Yvonne Rudelatt Yvonne Rudelatt ( January 1897 – 23 April 1945 ) was a member of the Special Operations Executive ( SOE ) during World War II and worked as a courier for the French Section . Early life . Rudellat was born in January 1897 in France , the youngest of ten children , most of whom died in infancy . She was the daughter of a horse dealer for the French army , and when her domineering mother would allow it , Yvonne accompanied him on buying trips . After his death , Yvonne found herself unable to live with her mother anymore , and moved to London to get a job . While working at a chain store in Regent Street , she met a waiter from the Piccadilly Hotel , and the two were married in 1920 . Alex Rudellat was nine years older than his eighteen - year - old bride , and had once been an undercover agent . In 1922 , Yvonne gave birth to a baby girl and named her Constance Jacqueline . When the child was seven , Yvonne and Alex separated , but were friends , and shared time with their daughter . Wartime work . Ten days after the declaration of war in 1939 , Yvonne ' s seventeen - year - old daughter joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service , and later married a sergeant . Yvonne tried several times to join her daughter in the ATS , but was turned down because of her age . In 1942 , at the age of forty - five , Yvonne was finally accepted and selected to train for the SOE , though no woman had ever been chosen as a leader , though many had proven themselves . Rudelatt joined the SOE in 1942 and following her training , she left England for Gibraltar on 17 July 1942 under the codename " Jacqueline " and , after months of training , became the first woman SOE to be sent abroad . In terrible weather , she landed by small boat on the Riveria coast of France and travelled to Tours , close to the border of the Occupied Zone and Vichy France to act as a courier to the Prosper circuit . She and her partner , Pierre Culioli , controlled the group together , and carried out many successful operations against German - operated train lines and factories . Between August 1942 and June 1943 , Rudelatt worked with the circuit as a courier and also specialised in sabotage and parachute drops . She was part of the team who sabotaged Chaigny power station and personally blew up two locomotives at Le Mans in March 1943 . With suspicions mounting , the two were openly pursued by German forces . On 21 June 1943 she was arrested by the Gestapo whilst waiting for a parachute drop and was wounded during an attempt to escape ; Pierre and Yvonne were trying to escape arrest in a car when a bullet hit her in the back of her head , knocking her unconscious . Pierre saw the amount of blood coming from the wound , and since Yvonne was unresponsive , he decided to kill himself rather than be taken and tortured . He slammed the vehicle into a ditch and then the side of a cottage , but the two woke up in a hospital at Blois hours later . Yvonne was told that her injury wasn ' t life - threatening , and that the bullet hadn ' t pierced her brain , but that it would be unsafe to remove it . She was taken to Ravensbrück , on the same transport as another female resistance heroine , Odette Sansom . She was hospitalised at Blois . On recovery she was transferred to Ravensbrück on 21 April 1944 . She was later moved to Bergen - Belsen concentration camp where she contracted typhus and died . Imprisonment . During World War II , over 8 , 000 Frenchwomen were sent to prison camps in Germany , and only 800 returned to France . In February 1945 , 2 , 500 elderly and ill women were sent from Ravensbrück to what they thought would be a ' convalescent camp , ' but which was actually Belsen . Yvonne , who had not given the German authorities her real name , possibly suffering from amnesia , was recorded as " Jacqueline Gautier " . She died there after contracting typhus on or around 23 April 1945 , shortly after the camp was liberated . As she had successfully maintained her alias of Madame Gautier , and she was extremely ill when the Allied troops arrived , she was not identified as a British SOE agent and was buried in a mass grave . Honours & Decorations . Today , she is commemorated by an obelisk at Romorantin in the Loire Valley , and by a plaque at the Valençay SOE Memorial , where her name is included in the Valençay Memorial Roll of Honor , along with 91 men and 12 other women who died for their country .