New book tells the story of the Canadian spies who loved each other and took on the Nazis

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Asked to imagine your typical Second World War bride, most of us will conjure a young woman from England or Europe, who – with a romance accelerated by war’s uncertain atmosphere – hastily marries a soldier from Canada or the US in an austere ceremony with the groom in uniform. Assuming her betrothed survives the conflict, the bride then endures a difficult passage by ship to her husband’s home country, where she experiences an even more challenging period of cultural adjustment.

One of the many things that distinguishes Sonia d’Artois (née Butt), the England-born, France-raised war bride depicted in Nahlah Ayed’s fascinating, and often deeply moving book The War We Won Apart (Viking, 416 pages) is that she too wore a uniform at her wedding to French-Canadian Guy d’Artois. Days after the wedding, Sonia and Guy would parachute separately into different parts of France, where, as part of Churchill’s elite Special Operations Executive (SOE), they engaged in internal efforts to sabotage German forces ahead of the D-Day landings.

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The War We Won Apart tells Sonia and Guy’s stories together and individually: from their respective beginnings in England, France and Quebec, to the intense training they endured for an assignment that was only revealed to them at the last minute, to their feats of bravery in France, and to their postwar years in Canada, where they became parents to six children.

How did you come across Sonia and Guy’s story?

I learned about it when I was based in London as a foreign correspondent. The anniversary stories – Battle of Vimy Ridge, D-Day – are fixtures in our calendar, but on the big anniversaries we also do a more substantial story. At the time, the Juno Beach Centre was honouring women who’d contributed to D-Day. And my producer, Stephanie Jenzer, said to me, there’s this one woman – Sonia d’Artois – who’s really interesting. And I said yes, just based on the fact that I’d done so many men’s stories about D-Day, but never one about a woman. Then, when I understood what she’d done, I was hooked.

We did a five-minute piece for the National on CBC and I met the family, who’d come to see the display at Juno Beach centre about Sonia. Nadya, Sonia and Guy’s daughter, was sort of the matriarch of that group, and her passion about her mother and her mother’s story really struck me.

Many months later, I called her up because I couldn’t stop thinking about Sonia. Neither could our viewers and listeners, who were writing and saying, Why are we hearing about this woman for the first time? And that’s when I asked, Has anybody written a book? I soon learned there’d been attempts, but it just had never actually come together. So I was really lucky.

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You portray Sonia and Guy’s initial encounters at the SOE training camp as pretty fractious. What do you think drew them together as a couple?

He was seven years older and far more experienced in the arts they were learning. He was put into a leadership position and was indispensable in helping shore up her skills. She’s a civilian, a young woman of 19 when she’s in training. They spend a lot of time together, and I think she appreciated, despite the antagonism at the beginning, his expertise and his knowledge. She talks about how they relished learning to cook explosives together.

What, for you, was the most astonishing thing that each did individually in France?

I found it astounding that Sonia decided to live openly and to frequent black market restaurants where German officers hung out. The boldness and courage that would have required to go behind enemy lines on your own in a parachute in the middle of the night. And then to have the people outside thinking you’re consorting with the enemy. To have people spitting at you.

And with Guy, there’s a story about him driving a lorry into one of the German bases to deliver – I don’t remember what it was, maybe coal – and ignoring directions so he could drive around the base and get a better sense of it. These stories just give you chills.

The postwar parts of the book, which cover Sonia and Guy’s entry into the 1950s domestic sphere, fascinate in a different way. It feels unfathomable that, for all his admiration of Sonia’s derring-do in wartime, Guy is against her getting a driver’s license. There’s also a lot of tiptoeing around his ego on her part when it comes to recognition and accolades.

I’ve been talking about that quite a bit because it really resonates with people. I mean, that’s the way it was back then. She couldn’t arrange a surgery she needed for her wartime back injury without Guy’s consent. It seems ridiculous, looking at it from today’s point of view. But that’s how it was, then.

Having said that, Sonia wasn’t a conventional woman. And my sense is that this would have been really difficult for her. In a recorded interview, she sounds incredulous at the fact that she had to be under the charge of her mother-in-law because she wasn’t yet 21 when she moved to Canada. Meanwhile, she’d been ambushing Nazi convoys in France.

What question would you most want to ask Sonia and Guy were they still alive?

There’s a moment during training where they finally learned what their roles were: that they were going to be on the ground as members of a secret army. And I would have loved to sit Guy and Sonia down and say, “You were told what you were doing, and had the choice to leave, and yet you stayed. Why?”

Because that was kind of the last exit on the highway to France. And there were Canadians and others who took it and others who said, no, I don’t want to do this. And they were fully in the right to do so. But those two stayed.

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You’ve been to France several times for the D-Day ceremonies, including this year. Did you experience them differently after writing the book?

This was my third major commemoration – I was there for the 70th and the 75th. As a foreign correspondent, every story in some way connects to the legacy of the Second World War, whether it was in the Middle East, Crimea, Africa or anywhere in Europe.

I remember the first time I saw one of those Commonwealth cemeteries where hundreds and hundreds of young Canadians are buried. I was very affected by it. And I was always in awe of these veterans who would come back over and remember those days.

But I had no idea that there were agents operating behind enemy lines before D-Day. And that there were Canadians among them. In the book, I tried hard to work in those Canadians whose names we don’t know. Who were hung by piano wire and executed by firing squad or in concentration camps.

I didn’t learn this stuff in school. And I certainly didn’t know there were women behind enemy lines preparing for D-Day.

So, returning to Normandy five years after learning about the SOE, that knowledge just gave a whole new meaning to that day. The lives lost, the lifelong injuries that were sustained ahead of D-Day, forgotten to history, really came alive for me in those five years of research. Unlike other anniversaries, on this one I thought about them, too.