those dolls at the end of the book was exceedingly moving to me. You can see those dolls, in person, at the Imperial War Museum, where they also have Odette’s medals, dress, gun, and Fritz Suhren’s gun.

He who has not eaten his bread in tears, He who has not sat up weeping upon his bed throughout the night of despair, He knows you not, Oh Heavenly Father.

Goethe’s quote, and the scenario within which Peter read it (starving, lonely, isolated, likely to be shot), might be the most moving in all of the book for me. It seems that at some point in our lives, we all have a night, or many nights, in our own Garden of Gethsemane.

It was a marvelous group—conspirators, imprisoner, prisoner, traitor—all under the watchful eye of mother-in-law. Eating and drinking, the party fellowshipped with the happy tension of a family reunion.

The scene alone is shocking. You have the Fols (French conspirators), German Hugo Bleicher (the enemy and imprisoner), his French girlfriend (traitor), Peter (British prisoner), and an American mother-in-law all sitting for lunch in occupied Paris! You couldn’t even make this up. Bleicher’s mixed and complicated character (enemy one day, caretaker the next) is why two Hollywood players have told me he is “Academy Award bait.”

In our darkest moments, Aristotle had said, we must focus to see the light.

One of the things I try to do is to add seasoning to my work. Nonfiction can be informative but stale; a meal of bread and water. I try to season with a quote here or there from a philosopher, thinker, or writer. In Into the Lion’s Mouth, I used “Pascal’s Wager” for a cliffhanger. In the end notes of CODE NAME: LISE you will find one of the most moving poems ever written: Bonhoeffer’s famous “Who Am I,” which he wrote about that same time that Odette was at Ravensbruck. I’ve quoted Hemingway in both books. But this quote from Aristotle seemed so appropriate because of Odette’s childhood blindness, and then time in the Ravensbruck bunker.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you all for reading CODE NAME: LISE, and for your enthusiasm about it. I can’t tell you how much Odette’s family appreciates it. Two of Odette’s granddaughters thank me almost daily for keeping Odette’s story alive. They absolutely love the book, and are hoping that it soon becomes a movie. One granddaughter, Sophie Parker, will be at an event for the book at the Walton Library in Surrey, England on Nov. 21. A professional narrator will be reading portions of the book, and Sophie will comment on it. I’m working on my next book now, but will be there in spirit! For those asking, the next one will be about another female WWII spy. An American. Will hit bookstores March 2021.