Blanche Charlet

Valentine Blanche Charlet MBE (23 May 1898 – 11 October 1985), code named Christiane, served in France as an agent for the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II.

SOE agents in France allied themselves with French Resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England.

She trained with the first group of SOE F Section female agents, Andrée Borrel, Yvonne Rudellat, and Marie-Thérèse Le Chêne, and herself.

Charlet's first task was to find a safe house from which wireless operator Brian Stonehouse could transmit and receive messages.

The escapees broke up into small groups, Charlet and Suzanne Warenghem, a young French woman who had been a courier for the Pat O'Leary Escape Line (and married to British soldier and turncoat Harold Cole), remaining together.

There they sheltered in a guest house for two months before the monks took them to an escape line which helped people flee France by walking across the Pyrénées mountains to Spain.

Charlet was worried she might be recognized in Lyon and traveled to the Jura Mountains near the border of Switzerland to work as a courier and guide for SOE.

[11] On 19 February 1946 Charlet was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by King George VI for "services in France during the enemy occupation.