'The prettiest thing imaginable', her commander thought when she was dropped in France in 1944. Sonya's father was in the RAF, and she lived with her mother in France. Her mother was visiting England when war broke out and Sonya escaped through France and across the Channel alone, aged 15, with no documents.

She joined the Women's Royal Air Force (WRAF) at 17 but was bored and asked for a transfer to SOE. 'I asked how we got to France and he said by parachute and I said well that's all right.'

She met her husband while training: he helped her with map-reading. On a parachute jump together she winked at him as she jumped, and he proposed to her on the ground. But once married, they had to be sent on separate missions.

She used her expertise in explosives sometimes daily, gave weapons training to new recruits, hid fugitive airmen and cycled hundreds of miles as a courier. She ate in expensive restaurants, and had hidden her revolver in her handbag on the day that 20 of her people were captured.

While her husband was up all night 'talking to married women on the telephone', organising the best communications network in the resistance, she was 'sleeping in a ditch with 15 Frenchmen'.

They met again in liberated Paris; she became pregnant and had to leave the service. She went to Canada as a war bride and had four children. She decided to teach the girls French as 'it was more becoming'. Nevertheless, her daughter and two grandchildren have black belts in karate.