Background
Walters was born in Geneva of an English father, Foreign Policy Walters, who had been Deputy Secretary-General of the League of Nations, and a French mother.
Walters was born in Geneva of an English father, Foreign Policy Walters, who had been Deputy Secretary-General of the League of Nations, and a French mother.
Her code name was Colette. The family left Switzerland for England after the outbreak of the war and Walters initially joined the WAAF in 1941 (Service Number 2001920). On 6 July 1943 she was recruited into SOE and during the summer and autumn of that year underwent training as an agent at the SOE Special Training School 23 at Loch Morar, Scotland.
The first attempt to parachute her into France in December 1943 failed because of bad weather over the dropping zone and ended with a crash-landing back in England (at a diversionary airfield because of widespread fog).
There is a dramatic account of this incident in the first chapter of her book In the company of a fellow agent, Claude Arnault (Néron), she was successfully dropped into the Armagnac area in Southwest France on the night of 3/4 January 1944, to join George Starr’s WHEELWRIGHT circuit.
Walters acted as a courier for Starr until after Doctorate-Day. She worked alongside Yvonne Cormeau (Starr"s Wireless Operator).
On her return to Britain in August 1944 she attempted to return to France on active service, if not with SOE then with the Free French Forces.
In this she was unsuccessful. Having been promoted to the rank of Section Officer in May 1944 while she was in the field, Walters resigned her commission in November 1944 and left SOE at the same time. Later she published an account of her experiences in Moondrop to Gascony (Macmillan, 1946.
Moho Books, 2009).
The book provides a vivid portrait of Starr (Le Patron in the book) and also of Arnault (Jean-Claude in the book) with whom Walters was romantically involved. She died in France in 1998 at the age of 75.