Madeleine Truel: The Peruvian Heroine of World War Two

Madeleine seated front, 3rd from right 

Madeleine Truel was a Peruvian woman of French parentage who fought in the French Resistance as a document forger.

She was captured in 1944 and was tortured to extract information without success, following which she was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin 1945. She died in Stolpe, Germany on 3 May 1945, after being made to walk on a "death march" just a few hours before the Russian troops arrived.

Alexandre Léon Truel and Marguerite Larrabure, were French immigrants who had arrived in Peru in the second half of the 19th century. They had eight children of which Madeleine was the youngest daughter, born on 28 August 1904. Madeleine grew up in the family home located on the old 54 Arequipa street in Lima. Her father managed a hardware store located at 150 Jirón de la Unión. She came from an observant Catholic family and studied at the school San José de Cluny, located on the corner of the Boliva Street and Jiron Washington in downtown Lima. French was spoken in her home and this allowed her to perfect her command of French along with Spanish.

Both of Madeleine Truel's parents died before she was 20 years old. Her mother was the first to pass away from ill health. Then her father died on 6 May 1918, in the clinic Maison de Santé in Lima, due to an infected leg wound which he acquired whilst he was working for the fire brigade putting out a fire at the "El Pergamino" shop. Alexandre Truel was recognized as a hero of Fire Brigade Nº3 and was decorated with a gold medal.

The orphaned Truel children decided to return to France at the request of some family members in Paris in 1924. Madeleine decided to study philosophy at the Sorbonne University. She later found work as an administrative assistant in the first branch of the Spanish Bilbao bank, located on the Rue de Richelieu. She told her workmates anecdotes of her life in Peru, and explained the traditions as well as the current affairs. She also liked to cook traditional Peruvian dishes for her french friends.

In January 1942, Madeleine was knocked over by a Nazi army truck. She was diagnosed with multiple fractures to the cranium and legs and spent about a year in hospital recovering from her terrible injuries. Due to this accident she had a limp that stayed with her for the rest of her days.

The Book Madeleine Wrote

In 1943, she co-wrote the book L'Enfant du Metro  (The Boy of the Subway) along with her sister Lucha. The book narrates a story of a boy who travels through the stations of the Paris subway. The book was dedicated to Pascal, the son of a family of Jewish-Romanian origins who were friends of hers. Her sister Lucha drew the illustrations for the book and Madeleine wrote the text. The publishers were Editions du Chêne. The seemingly innocent story book was Madeleine's covert literary protest at the German occupation of Paris and the persecution of the Jews.

In June 1940 when the German forces had invaded Paris, a married couple - Pierre and Annie Hervé - who were friends of Madeleine introduced her to some members of The French Resistance and very soon she began working in order to help them. Madeleine´s job was to forge documents, especially passports, and travel papers which were delivered to many Jewish fugitives and allied soldiers that had parachuted over the French capital. She used the pseudonym "Marie" when carrying out her resistance work. All the papers, passports and travel documents were forged by hand and she was so good at it, her work was rarely spotted as fake by German soldiers, and subsequently she saved many hundreds of people's lives in this way. 

Documentary on Madeleine

On 19 June 1944, Truel was captured by three German agents when she was picking up ink in one of the resistance's hide-away houses. Days before, a resistance comrade called Annie had been captured and with the information they had gathered from her, the agents set a trap which led directly to Madeleine's capture.

After being arrested she was driven to the SS offices located on the Foch Avenue and then she was temporary transferred to the Fresnes prison.

She was tortured by force for many days by the SS in order  they could uncover more details about the plans and the people of the resistance she was working with - but she refused to co-operate and didn't give away any details. She kept telling them that she assumed all the responsibility for her acts. Her family visited her and the only thing they could leave her was a Bible.

She was transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1945. In the concentration camp she lived in a very heroic and charitable manner. She re-distributed the small amount of food that she received, in order to help those who needed it most. 

Gates at Sachsenhausen

She maintained good spirits in spite of all the terrible hardships she suffered at Sachsenhausen  and liked to entertain her fellow prisoners with stories that she remembered about Peru. For this reason she received the affectionate name "Bird of the Isles" from her cell-mates.

As the end of the war drew near, the Soviet army was approaching from the east and the U.S. military from the west. German troops began to become very disorganized and started to flee.

Survivors of the concentration camps were moved in what was to become known as the "Death Marches" in late 1944 and early 1945.

