Elizabeth Devereux-Rochester

The daughter of American parents, Aimee (Babe) Margaret Lathrop née Gunning Rochester Reynolds and Richmond Rochester, Jr.. She had one sister, Aimee Christine Gunning Rochester. Devereaux Rochester was educated by an English governess and at Roedean School in England. Her parents divorced and her mother married Myron Reynolds. Devereaux went by the name Rochester pre-dominantly, but seems to have also used Reynolds.

In the 1930s, she was living in Paris with her mother; when the Germans invaded France. She successfully worked as a driver for the French Red Cross until her cover was compromised. She escaped with a group leading several Jews into Switzerland. She became one of the leaders of the group and was later asked to return to France and work with the French Resistance. She led several downed pilots across the border to Switzerland until that route had to be closed. For this group she developed a new escape route across the Pyrénées.

She joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in early 1943. Following training, she landed in a Hudson aircraft on 18 October 1943 in France with Richard Heslop (organiser of the Marksman circuit, codename "Xavier", a radio operator, Owen Denis Johnson, and an RF agent of Charles de Gaulle, Jean Rosenthal. Heslop described Rochester as very English in appearance. "She did not walk, she strode...you automatically expected to see a couple of Labradors at her heels...She stuck out like a sore thumb." But, he added, "She did a fine job for she had guts and imagination."[1]

In Spring 1944, Heslop reluctantly requested that Rochester be recalled by SOE to England, as she "looked so like an Englishwoman" that he and the French leaders were apprehensive that she would be captured by the Germans. The capture of one member of a network would endanger the other members as the captured member might reveal details of the network under interrogation and possibly torture.[2] Heslop blamed SOE for recruiting an agent who looked so "un-French."[3] She left the Marksman circuit, but didn't return to England and instead went to Paris to see her mother. She was arrested on 20 March 1944 in Paris. She was released from the French gaol and eventually put in a Prison of War camp where she stayed until liberation.

She was awarded the Legion of Honour; and the Croix de Guerre by France.

Following the war she lived in Paris and worked in advertising for the Vel d'Hiv. She inherited money[4] from former California Governor, Jane L. Stanford. Mrs. Amy Hansen, a niece of Jane Lanthop Stanford, adopted Amiee G Reynolds and her two daughters, Minnie Rochester of Paris and Amiee Muinz. Stanford University tried to contest the adoption as invalid so that the money would not be bequeathed and would instead be given back to the university. The case was finally won by the heirs 21 September 1957[5] and shortly after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She lived her later years in Dinard in Brittany until her death. She was never married.