Joining the Mechanised Transport Corps (MTC) to train as an ambulance driver at the outbreak of war in 1939, Penny Otto, as she was before her marriage, was to find herself involved in the retreat of the French Army as it recoiled before the German onslaught in June 1940.

As part of a unit of doctors, nurses and ambulances, she and her team were responsible for administering the first medical treatment the wounded received immediately behind the battle front. In consequence of this, she was able to record in close-up, and commit to paper in a diary, the gradual disintegration of the morale of the French fighting soldier in the face of the seemingly irresistible German advance.

So close indeed were the ambulances to the advancing enemy that at one time she and her fellow drivers fell into German hands. But in the confusion and rumours of a French counterstroke — it turned out to consist of eight bewildered poilus on bicycles — they were able to make good their escape.

Penelope Ellison Otto was born in 1916 and educated at Allenswood School, South Wimbledon. She went into hotel management and was a trainee with Gordons Hotels when Britain entered the war on September 3, 1939.

After training with the MTC she went to France and was in Paris as a driver with a unit of five ambulances attached to the French Army when the German Blitzkrieg broke in the west on May 10, 1940. Known as the Château de Blois Ambulance Corps, this had been privately financed by a group of Americans and given to the French Government — though it was led by an American who was living in Paris and had helped to coordinate the raising of funds for it.

On June 4, with the British Army having virtually completed its escape through Dunkirk and with German shells falling in the outskirts of Paris, Otto and her colleagues — all women — drove their ambulances out of the city to join the French 6th Army, which was retreating towards the Marne. Over the next few days, with the 6th Army sustaining heavy casualties, the ambulances were at full stretch retrieving the wounded and taking them from the field dressing stations to the base hospital at Crouy, between Paris and Rheims.

For a moment the wounded enjoyed excellent medical treatment in pleasant surroundings. This was not to last long. By June 8 the enemy was approaching, and throughout the night Otto and her fellow drivers ferried the wounded from the relative comfort of the hospital to trains to take them to safety.

By June 10 she was beginning to confide to her diary “a feeling of demoralisation among the French”. As the German armoured pincers closed round Paris the retreat of the 6th Army and its wounded continued amid a sickening sense of a breakdown in order. More than once Otto had to bribe French officers to obtain petrol for her vehicle.

Yet the ambulance unit maintained its discipline. After it had run slap into the tanks of a rapidly pursuing German Pan-zer division she recorded that there was no panic. The senior ensign, a South African, Marjor-ie Juta, merely instructed: “Girls, this is the moment when I insist that you should wear your helmets.” This coolness enabled the ambulances to drive out of the trap they had got themselves into.

By that time, June 15, it began to be obvious that the French retreat was becoming a rout. Defeatism was universal among soldiers and civilians alike. Otto and the other women discussed what their position might be should France ask for an armistice. Conflicting news from moment to moment was resolved on June 17 when it was learnt that the French had sued for peace. Otto’s diary recorded: “Terrible depression and cafard everywhere.”

With the French laying down their arms, the task of the little ambulance corps was at an end. But its MTC women drivers were in the upper reaches of the Loire, far from the coast, their only exit route from a country whose government had gone over the enemy.

Otto and her colleagues now used their ambulances to put as much distance as they could between themselves and the Germans. By June 22 they had reached Arcachon on the Atlantic coast where they were welcomed aboard the British cruiser Galatea, about to sail for England. In the event this speedy form of transport was denied them. Galatea’s berths were commandeered by British Embassy staff and the ambulance girls came home in the more prosaic troopship Ettrick.

Otto was soon abroad again as an ambulance driver, her MTC company reaching Cairo via South Africa in 1941. It now became Motor Ambulance Company 502 of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), and she became its commander.

Her company followed the fortunes of the 8th Army as the war in North Africa swayed to and fro. In 1943 she was appointed MBE (military).

After the Allies invaded mainland Italy in the summer of 1943, 502 MAC was shipped to Taranto in Apulia. Thereafter she led it in the wake of the 8th Army up through the Italian peninsula until the end of the war. After the cessation of hostilities it moved into Austria, where it spent the winter. It was eventually disbanded in March 1946, and Otto returned to England, having been almost continuously on service overseas since 1939. In 1945 she had been awarded the Croix de Guerre by the grateful French Government.

In 1949 she married Lieuten-ant-Colonel James Phillips, 8th Kings Royal Hussars, and they had two children. At their Somerset home she took an interest in local politics and was a Conservative member of Somerset County Council from 1955.

After the death of her husband in 1960, she continued on the council, first as a self-styled “backbencher”, but from 1974, when local government was reorganised, as leader of the council until 1985, when the Alliance won the balance of power at that year’s council elections and ruled with Lab-our support. Thereafter she remained leader of the Tory group on the council until her retirement in 1989. In 1987 she had been appointed CBE (civil).

Penny Phillips is survived by her son and daughter.

Penny Phillips, CBE, Croix de Guerre, wartime ambulance company commander, was born June 5, 1916. She died on February 10, 2007, aged 90