WELLINGTON business Odette’s Tearoom is paying tribute to the war hero it was named after.
With the film festival fast approaching, many businesses in the town will be taking part in the event. One of them is Odette’s Tearoom, which will be showing the 1950s film Odette, along with a Q&A from Odette’s great-granddaughter Sophie Parker.
Odette Hallowes, who lived in Whiteball just outside Wellington, was an agent for Britain’s Special Operations Executive during World War Two.
Code named Lise, she became the first woman to be awarded the George Cross and was also awarded the Legion d’honneur by France for her espionage work.
Nancy Powell-Brace, 63, owns Odette’s Tearoom. The business has been open for seven years. She said: “The tearoom is very much part of keeping Odette’s story alive, we’ve had people come in who went to school with Odette’s children.”
Nancy has also helped campaign for street names in Bovis homes Bagley Road development to be named after her. The tearoom is adorned with photos of Odette and her achievements.
The idea behind the tearoom came from Nancy’s brother Nick Brace who was putting together a community play about Whiteball Tunnel, one of Isambard kingdom Brunel’s famous projects which Odette lived above.
Nancy said: “Shortly after my brother found out about her story I was thinking of names for my yet unopened tearoom, as soon as I heard about it I was convinced that this was the right name for my business. Since opening I have met and been in close contact with Sophie Parker, who is Odette’s granddaughter and she will be visiting during the film festival for a Q&A session at the tearoom.”
Odette - also known as Odette Churchill and Odette Sansom - infiltrated Nazi occupied France where she operated until her arrest in the French Alps in April 1943. During her time there she carried out secretive and classified missions coordinating with the French resistance while also sending and taking messages between resistance cells.
Odette was eventually captured along with another officer Peter Churchill, who later became her husband. The pair were relentlessly interrogated; it is thought they were only kept alive as bargaining chips due to their cover story that Peter was Churchill’s nephew.
Soon after, Odette was transferred to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. A specialist camp exclusively for women, it was estimated that 132,000 women were kept there during the war.
During Odette’s time in Ravensbrück she was branded, had her finger and toenails pulled out and was kept in solitary confinement on a ‘starvation diet’, despite this she never gave up the information to the Germans. She adopted a defiant attitude which she found resulted in a degree of respect by her captors. In a post-war interview she said: “I’m not brave, not courageous, but just make up my mind about certain things.”
After the war, Odette testified against her captor who was executed for war crimes in 1950.
She came back to the Wellington area after the war, and married Peter Churchill in 1947 but divorced him in 1955 and later married Geoffrey Hallowes.
In 1949-50 she published her biography and a film was made about her role during the war and subsequent capture.
She died in 1995 aged 82.