THE REAL EVENTS THAT INSPIRED TEMPERANCE'S TRIAL…
EVERY story in the Virtues and Valor series is inspired by real people and real events. This story is no exception. While the story of the special team of operators I named The Virtues is entirely fictional, set in a fictional town, and comprised of fictional characters who form a fictional military division, every single one of my fictional heavenly heroines was inspired by a real World War II heroine and the story was inspired by real events.
The great and honored reverend Pastor André Trocmé as well as Pastor Edouard Theis were actual people. These men of God inspired the entire town to smuggle as many as five thousand Jewish children and their parents, possibly more, out of the country and to safety. Those children who could not be safely evacuated were taken in and "adopted" by families who informed the Nazis that these children were either simply visiting relatives or war orphans.
When the Gestapo or the corrupt and collaborating Vichy police would raid the town, the citizens would routinely risk their lives by hiding children and parents anywhere they could — using elaborate schemes to signal when the coast was clear. Many residents were eventually arrested by the Gestapo. Sadly, the Reverand Trocmé's own cousin, Daniel Trocmé, was sent to Maidanek concentration camp and tortured to death.
It may be significant to note that the townspeople received contributions from the Quakers, the Salvation Army, the American Congregational Church, and other Jewish and Christian ecumenical groups, the French Protestant student organization Cimade, and the Swiss Help to Children. All of these organizations helped to ensure that the Jewish refugees were housed and fed and could travel in relative safety to Switzerland or other safe havens.
In 1990, the entire town became the only French town and one of only two towns on earth to be recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" for their humanitarianism and bravery under extreme danger during the Second World War.
Marie Gilbert, code-named Temperance, was inspired by the incredible Eileen Mary "Didi" Nearne who served as a wireless operator in the Spiritualist Network in Occupied France under the code-named "Rose."
Like Temperance, Didi Nearne, her brother Francis, and her sister Jacqueline fled the Nazis as the German war machine rolled into France. They eventually made their way to Great Britain via Spain.
All three of the Nearnes entered service with the British Special Operations Executive, or SOE, which was called "Churchill's secret army." A group within the SOE was called the F Section Networks. These networks were established in France to transmit and receive coded messages just like Temperance does in Temperance's Trial. Due to the ease of detection and the German's determination to track down these operators, it was one of the most dangerous duties assigned to agents within the SOE.
While Didi's sister, Jacqueline, was sent to France to act as a courier (much like Temperance's friend, Prudence), Didi stayed in England as a signals operator and received the encoded messages coming from France. After some time, she volunteered to go to France and act as a wireless operator for the F Section.
On March 2, 1944, Didi became one of only 39 women to parachute into Occupied France. She used the aliases Mademoiselle du Tort, Jacqueline Duterte, and Alice Wood — and went by the code name "Rose". She worked as part of Operation Mitchel, which organized finances for the resistance. During her first five months in France, she transmitted an astonishing 105 messages.
After many, many narrow escapes, including a time on a train when a Nazi soldier offered to carry the suitcase containing her wireless radio, Didi was finally arrested. While in Paris, she had sent a coded transmission from her room, much like my character Temperance. Within minutes, the Gestapo arrived and found her in possession of her wireless rig.
According to wartime records, Nearne "survived, in silence, the full revolting treatment of the baignoire," in the torture chamber of the Paris headquarters of the Gestapo on the banks of the Rue des Saussaies.
She nearly died from the torture. They beat her, stripped her, and repeatedly submerged her in a bath of ice cold water until she started to black out, yet, she did not break. She stuck to her story of being an innocent French girl who had been duped into helping someone by sending messages she didn't understand in return for money to buy eggs and bread.
She never once revealed her true identity. She never told of the other agents with whom she worked. Despite days of endless torture, she never gave up any information of planned operations. At the time, Eileen Mary "Didi" Nearne was only 23 years old.
On August 15, 1944, she was sent to the infamous Ravensbrück concentration camp near Berlin, and from there was sent through several forced labor camps. She refused to work in any of the camps, even under threat of being shot. Instead, she dared her captors to shoot her, and ended up being transferred each time instead.
Eventually, she ended up in a camp in Silesia. There Didi finally realized that the only way she would survive this experience would be to give in and work, otherwise she would starve. During the bitter cold winter in December of 1944, the Nazis moved Didi to the Markleberg camp, near Leipzig, where she worked on a road-repair gang for 12 hours a day.
On April 13, 1945, while being transferred to yet another camp, along with two French girls from a work gang, Didi escaped. The trio evaded their pursuers by hiding in the forest. They were apprehended by the SS in Markkleeberg, but she used her French language skills to fool her captors into letting them go. In Leipzig, a Catholic priest hid her until the arrival of the United States troops.
Sadly, American intelligence officers initially identified her as a Nazi collaborator and held her at a detention center alongside captured SS personnel. Once London verified her identity as a secret agent, the Americans finally released her.
After the war, Eileen Mary "Didi" Nearne was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French government, that nation's highest award given to foreigners, and was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by King George VI for services rendered in France during the enemy occupation.
Given what she underwent at the hands of her captors for years and years, her very survival is remarkable. When asked how she kept going, she replied, "The will to live. Willpower. That's the most important. You should not let yourself go. It seemed that the end would never come, but I always believed in destiny, and I had a hope."
Didi lived with her sister Jacqueline until her sister's death in 1982. Afterward, she lived alone, a total recluse, haunted by her experiences as a captive of the Gestapo.
When Eileen Mary "Didi" Nearne died alone on September 2, 2010, it was several days before her death was discovered. It wasn't until officials went looking through her belongings hoping to find a relative whom they could contact that they discovered her true identity. Once they realized her incredible bravery and service, the entire community of Torbay, France, came together and gave her a funeral worthy of such an amazing war heroine with full military honors.
Unsurprisingly, there are very few actual photographs of Didi from the war and none of her operating a wireless rig. For the original cover of this book, another suitable individual was selected. Pictured on the cover in place of "Temperance" operating a wireless radio is none other than Mrs. Mac.
Mrs. Florence Violet McKenzie OBE (nee Wallace), aka "Mrs Mac" (1890-1982) was Australia's first female electrical engineer, first female amateur radio operator, and the founder of the now international organization, the Electrical Association for Women. Mrs Mac is best known, however, for her work during the Second World War.
Having founded the Women's Emergency Signalling Corps in 1939, she then successfully campaigned to have some of her female trainees accepted into the Royal Australian Navy, thereby originating the Women's Royal Australian Naval Service. As the head instructor for the military, it is estimated that during the war some 12,000 servicemen from nearly every Allied nation passed through her Morse Code training school in Australia.