Prisoners at Sachsenhausen

The Death March of prisoners from Sachsenhausen concentration camp to Lübeck, located just over 100 miles away, began on 22 April.

Many prisoners were exhausted by severe malnutrition and the bad living conditions and weather they had been forced to endure - most were not physically fit to march and many were dying along the way.

The purpose of these marches was to hide some of the evidence of the evil brutality suffered in the concentration camps. A German soldier who became impatient with the slowness of the marching prisoners began to beat some of them furiously with a steel rod. One of these victims was Madeleine.

A few hours later the Germans abandoned the marching prisoners and stripped off their uniforms in order to hide from the Russian troops that were now pursuing them. Madeleine lost consciousness and was carried on a stretcher by her fellow prisoners. In spite of her small stature it took six people to do the task because they were all so weak and malnourished themselves. Eventually the group of survivors arrived in a small German town called Stolpe. When she became consciousness again Madeleine complained of suffered a strong headache and a high fever, and then shortly afterwards, she died.

Women Prisoners at Sachsenhausen

The friends who accompanied her to her grave, dressed her in a red dress and sought a Catholic priest to pronounce the funeral prayers, in the confidence that Madeleine would have appreciated that gesture. Before being buried, one of the companions knotted her bracelet with the Star of David on Madeleine’s arm, so that she could later be identified as a victim of the Nazi concentration camp. Another, placed on her chest red and white geraniums in homage to her Peruvian flag and nationality and as a sign of gratitude for how much she had taught them about her country of birth.

In front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, there is a memorial of homage to all the people who were deported from France during World War II, the great majority of names on it are Jewish - but in that long list also appears the name of Madeleine Blanche Pauline Truel Larrabure - one of the few Peruvian heroines of World War Two.

At the end of 1946, a survivor from the concentration camp of who knew Madeleine well, wrote a testimonial article in Le Figaro Newspaper . It is from this article that the story of Madeleine Truel's life and death was uncovered. Over the last 70 years Madeleine's name has almost been forgotten - even by her fellow Peruvians who have never honoured her in any way. 

In Peru, journalist Hugo Coya published the book “Final Station” in 2010, where he tells the story of the Peruvians who died in the Nazi concentration camps. The chapter on Madeleine is the first Peruvian text that claims the merits of this authentic heroine of the twentieth century. It shows us how it is possible to transcend adversity, overcome courageously, find fortitude in misfortune, and fully assume the defense of universal values ​​through solidarity and a faithful respect for human rights.

There has also been a short  Peruvian documentary film made about Madeliene. You can watch both a short English Language clip and a 30 minute documentary on her life below - the second one is narrated in Spanish but you can click on the YouTube subtitles on bottom right of the video player to get English subtitles.

 SHORT CLIP ABOUT MADELEINE

 30 MINUTE PERUVIAN DOCUMENTARY ON MADELEINE

Phoebe Hessel: The Amazon of Stepney & Brighton

PHOEBE HESSEL

Phoebe, who was born in Limehouse London, was known as “The Amazon of Stepney” and allegedly spent 17 years serving in the British Army, disguised as a man before becoming one of Brighton's oldest and most celebrated residents. However, it is often very difficult to separate the fiction from the facts when recounting Phoebe Hessel’s very unusual life story.

Born Phoebe Smith at Limehouse in 1713, she was baptised at St Dunstan’s Church in Stepney on 13 April 1713. Some sources indicate that her father was a soldier who disguised his young daughter as a boy after the death of her mother and smuggled her into the British army, where she became a fife and drum player.

Other accounts say that aged 15, in 1728 Phoebe fell in love with a soldier called William Golding and subsequently enlisted in the Fifth Foot Regiment to remain with him when he was posted to the West Indies and Gibraltar. In 1745 she was wounded in the arm by a bayonet at the Battle of Fontenoy, but when Golding was wounded and invalided home too, Phoebe was said to have revealed her true sex to the commanding officer's wife after which both she and Golding were honourably discharged. She was given no punishment, but had her salary paid out as any other soldier who was discharged from the army.

Linda Grant de Pauw tells a slightly different story in Battlecries and Lullabies: Women in War from Prehistory to the Present (University of Oklahoma 1998). She believes on the evidence of a sergeant of the 13th Light Dragoons, that Phoebe was sentenced to the lash for some breach of discipline. Her sex was initially revealed when she was undressed to be whipped, upon which she only commented: "Strike and be damned!"  The flogging story may or may not be true. It feels like a stock element of the woman-soldier-in-disguise story that was so popular in Georgian plays and ballads but, as evidence shows, these ballads were often based on real facts.

