Phyllis Latour was born in April 1921 in South Africa.


 Her father was a French doctor, and her mother, Louise, was a British citizen living there.


In 1941, she moved to England and later joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a group created during World War II to gather secret information and disrupt enemy plans in areas controlled by the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany.


On May 1, 1944, Phyllis parachuted into Normandy, France, as part of a secret group called the Scientist circuit. She spoke French fluently and pretended to be a teenage girl whose family had moved to the area to escape Allied bombing. She rode around on a bicycle, selling soap and chatting with German soldiers to collect information.


Phyllis had a clever way of hiding the codes she used to send messages. She had a piece of silk with one-time codes printed on it, which she wrapped around a knitting needle and tucked into a flat shoelace she used as a hair tie. She then used Morse code equipment to send the secret messages.


Even though German soldiers searched her and questioned her a few times, they never realized her hair tie was hiding secret codes, so they let her go. In total, she sent 135 coded messages, which helped guide bombing missions to important enemy targets.

Today, Phyllis Latour is the only living female SOE agent from World War II, and as of now, she is 102 years old.

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