317 lines
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Plaintext
Executable File
317 lines
14 KiB
Plaintext
Executable File
news
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obituaries
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7692707
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-----
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# Marguerite Garden
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## Marguerite Garden, who died on May 5 aged 84, was a Scottish grandmother
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who, as a 14-year-old schoolgirl in occupied Brittany, risked her life daily
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to work as a courier for British military intelligence and helped Allied
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airmen escape across the sea.
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5:04PM BST 07 May 2010
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[Comments][1]
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In August 1940 Marguerite Vourc'h, as she then was, returned home from
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boarding school in Paris to find her home village of Plomodiern, in western
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Brittany, occupied by German troops. Though the Resistance was virtually non-
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existent at the time, her father, Antoine, the local doctor, sought out
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sympathisers on his rounds; meanwhile Marguerite, in pretended innocence,
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established from her friends where their families' sympathies lay.
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![Marguerite Garden][2]
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Marguerite: German officers were billeted at her family home
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When her brother Jean returned home from the war, she helped him and some
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friends escape to England disguised as fishermen. They soon returned to
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Brittany, trained and with a couple of radios.
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Perched on a hillside, about three miles from the coast, Plomodiern was the
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perfect spot from which to track the movements of German boats in the Bay of
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Dournenez, and Marguerite soon showed her true potential.
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For days on end she would cycle round the local coastline, gathering
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intelligence on soldiers, boats and mines, which was duly relayed to MI6.
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Increasingly, her work brought her into contact with the Resistance as she
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helped deliver false identity cards to the networks. No one took a 14-year-old
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schoolgirl on holiday for a spy, and she managed to continue her work even
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after part of the family home was commandeered to billet Gestapo and Wehrmacht
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officers in January 1941.
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One day she was going to collect eggs and spotted a tall mast with strange
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wires in a local field. The farmer's wife, assuming she was just a nosy child,
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told her it was for sending messages to the German submarines. Within three
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days the RAF had destroyed the mast.
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During term time Marguerite continued to study in Paris, but at half-term and
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holidays she would resume her spying. School provided her with perfect cover
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for carrying messages and parcels between her local Resistance network and
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another in Paris. When she returned to Paris, hidden among her school books
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were folders bulging with military information. "There was no reason to
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suspect me," she recalled. "I was a young girl, travelling to my school. I was
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never arrested."
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As the war progressed, Marguerite became involved in helping Allied airmen
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escape to Britain by hiding them in lobster boats. She also passed on
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information about German ship positions which a family friend, a Madame Le
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Roux, managed to extract from an unsuspecting harbourmaster.
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When Madame Le Roux was arrested at the Vourc'h family home, the Germans at
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first failed to make any connection. But, fearful of what she might say under
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interrogation, Marguerite's father made his escape, eventually finding his way
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to North Africa. When the Gestapo eventually turned up on the family doorstep
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Marguerite's mother informed them that he had abandoned his family. They
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believed her and Marguerite did not come under suspicion.
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As the war approached its denouement Marguerite and her mother were joined by
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Jean-Claude Camors (code-named Raoll), a Resistance friend of her brother.
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Together they planned an operation to repatriate some 40 Allied airmen who
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were then hiding in Brittany.
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The airmen were duly assembled, but before they could put the plan into
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action, Raoll was recognised by a German double agent and shot. His death
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meant Marguerite and her mother had to find a place to hide the airmen and a
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way to feed them. They approached the local priest, who agreed to hide them in
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his church. The men hid there for days, while the Resistance waited for a
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chance to get them home.
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The successful escape of the airmen, however, was to be the undoing of
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Marguerite as, when the men arrived in Britain, the BBC broadcast a coded
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message that the "fourth son of a doctor of Brittany" had arrived. It was too
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obviously a reference to Marguerite's family, and the Gestapo soon came
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calling once again.
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Marguerite was at school at the time and her mother was visiting the Breton
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town of Quimper. Warned by friends not to come home, they hid in a run-down
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apartment in Paris.
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But Marguerite's younger sisters, aged four, six and eight, were left behind
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and had to face the wrath of the Gestapo: "They'd wake the girls up in the
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middle of the night, holding their rifles to the girls' faces," Marguerite
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recalled. "They would do anything they could to terrify them into saying where
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mother was. But it didn't work."
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A few months later Paris was liberated.
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The sixth of nine children, Marguerite Vourc'h was born on January 25 1926 at
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Plomodiern, in the Finistere department, where her father was both the village
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doctor and a local councillor. A veteran of the First World War, he had been
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awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Legion d'honneur. Marguerite was educated
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locally and at the Maison d'education de la Legion d'honneur at St Denis, just
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outside Paris.
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After emerging from hiding during the liberation of Paris in August 1944,
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Marguerite had the harrowing task of locating and bringing back to her mother
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the body of her brother Jean, who had been mortally wounded at Versailles
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during the battle for Paris.
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After the war she went on to study Architecture at the Beaux Arts in Paris,
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but cut her studies short when she met James Garden, a Scottish army surgeon
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visiting Paris on holiday. She followed him to Scotland against the wishes of
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her father, and they married in 1949, eventually settling in Lanark, where her
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husband became a prominent orthopaedic surgeon.
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A keen amateur naturalist, Marguerite Garden was a prime mover in founding the
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Corehouse Nature Reserve, which is now run by the Scottish Wildlife Trust, and
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supported many other conservation projects in South Lanarkshire. She served
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for many years in the Red Cross and worked tirelessly in collecting funds each
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year for the Poppy Appeal for the Royal British Legion.
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After the war she received a handwritten letter of thanks from the Air Chief
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Marshal for her help in securing the freedom of many of his men, but for many
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decades her story went untold for the simple reason that she had remained true
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to her orders to remain silent.
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In 2003, however, her contribution was recognised belatedly by the French
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government and she was appointed a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur. In the
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same year she was nominated for a "Woman of the Year" award, and in 2004 her
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story formed part of a BBC2 documentary, Crafty Tricks of War. "It wasn't
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bravery, it was necessity," she recalled. "It was sad and frightening. But
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there was something about those days, maybe it was the adrenalin. I have never
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been so alive."
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Marguerite Garden's husband predeceased her in 1992, and she is survived by
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her seven children.
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