Phoebe and William Golding were married for about twenty years and after their discharge they lived in Plymouth where they had nine children, eight of whom died in infancy - sadly their only surviving son died later at sea.

After Golding's death Phoebe settled in Brighton and married fisherman Thomas Hessel. He died when she was aged 80. After Hessel’s death, she was given three guineas from the parish, so Phoebe bought a donkey and hawked fish and other goods in nearby villages to make a living. 

After overhearing a conversation in a Shoreham inn one day, she provided key evidence resulting in the conviction and execution at Goldstone Bottom of one Mr James Rooke for robbery. Highwayman Rook and Howell his accomplice stole a horse and robbed the post boy of half a guinea. Horse stealing and robbing the mail were both capital offences, so the two were hanged at Horsham where their execution was watched by 1400 spectators. Their corpses were tarred and placed in a gibbet that hung at Hangleton bottom. Rook's mother, was said to have waited beneath the gibbet for her son's bones to drop and then collected them in her apron so she could bury him piece by piece. Nearly 100 years later, Alfred Lord Tennyson found this story so moving, that he wrote the poem 'Rispah' to tell the world about it.

In about 1800, when she was eighty-seven years old, Phoebe was selling ginger-bread, oranges and apples at the corner of Old Steine and Marine Parade near the Brighton Pavilion. Clad in a brown serge dress, with a spotless white apron and a hooded black cloak, her only concession to her increasingly great age was a stout oak walking stick. She became very well known in Brighton, due to her great age and unusual experiences but not long after this she was taken into the workhouse.

She discharged herself from the workhouse in August 1806 and in 1808 was granted a pension of a half guinea per week by the Prince of Wales. As the oldest inhabitant in the town she was entitled to sit beside the vicar at a Napoleonic celebration dinner on the Level on 12 August 1814, and, although now blind, she also attended the town's coronation celebrations on 19 July 1821.

Phoebe Hessel died on 12 December 1821 at the grand age of 108 and a local pawnbroker Hyam Lewis paid for the large gravestone to be placed in her honour. 

Research has often revealed conflicting evidence with Phoebe's story; and it was only later in her life that she recalled all her military exploits. It has been suggested by sceptics that the army tale was merely a good story designed to encourage listeners to open their purses to her and help her stave off poverty

PHOEBE HESSEL'S GRAVESTONE

However, the Northumberland Fusiliers, successors to Phoebe's alleged regiment, certainly believe the story to be true as they restored her grave at the Church of St. Nicholas, Brighton in the 1970s.

Her gravestone reads:

In memory of Phoebe Hessel who was born at Stepney in the year 1713. She served for many Years as a private Soldier in the 5th Regt of Foot in different parts of Europe and in the Year 1745 fought under the command of the Duke of Cumberland at the Battle of Fontenoy where she received a Bayonet wound in her Arm. Her long life which commenced in the time of Queen Anne extended to the reign of George IV by whose munificence she received and support in her latter years. Died at Brighton where she had long resided, 12 December, 1821. Aged 108 years.

Amazon Street and Hessel Street (both named in her honour) still exist today in Stepney in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Phoebe is also immortalized on one of Brighton’s buses, all of which are named after famous residents.

Nakano Takeko: The Japanese Female Samurai

Nakano Takeko was a Japanese female warrior of the Aizu domain, who fought and died during the Boshin War. 

Nakano, born in Edo, was the daughter of Nakano Heinai, an Aizu official. She was thoroughly trained in the martial and literary arts, and was adopted by her teacher Akaoka Daisuke.

After working with her adoptive father as a martial arts instructor during the 1860s, Nakano entered Aizu for the first time in 1868. During the Battle of Aizu, she fought with a naginata (a Japanese polearm) and was the leader of an ad hoc corps of female combatants who fought in the battle independently, as the senior Aizu retainers did not allow them to fight as an official part of the domain's army. This unit was later retroactively called the Women's Army or Jōshitai.

Whilst leading a charge against Imperial Japanese Army troops of the Ōgaki Domain, she received a bullet to the chest. Rather than let the enemy capture her head as a trophy, she asked her sister, Yūko, to cut it off and have it buried. It was taken to Hōkai-ji Temple (in modern-day Aizubange, Fukushima) and buried under a pine tree.

A monument to her was erected beside her grave at Hōkai-ji; Aizu native and Imperial Japanese Navy admiral Dewa Shigetō was involved in its construction.

