This June, it will be 80 years since D-Day. Pippa Latour, who died in West Auckland late last year aged 102, helped lay the groundwork for the operation’s success by acting as a secret agent in France for Britain during World War II.
“I was not a James Bond-style spy,” Latour said. “I was a secret agent whose job it was to blend into the background and cause quiet chaos.” Her role was the stuff of spy thrillers, possibly even the TV series ‘Allo ‘Allo. It was exhausting work; she was unable to trust anyone, had several code names, and was often hungry. One day, German soldiers came into where she was staying while she was typing a message. Quickly putting the machine away, she said she was packing to leave, as she had caught the highly contagious scarlet fever. The officers left quickly.
Latour’s was a truly remarkable life all round, and The Last Secret Agent, written with Jude Dobson, is a clear and fluent account. Much of what has been written about her was “poppycock”, she said, and this book is likely to spur dozens of Wikipedia edits.
As if impatient to make her way into the world, Phyllis Latour was born prematurely on a jetty at the port of Durban, South Africa, in 1921. Her father, Philippe, was a French doctor and her milliner mother was British, though also of French descent.
She lost both parents early in life. Her father was killed in conflict in Africa. Her mother died soon after, though not in a fiery car crash as reported, but of a haemorrhage. She went to live with her father’s cousin and her husband in the Belgian Congo, where her foster mother subsequently died of a snake bite while out riding.
The young Pippa picked up languages easily, becoming fluent in Swahili, French, Flemish (similar to Dutch) and bits of other languages. She travelled to Paris and later to Britain. Noticed for her language skills, after rigorous training in stately homes around the country, she was recruited into the SOE (Special Operations Executive), an organisation formed to undertake espionage and sabotage in occupied Europe. Dropped solo into a field, the petite, 20-something Pippa posed as a teenage girl, selling soap to German soldiers. She transmitted information that helped to guide bombing missions, using codes printed on a piece of silk wrapped around a knitting needle and inserted into a shoelace, which she used to tie her hair.
It was a desperately perilous job. Many of the 13,000 SOEs were killed, including 14 women out of 39 in France. When she was serving, the average life expectancy of male wireless operators in France was six weeks. The threat of being discovered was physically and mentally exhausting, and food was scarce. One day, she was fed what she was told was a squirrel but which turned out to be a rat. Her recruiting officer said, “Women … have a greater capacity for cool and lonely courage than men.” Latour was the last of the 430 F Section (French) SOE agents to die.
Why did she do it? For revenge, she said. Latour’s godmother’s father, with whom she was very close, was killed either directly or indirectly by the Germans, and her godmother committed suicide after being imprisoned.
After the war, she married and became Pippa Doyle, and had four children. She decided to leave the marriage and, with the children, arrived in New Zealand 60 years ago by mistake – she thought she was travelling to Australia. She didn’t tell her kids about her war experiences until she was rumbled by stories on the internet late in life, saying she had been a balloon operator – “As I see it, it wasn’t anybody’s business what I did in the war.” Such a humble and phlegmatic demeanour surely makes her a bona fide Kiwi. Once the truth came out and she was no longer bound by the Official Secrets Act, Latour was given numerous awards, including France’s highest, the Legion of Honour. She had said it was more her family who wanted the awards, but she received that one in person. Victoria Cross hero Willie Apiata was among those to congratulate her.
Kiwis In Conflict: A History of New Zealanders at War
by Chris Pugsley et al (Bateman, $59.99)
Published as Scars on the Heart in 1996 alongside an Auckland Museum exhibition, this history of Kiwis in combat over two centuries has been revised and updated and now encompasses the military’s involvement in the Christchurch earthquakes and the country’s Covid-19 pandemic.
As former MP and soldier Ron Mark writes in the foreword, Kiwis are a “unique bunch with a proud military history”. It’s a detailed and profusely illustrated account with more than 300 black and white photos alongside maps, diagrams and charts. Buddy Mikaere, Nigel Prickett, Laurie Barber and Rose Young provide essays on the NZ Wars, the Boer War, the two world wars and the conflicts after, as well as peacekeeping and local disaster relief.
The world wars occupy the heart of the book, unsurprisingly, given New Zealand’s contribution: during WWII, for example, our casualty rate was far higher than Canada’s and Australia’s, and war expenditure was 31% of the national income. As one returned soldier writes, “When we arrived back home, we were given a leave pass to travel round New Zealand. I went through the North Island calling on members of my platoon. Unfortunately most of them had been killed so it was a bit of a sad time.”
Those Who Have Courage: The History of the Royal New Zealand Armoured Corps
by Matthew Wright (Oratia, $95 hb)
This hefty hardback from experienced military historian Matthew Wright tells the official history of the armoured corps and its predecessor cavalry, mounted rifles and armoured forces across more than 160 years.
Years in the making, the book naturally covers much of the same ground as Kiwis in Conflict, from the Mounted Volunteer Corps ordered in 1845 to the Boer War, to WWI and WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and more recent conflicts in places like Afghanistan.
Some deep research has been undertaken by the author, particularly where the records were scant or spread between archives, but the result is a readable, if exhaustive, account (though about 200 of its 600+ pages are appendices, notes and an index) which provides wider insights into New Zealand society. It contains excellent maps, artworks and historical photographs, clear and murky. Many will not have been seen by the public, though being a record produced with the Royal New Zealand Armoured Corps there are plenty of squads of soldiers in uniform.
Portrait of a War Artist: A young doctor’s Vietnam wartime experience in words and pictures
by John Gillies (Quentin Wilson, $34.99 hb)
This shorter hardback is a collection of sketches, drawn and written, by John Gillies, who in 1969 was a medical student when he was offered the chance to serve in Vietnam. Armed with stethoscope, pastels and sketch pad, he nervously went to war (37 Kiwis died in the conflict), travelling by Hercules from Auckland’s Hobsonville to Papua New Guinea, then Singapore and to what was then Saigon. He was keen to “depict aspects of war’s intrusion into the daily lives of the Vietnamese civilian population”. Gillies is a gifted artist and, in the four months he spent in the country, he made portraits of locals and captured impressionistic street scenes alongside contemporary photographs. He offers his observations of people and society, hospital life and delivering medical treatment, as well as the experiences of a young man abroad.
