PETER CHURCHILL AND ODETTE SAMSON

PETER CHURCHILL AND ODETTE SAMSON
Very rare pair of photographs signed by two of Britain's most successful Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents, those of PETER CHURCHILL and ODETTE HALLOWES. The Churchill photo, 8 x 10 in. b/w, shows the agent in civilian garb ca. 1960 and is signed in the extreme bottom-right corner. It has a very light horizontal crease, mentioned only for accuracy. Hallowes' photo, 4.5 x 6.25 in, shows her in military tunic and is inscribed: 'To the U.S. Counter Intelligence Corps', with a fine signature. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers, especially Germany. SOE agents allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. In January 1943, to evade arrest, Churchill and Sansom moved their operations to near Annecy in the French Alps. She and Churchill were arrested there on 16 April 1943 by spy-hunter Hugo Bleicher. She spent the rest of the war imprisoned in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. Churchill was housed in a number of camps, probably surviving by claiming (false) kinship to Winston Churchill.