During the annual Aizu Autumn Festival, a group of young girls wearing hakama and white headbands take part in the procession, commemorating the actions of Nakano and her band of women fighters of the Joshigun.

Fanny Duberly - the War Journals of A Victorian Soldier's Wife

"Fanny" Isabella Duberly  was a Victorian English soldier’s wife who published a journal of her experiences on campaign in the Crimean War and the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Her husband, Captain Henry Duberly, was paymaster to the 8th Royal Irish Hussars, part of the British light cavalry that took part in the Charge of the Light Brigade. Duberley's journal of her time in the Crimea was published as Journal. It not only includes eye-witness accounts, but is also a record of gossip and rumours circulating in the British Army.

Fanny Duberly welded an extraordinarily bold pen. She lashed out at incompetent British generals when they allowed their men to die in droves in the Crimea. She revealed the secrets of Indian harems. She regaled her readers with a fascinating mixture of terrors, adventures, secrets, everyday events and ferocious characters. She was what many women dreamed of being and few men dared emulate.

In this modern age we would call her an embedded journalist, a news reporter who is attached to a military unit involved in an armed conflict. Yet English society in the 1850s encouraged women to act demurely and stay at home, not follow their husbands into combat. Even if Fanny Duberly noticed that her actions were raising disapproving Victorian eyebrows, that didn’t stop her from riding straight into one of the most brutal wars of the 19th century.

Born Frances Isabella Locke in 1829, she was the daughter of Wadham Locke, a Wiltshire banker. Duberly has been described as "a splendid rider, witty, ambitious, daring, lively, loquacious and gregarious." She seemed to possess the physical requirements and tough attitude required of her later surroundings, saying that she "was awoke by the reveille at half-past two; rose, packed our bedding and tent, got a stale egg and a mouthful of brandy, and was in my saddle by half-past five."

After the death of her mother in 1838, she moved to live with her eldest brother (also Wadham Locke) at Ashton Gifford House in Wiltshire. She left Ashton Gifford on her marriage in 1845, which took place shortly after her brother had married for a second time.

She was raised in a culture which frowned on women risking their lives in foreign places, Fanny managed to overcome this by marrying Captain Henry Duberly, an officer in the dashing 8th Hussars. Fanny was just twenty-five when her husband, and his unit, were ordered into battle. Rather than remain at home, the avid horsewoman announced that she was packing her side-saddle and going with Henry to Russia’s Crimean Peninsula. Thanks to the lax military restrictions of the day, in 1855 Fanny was able to accompany her husband and his regiment when they went into battle, in spite of the protests of commanders such as Lord Lucan.

The intrepid amateur war correspondent spent the next two years camped alongside her husband and his troops during the course of their brutal campaign. Despite the dangers from cholera which slew thousands around her, having ridden through cannon fire and having witnessed the “charge of the Light Brigade,” the indomitable young woman was the only officer’s wife who stayed with the army during the length of that brutal campaign.

It was while she was still camped in the Crimea that her first book became a runaway best-seller.

As the only officer's wife at the front, she was a centre of attention. She was told of planned attacks ahead of time, giving her the opportunity to be in a good position to witness them. Such was the case at the Battle of Balaclava, where her journey from camp to meet up with Henry and watch the battle took her quite close to the enemy. Though her husband survived the day (being away on staff duties), many of her friends did not: "Even my closed eyelids were filled with the ruddy glare of blood."

Being so close to the front line in one of the first "modern" wars, Mrs Duberly differed from many of her compatriots back home in comprehending the reality of war. When her husband asked if she wanted to view the aftermath of the Battle of Inkerman, she told him she could not as "the thought of it made me shutter [sic] and turn sick."

What she saw and recorded in letters home to her sister shocked the English world, for there was little glory but plenty of death. Cholera slew elite officers and lowly enlisted men alike. Horses starved. The wounded lay untended. The dead went unburied. Allies argued. Incompetence was rampant. The Crimea was hell for men and indescribable for a woman on her own. Yet against the odds, Fanny Duberly rode through it all. She witnessed the battle of Balaklava, explored the ruins of captured Sebastopol, dined with lords, drank with soldiers and watched the ill-fated charge of the noble Light Brigade.

Fanny's “Crimean Journal” tells how cities fell and nations argued, while half a million soldiers died in a bitter and largely forgotten conflict. Though no great military male figures emerged, two remarkable women are remembered. Florence Nightingale made her reputation improving the medical needs of soldiers and Fanny Duberly penned this vivid eye witness account of an unnecessary war. Fascinating, remarkable, courageous, mysterious, sympathetic -Fanny Duberly was the Victorian heroine deluxe.

India

Duberly again accompanied her husband when the 8th Hussars were sent to India in 1856.

It was a barbarous war and is known today by various names including the Indian Mutiny or the First War for Independence. Regardless of what it’s called, the struggle which swept across India in 1857 remains a blood-soaked memory, one wherein hordes of innocent civilians were wantonly slaughtered by merciless men on both sides. Having established an economic and political stranglehold over much of India by the mid-19th century, the merchant princes who ran the British East India Company were content to enjoy their profits in faraway London. Meanwhile, they left the actual running of the various seized principalities to a mercenary army, whose officers were primarily British and whose rank and file had been recruited from a variety of Indian races and religions.

In this climate of political complacency English expansionists treated their Indian subjects with contempt. Equally damaging was the unfounded rumour stating Indian princes would be forced to marry English widows so as to ensure a Christian succession. Worst of all were the reports that Indian soldiers would be forced to bite cartridges covered in pig or cow grease, a sacrilege supposedly designed by the British to break the religious laws of Moslem and Hindu recruits. When this political powder-keg exploded, the Indian soldiers revolted and murdered European officers and civilians. Thereafter a savage war raged across India pitting vengeful Europeans against outraged Indians. The carnage was indescribable.

Though she was a hardened campaigner, the resultant 1,800 mile equestrian journey which Fanny undertook is a feat of endurance for any human being. Ordered to cross the Rajastani desert, Fanny rode alongside Henry and his hussars through a sun-baked wilderness where the midday temperatures often reached 119 degrees in the author’s tiny tent. The indomitable Fanny witnessed battles, dodged cannon balls, dined with captured maharajahs and survived a battlefield surgical procedure that left a three inch hole in her body.

She stayed with her husband throughout the final months of the Sepoy Mutiny. She was adamant about accompanying the troops on campaign and told her sister that she would "stain my face and hands and adopt the Hindoo caftan and turban," refusing to stay behind. At Gwalior in 1858, while watching the start of a cavalry charge, her horse ran after the rest and, instead of holding back, she told her husband "I must go!" and galloped away.

The couple had no children. She was a great friend and supporter of her husband, who never seemed to be jealous of his wife as the centre of attention in the all-male environment of the British Army in the field. She described her husband as "a friend I am obliged to support." He was ill when the time came to go ashore in the Crimea and she told her sister that "Lord Cardigan intends him to land with the troops, but I don’t intend him to do so." The couple had their differences of opinion on the nature of military service. When orders came from Lucan that she must be put ashore at Constantinople, she wrote that "Henry looks upon the order as a soldier; I as a woman, laugh at it."

The Duberlys returned to England in 1864. She retained her campaign memories but, when asked to reminisce about what she had witnessed, she replied that "those days are best forgotten." 

Nevertheless, she retained her adventurous spirit and complained to a nephew in 1896 that "I cannot stand dullness for long, and life gets duller and duller as one gets older."

She died at Cheltenham in 1903, aged 73.

Portrayals in Fiction

• Fanny Duberly was played by Jill Bennett in the 1968 film The Charge of the Light Brigade. In this, she was wrongly depicted as having a sexual relationship with Cardigan, played by Trevor Howard.
• She featured in two books about Harry Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser: Flash for Freedom! and Flashman at the Charge. In both of these, particularly the former, she is a target for Flashman's lust but he fails in his attempted seduction of her. Fraser introduces her, still Fanny Locke, as "a damned handsome eighteen with the shape of a well-developed matron." He remarks on her prettiness, fair hair and blue eyes as well as complimenting her on her riding skills: "she could ride, that girl." Flashman desires to have sex with her, opportunity allowing, and laments not being able to do so or at least to "give her tits a squeeze." Fraser has Flashman jealous of Duberly's husband, describing him in Flashman's words as a "muff" who, when on guard duty, sits outside the room "like a blasted water bailiff."
• Mrs Duberly is mentioned in Queen Victoria's Bomb by Ronald Clark (1967). The story consists of the memoirs of Professor Franklin Huxtable whose invention of an ultimate weapon in the 1850s was supposed to make warfare impossible. The bomb is trialled in a remote part of India and resulted in the vaporising some unfortunate horses whose shadows were left as a permanent record burnt on the landscape.